Heya, I've got a question for you, experienced and less experienced ambassadors! If you go to an event with openSUSE DVD's, how many DVD's do you need per visitor? So, say you have 500 visitors, how many DVD's do you need? 200? 300? 100? And does it make a difference if you also have other things, like stickers, posters, t-shirts and such - do you then need less, or more DVD's? I'd love to hear some of your input on this. Hugs, Jos
2012/11/21 Jos Poortvliet <jos@opensuse.org>:
Depends by the event.
So, say you have 500 visitors, how many DVD's do you need? 200? 300? 100?
For example: Event in a school (example Linux Day or similar): 500 students, 100 DVD are enough. Promotional event only about openSUSE: 100 attenders, 100 DVD Fair 5000 visitor: 300 CD.
And does it make a difference if you also have other things, like stickers, posters, t-shirts and such - do you then need less, or more DVD's?
For this I'm pretty sure In the past years the DVD was the most important thing, but to the present day, with a higher uptake of DSL, the are things (stickers, poster, t-shirts, hats and similar) are attracting much more attention of young people. I noticed however that the elderly, or no longer young, still prefer the DVD.
I'd love to hear some of your input on this.
I think the time is ripe to start talking about a new way to promote GNU/Linux and openSUSE in particular. The DVDs are important, but I think that today we could think of some alternatives (such as a version to be copied in USB flash drives during the events, perhaps creating a small cardboard box, colored and adorned with logos openSUSE, to be connected a computer). Another idea is to create small objects of daily use and low cost, with the openSUSE logo, in addition to those that already exist. For example, the feathers, the USB flash drives, notebooks (not the computer, I mean those of paper), or other similar objects. And we can imagine more....
Hugs, Jos
Regards Alexjan. -- Alexjan Carraturo -- Twitter/Facebook/Identica/flickr: axjslack Personal site: http://axjslack.wordpress.com -- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 12:45:19PM +0100, Jos Poortvliet wrote: [...]
So, say you have 500 visitors, how many DVD's do you need? 200? 300? 100?
I would say about 100 in practice, unless you have them put in the bags at the start, in which case 500... But it's more likely that people will do something with them if they have actually received them personally.
More. And those other things should be "fun toys" or "useful items" rather than just any old thing with branding on. -- ============================================ Roger Whittaker Premium Support Engineer (SUSE) roger.whittaker@suse.com 01344 326116 07802 357081 SUSE Linux 1 Arlington Square Downshire Way Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 1WA Registered in England and Wales no: 02033363 ============================================ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
Hello Jos, I'll talk for events run in Mauritius. Taking the example of 500 persons, I'll say 300 DVDs. I've noticed it's usually like 3/4 of number of people attending the event. I also get people wishing to have a Live edition on their pendrive. A laptop and a simple use of 'dd' helps then :) T-shirts / posters help a lot when you have volunteers around. For the last grand event I did in Mauritius (back in 2010), we prepared t-shirts ourselves (I mean the volunteers). We got some posters printed. The impact was great. We got a nice response. On one occasion I received some stickers from Novell. We did an event at the University of Mauritius and I got many students showing up to get a sticker on their laptop... some even on their phone :) Regards, Nitin (Ishwon) Sookun On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 3:45 PM, Jos Poortvliet <jos@opensuse.org> wrote:
For me on the other hand it is how many times you have attented the event. I mean lets talk about an event with 500 people that openSUSE joins for the first time ever, I would take around 300 DVDs, but after a year or two, given the fact that community has done some work I guess from 100-200 would be more than enough. Now the level of the attended is a factor but nothing that changes those numbers radical. Stickers and other stuff are treated the same way, of course you give away stickers more easy than you give T-shirts. We give T-shirts to volunteers and to people whom we know they contribute and for some reason we have not met them before, also people woh bring Laptops to have openSUSE installed. Again after the first time you don't need that many T-shirts e.g This year we will probably don't need any T-shirts for our events. Please always have in mind that you should give people free stuff but give those to people who will actually use it and not throw them away(to the point that this is possible to predict). Most of the last times DVDs where over and people were left with out DVDs(and other stuff). People who could actually use those stuff to bring people to the Project. Just my 2 cents Have fun Kostas 2012/11/21 Nitin K Sookun <nsgupta@indra.mu>:
