Hi,
first of all let me thank again to all the people who helped preparing
for the event and for those who helped with the stand!
A short report:
We were told that there were 5,000 geeks around. I don't know but it certainly
feeled crowded even in the building where the Perl stand was.
In the main building most of the stands belonged to the various linux and BSD
distributions while there was a separate building where the various
projects had
their stands. Some of the projects (at least I think PostgreSQL) had
both a stand
there and a dev-room.
While our stand was not in the main flow of the people we still had
lot of people passing
by and stopping at the stand.
A few comments and idea so far:
- Juerd Waalboer brought a beamer/projector and I think Dave Cross
hacked together a few slides we were projecting to the wall opposite
to the stand. (one of them explaining the tuits thing)
This was great. We should try to make this happen next time on purpose
and not only by chance. A slight improvement would be to project from some
other place and not from the middle of the table as this disturbs
the visitors.
We might need some way to put the project on a ladder maybe?
- We had two large Perl logos, the standing roll-up that was next to our stand
and the smaller one that we hanged behind the O'Reilly stand in the central
building. It was hanged there using masking tape - so maybe the new
buzz of Perl
could be "Perl is the masking tape of the Internet" or
"Perl stands behind O'Reilly" ;-)
- Next time we could have a few large wall papers. We could hang them
on walls next to
our stand or in a more central location. In the latter case we
should also put directions
on how to get to our stand.
- Each Perl Monger should get a name tag with the Perl logo, the name
of the person
and possibly also languages s/he is speaking.
That will help identify us both at the stand and when we are wondering around.
- T-shirts and sweaters in colder places for the team.
Some of us were in Perl T-shirts but it might be more attraction drawer if
we were all in the same T-shirt with a Perl logo just as all the PostgreSQL
people were in blue (or purple?) POstgreSQL shirts. For places where the
weather is colder like FOSDEM we should also provide sweaters.
(I was wearing a T-shirt with a Perl logo but most of the time it was too
cold for me so I had to be in a sweater that does not have any logo)
- Scheduling who is at the stand when?
This time we only had a short time when it seemed that all of us are either
giving a talk or want to attend a talk so our stand always had at least one
person but it would be much better to schedule who is at the stand when.
This will let others wonder around and/or go to talks without worrying about
the stand. (I basically went only to my talks and the talks before mine, the
rest of the time I was either trying to engage people at other stands or was
around the stand.)
- I brought two boxes of pens as I had just too much of them for my company.
They were gone quite quickly, though several people asked how much
do they cost.
- We could have something to give in return of donations.
e.g. The PostgreSQL people were collecting donations and they had
various things with various price tags:
Small purple elephants for 25 EURO, and a big one is 100 EURO.
They also have blue relaxation ball for a few EUROs
and some other stuff. The revenue could finance
further events activity just as it does for the PostgreSQL team.
The ideas we had during the event were:
- plush camel
- plush Moose
- onion shaped relaxation ball (to squeeze)
- (maybe even the pens)
- Something to play on:
We could setup a few computers where people could play with
- Frozen bubble or better a future SDL game in Perl
- Some (web ?) application in Perl
- Some kind of a game where people need to guess things (about Perl?).
A few questions and a lottery? (giving away some of the items we would
sell otherwise)
- Have mobile and other embedded devices and show how Perl works on them.
- Things we might need to hang and display stuff
- masking tape or duct tape or similar
- staples
- drawing pin
- scissors, rope
- clips to make sure the table cloth does not fall off the table
Salve gave me the following list of items to add to my reminder:
- banner / logo
- "more" color (it was all white)
- an eye-catcher more visible than the tuits
- something visual/screen demo
- "map of CPAN authors"
I am not sure what did he mean by each one of these and if I already
mentioned them
above but I can think of creating a large map of CPAN authors - e.g.
where they are
located on the world - that we can even sell.
That's all I can recall now.
regards
Gabor
