On Friday 10 May 2013 15:30:31 James Mason wrote:
> LinuxFest Northwest took place the last weekend in April, as usual, and
> was an *amazing* event for openSUSE!
>
> Prior to the event, I organized a social media schedule, posting to
> Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus every day of the week prior, with
> photos and info about our presence.
>
> As an event sponsor[1], we received a 100sq.ft. booth space[2] in a
> preferred area of the conference hall. This space was put to excellent
> use, creating an open and inviting area[3], instead of the 'stand in
> front of my desk' approach offered by most exhibitors:
> * In the rear, a 21" HP Touchsmart PC was setup with openSUSE 12.3
> and KDE, GNOME, LXDE, XFCE, and E17, providing a nice way to
> demonstrate our desktop experience
> * Next to the PC we had some space for doing Chameleon[4] and
> Penguin[5] origami projects. (Origami is a great metaphor for
> open source... you can expound on that yourself ;)
> * SWAG was set off to the side, behind a 6ft tall whiteboard
> (loaned to us by Attachmate Bellingham), to reduce the number of
> people simply walking by and grabbing stuff, although we kindly
> offered a kit (brochure, DVD, round sticker, system sticker) to
> anyone who asked.
> * The largest volume of the booth was taken up by a pair of lime
> green (SUSE green?) lawn chairs, and Geeko-themed table.
> The goal was to get people to 'come in' to openSUSE, and have a deeper
> interaction with a smaller, interested group, rather than to just hand
> out stuff to a crowd. We regularly updated the whiteboard with
> presentation times & locations by openSUSE Advocates, our 'Articles of
> Faith', and some questions/statements to spur conversation ("Ask me
> about SUSE Studio!"; "Is your app built with OBS?"). And of course,
> there was the bubble wrap. Loud green bubble wrap. Why? Just to make
> some noise, and have some fun. That's the point, right?
>
> Speaking of SWAG, we handed out 206 kits, which was fewer than I had
> anticipated (I ordered 300), but I expect to consume the rest
> distribution to the local LUG[6] and northwest US TAG offices. This was
> the first year that a substantial number of people were getting openSUSE
> via other means: "I already downloaded it"; "Can you put an image on my
> thumb drive"; "Can you copy the Raspberry Pi image to my SD card"; etc.
>
> The biggest change this year, over previous LFNW events, was that all
> the booth staff were local. In prior years, I've worked with Ted Haeger,
> Joe Brockmeyer, Alan Clark, Jos, and Bryan Yunashko here at LFNW; this
> year I put out a 'call for help' through local channels, and had three
> users (I'm going to call them Advocates from now on) step up to help:
> Bryan Lunduke - a local developer and media genius/whore, Adrian Klaver
> - a local Qt developer and avid fan of our KDE desktop, and Carl Symons
> (who in the end was unable to attend due to family emergencies) - a KDE
> contributor. We also informally picked up two more helpers: Chani
> Armitage spent a bit of time hanging around since there wasn't a
> dedicated KDE booth this year; and Caleb Gebhart, a local student who
> (hopefully) has signed up for openSUSE+GSoC this year. All in all, it
> was *awesome* having local help, and I expect to have more people
> representing different facets of the openSUSE community next year
> (although I wouldn't mind at all if someone flew in to have some fun)!
>
> Jupiter Broadcasting, a WA-based podcasting network was broadcasting
> live from the event, and recording interviews for use on the Linux
> Action Show[7][8]. My interview[9] got a fair amount of positive
> feedback, demonstrating, again, how we're trying to build an inclusive
> openSUSE community, that is related to, but not subjugated by the SUSE
> Enterprise.
>
> I suppose I should mention the final attendance numbers[10]:
> "We had 1250 registered attendees and it is estimated that we had a
> total of about 1400 to 1500 people at the Fest."
>
> I need to thank a few people who helped out behind the scenes...
> although openSUSE would've had a presence at LFNW without them, it
> wouldn't have been nearly as fun:
> * Agustin Bethencourt, openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE, for approving
> SUSE's sponsorship.
> * Alan Clark, Director of Open Source(and more) at SUSE, for being
> his usual amazingly helpful self, and getting me a banner and
> brochures at the last minute.
> * Darren Clark, Director of Development at Attachmate, for making
> office resources available for use at the event.
> Thanks guys!
>
> In summary, LFNW was a fun, positive event, with a tremendous amount of
> support for openSUSE. I'm looking forward to making our presence even
> better next year!This was an awesome report, dude, on an awesome event... ;-) > [1] http://www.linuxfestnorthwest.org/sponsor/opensuse > [2] http://www.linuxfestnorthwest.org/sponsors/map > [3] http://goo.gl/HXL2u > [4] https://en.opensuse.org/File:Origami_instructions_chameleon.png > [5] https://en.opensuse.org/File:Origami_instructions_penguin.png > [6] http://blug.org/ > [7] > http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/36476/linuxfest-nw-pt-1-las-s26e08/ > [8] > http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/36666/linuxfest-nw-2013-pt-2-las-s26e09/ > [9] http://youtu.be/8u3yUF9p9WQ?t=40m35s > [10] https://plus.google.com/111293764782511971489/posts/3RYn9qByAvU
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