-- --- \m/ --- http://opensuse.gr http://os-el.gr http://amb.opensuse.gr http://www.kde.gr http://warlordfff.tk --- \m/ --- me I am not I --- \m/ --- Time travel is possible, you just need to know the right aliens -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
2012/11/21 Jos Poortvliet <jos@opensuse.org>:
In our case, for events taking place in El Salvador, are requested 200-300 DVD's, because in an event attended by about 100 people (which is great), delivered about 80 DVD's The rest of the DVD was distributed to members of the openSUSE community more active, for distribution to other friends, college students, univerdades and entrepreneurs who are interested in using openSUSE or Suse. In terms of promotions, try to do some things, like shirts :-)
Hugs, Jos
-- Saludos, cheperobert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2012-11-21 at 12:45 +0100, Jos Poortvliet wrote:
That's a hard science question to ask. :-) Region, event, and current public perception have a great impact on the numbers. Some events I go to, DVDs go like hot cakes. LFNW would be a good example of that. Other events, people are interested in openSUSE but don't want/need DVDs (they'll download later themselves.) And worst yet, some events, people just aren't interested in visiting openSUSE booth at all, so you can't even give them the goodies if they're not visiting your booth. The more interesting a booth is, when you walk into a room, the more likely you'll get visitors to come by your booth and grab materials from you. Interesting can be in the form of booth design, toys giveaway, who is in the booth (if the person is well known in the local region, people will stop by), etc. Whether people actually do anything with the DVDs becomes the real question. I'll admit, I've gone to conferences, grabbed DVDs of other vendors with the intention of trying it out when I get home, and then never actually get around to it. I wouldn't be surprised if the same experience happens for those who get our DVDs. Yet, I'm loathe to NOT have DVDs on the table when we have a booth. It just looks really bad when the table is empty. My formula for number of DVDs is to get about 1/3 the amount of expected attendees. Be sure to contact the event to ask how many expected attendees. Having extras is a good thing too because you want to have a stack on hand at home to give out individually to people you contact in your daily life. I've suggested before, and would suggest this again, that we should ship DVDs in boxes of 50 instead of 100. This will result in a more efficient distribution, especially since so many events are not that large. Stickers... Ahhh... Our current sticker design really only appeals to the diehard fan of openSUSE. So, we really don' get rid of many stickers. We really need to re-design stickers to be more mass-appealing. Something that says openSUSE but also looks sooo cool people will want it even if they aren't an openSUSE user. My current supply of stickers literally lasts for years. Even large events do not unload stickers easily. Recently, I attended a sticker party. Over 350 FOSS orgs brought their stickers to the table, and for two days we were all like mad geeks flying through that table to grab the coolest and most useful stickers. That tells me clearly, its the coolness of the sticker that gets it grabbed. Same thing with t-shirts. Coolness will get more people to wear the tshirts even if they're not openSUSEans. However, tshirts take up a lot of space and are distracting to the booth staff. We spend time looking for the right size to give to the visitor instead of spending time talking to them about openSUSE. Moreover, lots of people grab shirts just for the free shirt. I'm wearing a tshirt right now from an organization just because I wanted a free shirt. :-) I have yet to actually use their product. Without a doubt, the biggest draw to a booth is our Geeko plushie. Easy to hand out and converse with people at the same time. They're bulky to carry to an event when we have a lot of them, but easy to store in the booth once set up. We get lots of people visiting the booth for that. I mean LOTS. This applies to both the Geeko plushie and also a foam version we gave out once at an event a couple of years ago. They are a big draw and a very unique item because most orgs don't have a mascot like this. Everyone wants this. Excellent bribery item to get people to the booth. Last thing I want to say, it is tempting to compare to other organizations for the amount they distribute at their booths. We have a different challenge than others. We're still trying to build up community and user expansion from a much lower number than others. So, having an abundance of branding items is good because we need more people to think "openSUSE" even after they've left an event and we need more people out there showing off their openSUSE swag. That unfortunately means it is more expensive for us to do this, but until we cross that hump into larger mass appeal and adoption, we're going to have to bite the bullet and invest in good swag. So the question, imo, that really should be asked isn't "how many pieces should we ship to an event?" but rather "what can we do to make the openSUSE Booth awesome?" Bryen M Yunashko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
2012/11/21 Bryen M Yunashko <suserocks@bryen.com>:
In our case in Guatemala, we use the DVDs and other promotional as a reward for all those who actively participate in the event or to answer questions asked in the event or talk. We have several events throughout the year so we must manage our resources;) -- Axel Ruiz IT Consultant Open Training & e-Ntiers Consulting Embajador openSUSE Guatemala -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
Eso es una gran idea!! That's a great idea!! To reward the participation in the event... interesting... On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 4:16 PM, Axel Ruiz <konelix@gmail.com> wrote:
-- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have a nice day ;-) TooManySecrets /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | FreeBSD Since 4.1 \ / - NO HTML/RTF in e-mail | GNU/Linux Since 1993. X - NO Word docs in e-mail | openSUSE Member since 2008 / \ - http://www.toomany.net | http://twitter.com/toomanysecrets --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
On 11/21/2012 12:45 PM, Jos Poortvliet wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up, as I was thinking about it a lot recently. Personally I still see, that even if most of us have the bandwidth and cheap writable DVDs, people still make use of these promo DVDs, as they don't have to actively prepare for the installation, just insert the DVD. In other words, people are lazy :) In a few weeks I'm going to an FSF Hungary organized event. The organizers and many participants are too much Ubuntu / Debian focused at the conference, but I still hope to find some open minds, who would not mind trying openSUSE on their machines. Here I'm not quite sure, if even 200 (or in other words for 2/5 of visitors) would need a DVD. On the other hand we are thinking about a better late than never pizza party for the 12.2 release, and there 2-3x more DVDs than visitors is better, as all attendees are openSUSE maniac and know a couple more people, who they could involve with a nice "original" openSUSE install DVD. Bye, CzP (who is waiting for an answer from ambassador-welcome@ ) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 8:45 AM, Jos Poortvliet <jos@opensuse.org> wrote:
I would say that it depends on the event. For massive events here, I would say that no more than 300 units are needed. In smaller events, I would say that 100 would be enough. Some people like the idea of taking a DVD home, but for my experience, most of the people already have a linux version installed and are not willing to install a different distro, rather try a live media of openSUSE. As a side note what makes a different and people will find awesome is one side 32 bit and the other side 64 bit. They go wooow!
So, say you have 500 visitors, how many DVD's do you need? 200? 300? 100?
500 visitors would be a big event, again for my experience that will gather all kind of users, new and old to linux so an average of 250 - 300 will do.
And does it make a difference if you also have other things, like stickers, posters, t-shirts and such - do you then need less, or more DVD's?
It does, yes! Stickers are always cool, and I would like to have a more modern design for them and maybe in a larger size as well. Quality of stickers I would say is very high, that's a plus. We also need to have more design options for t-shirts, and a quantity of 10-15 is good for major events. Best regards! -- Ricardo Varas Santana http://ricardovs.wordpress.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
Hi Jos, For an Install Fest LInux distributions which are present in sufficient 80-100 200 participants DVDs For an event dedicated to 200 participants only openSUSE's need 200 DVDs We observed a much greater impact would have USB sticks with a live image of openSUSE distribution, stickers and various small objects have openSUSE on them. Also, shirts and caps are impact, especially if you are offered as prizes in various competitions general knowledge. Community events which Romania participates (I or other members from different areas) we have: - Banner (are created by us) - DVDs (received or burned us) - Posters (containing information community in Romania and distribution openSUSE openSUSE) - T-shirts (all members participating in an event openSUSE are wearing T-shirts with the logo openSUSE) Lucian, PS. Images from past events - http://albume.ceata.org/index.php?/category/28 ----------------- Lucian Oprea Telefon: 0745 592602 Pe 21.11.2012 13:45, Jos Poortvliet a scris:
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 2:53 AM, oprea.luci@gmail.com <oprea.luci@gmail.com> wrote:
When I have done events such as Texas Linux Fest and Atlanta Linux Fest I requested about 300 to 500 DVD. For the South East Linux Fest I have requested 500. I usually don't have any extra. In fact for SELF I ran out one year because I only got 300 disc and I had burn about 100 DVD onsite. I usually ask for 100 DVD so that I can go the local meetings each month and drop 20 to 30 disc for people take home. I also keep if I have an left over 20 DVD in my car to pass out when I am out. Drives my wife up the wall, but hey, it's fun to get the word out and talk to complete strangers about the power of Linux and how openSUSE is leading the way. -- Terror PUP a.k.a Chuck "PUP" Payne (678) 636-9678 ----------------------------------------- Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux. ----------------------------------------- openSUSE -- en.opensuse.org/User:Terrorpup openSUSE Ambassador/openSUSE Member Community Manager -- Southeast Linux Foundation (SELF) skype,twiiter,identica,friendfeed -- terrorpup freenode(irc) --terrorpup/lupinstein Register Linux Userid: 155363 Have you tried SUSE Studio? Need to create a Live CD, an app you want to package and distribute , or create your own linux distro. Give SUSE Studio a try. www.susestudio.com. See you at Southeast Linux Fest, June 8-10, 2012 in Charlotte, NC. www.southeastlinuxfest.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 6:45 AM, Jos Poortvliet <jos@opensuse.org> wrote:
And does it make a difference if you also have other things, like stickers, posters, t-shirts and such - do you then need less, or more DVD's?
T-Shirts, Posters, and other swag items do make a difference. People love the stuff gecko, I hold on to those to pass out to people that really want to use openSUSE. At one Linux Fest because I only had two, I told a few people if they were willing to install openSUSE there I would give them gecko, and I did have two people do it. T-Shirts I give out to those will watch and try out and openSUSE. We have sold t-shirts to help out a Linux Fest I was at. The fest have loved us for that. I usually I take print out one pages documents with commands like the poster that I did for openSUSE. I always have a couple other one page man pages. I think if we could so some small pages on how to use SUSE Studio and OBS that those would be a bit hit as well. The people that usually get the DVD, get the stickers and place them on their laptops. I have request for cooler stickers. Like those gecko that Novell did a few back. Or the cards that Carlos made for SCALE. So sticker a big items. I have even had a quest for SUSE Studio Roboman as stickers. I have had a requested for usb drives with openSUSE install it so that people can use on their netbooks and other devices. The only thing that hasn't been popular was those ipod man things. So yes, please keep the t-shirt, posters, stickers, and other items. People love them, I can tell you that they are unhappy when we don't have any swag items. -- Terror PUP a.k.a Chuck "PUP" Payne (678) 636-9678 ----------------------------------------- Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux. ----------------------------------------- openSUSE -- en.opensuse.org/User:Terrorpup openSUSE Ambassador/openSUSE Member Community Manager -- Southeast Linux Foundation (SELF) skype,twiiter,identica,friendfeed -- terrorpup freenode(irc) --terrorpup/lupinstein Register Linux Userid: 155363 Have you tried SUSE Studio? Need to create a Live CD, an app you want to package and distribute , or create your own linux distro. Give SUSE Studio a try. www.susestudio.com. See you at Southeast Linux Fest, June 8-10, 2012 in Charlotte, NC. www.southeastlinuxfest.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
Hello Geekos, I would like to give my feedback as well. As the last year i participated in some FOSS events (by boothing), i would like to mention the following ones: a) Depending on the event (small-scale , medium-scale , large-scale) i estimate that always 35% of attendees in the event they do pick up swag items (Promo DVD's, leaflets, stickers etc) , in other words 1 in 3 people do take "our" stuff. b) If i have swag, like stickers, posters, t-shirts i think the best ways to give them away are: i) Make a draw [1] like i did during the Release Party in Madrid [2] ii) Create a quiz and give away a set of swag [poster,t-shirt,sticker etc] in the winner(s) of this quiz [1] https://github.com/athanrous/openSUSE-Release-Party [2] https://zoumpis.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/informe-de-la-fiesta-de-lanzamiento... Greetings , Ilias R. (aka Zoumpis) On 11/27/2012 03:27 PM, Chuck Payne wrote:
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
2012/11/21 Jos Poortvliet <jos@opensuse.org>:
Depends by the event.
So, say you have 500 visitors, how many DVD's do you need? 200? 300? 100?
For example: Event in a school (example Linux Day or similar): 500 students, 100 DVD are enough. Promotional event only about openSUSE: 100 attenders, 100 DVD Fair 5000 visitor: 300 CD.
And does it make a difference if you also have other things, like stickers, posters, t-shirts and such - do you then need less, or more DVD's?
For this I'm pretty sure In the past years the DVD was the most important thing, but to the present day, with a higher uptake of DSL, the are things (stickers, poster, t-shirts, hats and similar) are attracting much more attention of young people. I noticed however that the elderly, or no longer young, still prefer the DVD.
I'd love to hear some of your input on this.
I think the time is ripe to start talking about a new way to promote GNU/Linux and openSUSE in particular. The DVDs are important, but I think that today we could think of some alternatives (such as a version to be copied in USB flash drives during the events, perhaps creating a small cardboard box, colored and adorned with logos openSUSE, to be connected a computer). Another idea is to create small objects of daily use and low cost, with the openSUSE logo, in addition to those that already exist. For example, the feathers, the USB flash drives, notebooks (not the computer, I mean those of paper), or other similar objects. And we can imagine more....
Hugs, Jos
Regards Alexjan. -- Alexjan Carraturo -- Twitter/Facebook/Identica/flickr: axjslack Personal site: http://axjslack.wordpress.com -- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 12:45:19PM +0100, Jos Poortvliet wrote: [...]
So, say you have 500 visitors, how many DVD's do you need? 200? 300? 100?
I would say about 100 in practice, unless you have them put in the bags at the start, in which case 500... But it's more likely that people will do something with them if they have actually received them personally.
More. And those other things should be "fun toys" or "useful items" rather than just any old thing with branding on. -- ============================================ Roger Whittaker Premium Support Engineer (SUSE) roger.whittaker@suse.com 01344 326116 07802 357081 SUSE Linux 1 Arlington Square Downshire Way Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 1WA Registered in England and Wales no: 02033363 ============================================ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
Hello Jos, I'll talk for events run in Mauritius. Taking the example of 500 persons, I'll say 300 DVDs. I've noticed it's usually like 3/4 of number of people attending the event. I also get people wishing to have a Live edition on their pendrive. A laptop and a simple use of 'dd' helps then :) T-shirts / posters help a lot when you have volunteers around. For the last grand event I did in Mauritius (back in 2010), we prepared t-shirts ourselves (I mean the volunteers). We got some posters printed. The impact was great. We got a nice response. On one occasion I received some stickers from Novell. We did an event at the University of Mauritius and I got many students showing up to get a sticker on their laptop... some even on their phone :) Regards, Nitin (Ishwon) Sookun On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 3:45 PM, Jos Poortvliet <jos@opensuse.org> wrote:
For me on the other hand it is how many times you have attented the event. I mean lets talk about an event with 500 people that openSUSE joins for the first time ever, I would take around 300 DVDs, but after a year or two, given the fact that community has done some work I guess from 100-200 would be more than enough. Now the level of the attended is a factor but nothing that changes those numbers radical. Stickers and other stuff are treated the same way, of course you give away stickers more easy than you give T-shirts. We give T-shirts to volunteers and to people whom we know they contribute and for some reason we have not met them before, also people woh bring Laptops to have openSUSE installed. Again after the first time you don't need that many T-shirts e.g This year we will probably don't need any T-shirts for our events. Please always have in mind that you should give people free stuff but give those to people who will actually use it and not throw them away(to the point that this is possible to predict). Most of the last times DVDs where over and people were left with out DVDs(and other stuff). People who could actually use those stuff to bring people to the Project. Just my 2 cents Have fun Kostas 2012/11/21 Nitin K Sookun <nsgupta@indra.mu>:
-- --- \m/ --- http://opensuse.gr http://os-el.gr http://amb.opensuse.gr http://www.kde.gr http://warlordfff.tk --- \m/ --- me I am not I --- \m/ --- Time travel is possible, you just need to know the right aliens -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
2012/11/21 Jos Poortvliet <jos@opensuse.org>:
In our case, for events taking place in El Salvador, are requested 200-300 DVD's, because in an event attended by about 100 people (which is great), delivered about 80 DVD's The rest of the DVD was distributed to members of the openSUSE community more active, for distribution to other friends, college students, univerdades and entrepreneurs who are interested in using openSUSE or Suse. In terms of promotions, try to do some things, like shirts :-)
Hugs, Jos
-- Saludos, cheperobert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2012-11-21 at 12:45 +0100, Jos Poortvliet wrote:
That's a hard science question to ask. :-) Region, event, and current public perception have a great impact on the numbers. Some events I go to, DVDs go like hot cakes. LFNW would be a good example of that. Other events, people are interested in openSUSE but don't want/need DVDs (they'll download later themselves.) And worst yet, some events, people just aren't interested in visiting openSUSE booth at all, so you can't even give them the goodies if they're not visiting your booth. The more interesting a booth is, when you walk into a room, the more likely you'll get visitors to come by your booth and grab materials from you. Interesting can be in the form of booth design, toys giveaway, who is in the booth (if the person is well known in the local region, people will stop by), etc. Whether people actually do anything with the DVDs becomes the real question. I'll admit, I've gone to conferences, grabbed DVDs of other vendors with the intention of trying it out when I get home, and then never actually get around to it. I wouldn't be surprised if the same experience happens for those who get our DVDs. Yet, I'm loathe to NOT have DVDs on the table when we have a booth. It just looks really bad when the table is empty. My formula for number of DVDs is to get about 1/3 the amount of expected attendees. Be sure to contact the event to ask how many expected attendees. Having extras is a good thing too because you want to have a stack on hand at home to give out individually to people you contact in your daily life. I've suggested before, and would suggest this again, that we should ship DVDs in boxes of 50 instead of 100. This will result in a more efficient distribution, especially since so many events are not that large. Stickers... Ahhh... Our current sticker design really only appeals to the diehard fan of openSUSE. So, we really don' get rid of many stickers. We really need to re-design stickers to be more mass-appealing. Something that says openSUSE but also looks sooo cool people will want it even if they aren't an openSUSE user. My current supply of stickers literally lasts for years. Even large events do not unload stickers easily. Recently, I attended a sticker party. Over 350 FOSS orgs brought their stickers to the table, and for two days we were all like mad geeks flying through that table to grab the coolest and most useful stickers. That tells me clearly, its the coolness of the sticker that gets it grabbed. Same thing with t-shirts. Coolness will get more people to wear the tshirts even if they're not openSUSEans. However, tshirts take up a lot of space and are distracting to the booth staff. We spend time looking for the right size to give to the visitor instead of spending time talking to them about openSUSE. Moreover, lots of people grab shirts just for the free shirt. I'm wearing a tshirt right now from an organization just because I wanted a free shirt. :-) I have yet to actually use their product. Without a doubt, the biggest draw to a booth is our Geeko plushie. Easy to hand out and converse with people at the same time. They're bulky to carry to an event when we have a lot of them, but easy to store in the booth once set up. We get lots of people visiting the booth for that. I mean LOTS. This applies to both the Geeko plushie and also a foam version we gave out once at an event a couple of years ago. They are a big draw and a very unique item because most orgs don't have a mascot like this. Everyone wants this. Excellent bribery item to get people to the booth. Last thing I want to say, it is tempting to compare to other organizations for the amount they distribute at their booths. We have a different challenge than others. We're still trying to build up community and user expansion from a much lower number than others. So, having an abundance of branding items is good because we need more people to think "openSUSE" even after they've left an event and we need more people out there showing off their openSUSE swag. That unfortunately means it is more expensive for us to do this, but until we cross that hump into larger mass appeal and adoption, we're going to have to bite the bullet and invest in good swag. So the question, imo, that really should be asked isn't "how many pieces should we ship to an event?" but rather "what can we do to make the openSUSE Booth awesome?" Bryen M Yunashko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-ambassadors+owner@opensuse.org
participants (14)
-
Alexjan Carraturo -
Axel Ruiz -
Bryen M Yunashko -
cheperobert -
Chuck Payne -
Ilias R. -
Jos Poortvliet -
Kostas Koudaras -
Manuel Trujillo (TooManySecrets) -
Nitin K Sookun -
oprea.luci＠gmail.com -
Peter Czanik -
Ricardo Varas Santana -
Roger Whittaker