Apologies for the cross posting, but I want to be sure to get as many interested parties involved possible
I'm volunteering to co-ordinate an openSUSE stand at FOSDEM this February
I have to confess to being a FOSDEM beginner, but I know enough that I'm getting myself involved in a big thing, and I'm going to need help.
Even if you're not coming this year, I especially welcome advice and guidance from FOSDEM veterans. What worked in previous years? what do I need to know? what do I need to avoid?
To have a stand, we need to have our proposal in by 12th December. For both days, FOSDEM can provide either one or two 1m80 x 80cm tables, with 2 chairs per table.
We'll need at least 2 people to man the stand, though the more the merrier, and the less time we'll each have to spend working the stand.
As it's a big event my plan is to ask for 2 tables, but I need to have an idea of how many of you will be willing to help make our presence at FOSDEM felt
So if you're coming to FOSDEM, and would like to help out, please either reply to me directly or ideally to the opensuse-marketing mailing list
If any of you who work in NUE are coming to FOSDEM, please let me know, we might need your help to ferry goodies and stuff from SUSE offices to save on shipping.
Many Thanks
Richard Brown openSUSE Ambassador
Richard Brown Systems Engineering Team Leader City College Brighton and Hove
Hey,
On 01.12.2011 00:07, Richard Brown wrote:
I'm volunteering to co-ordinate an openSUSE stand at FOSDEM this February
Cool :)
Even if you're not coming this year, I especially welcome advice and guidance from FOSDEM veterans. What worked in previous years?
* Bring the Touchsmarts, people like to grope things. * Bring 12.1 DVDs, stickers and folders, people like to snatch things. * Bring Beer and T-Shirts, sell them for 1€ and give the proceeds to the university. They will love you. (Pascal knows whom to give it to) * Have 2 guys, you can rely on at any time, to be on the booth. People like to wander off into the awesome program. One minute it might seem that you have a gazillion people on the booth and the next one it's deserted because RMS speaks. * Try as hard as possible to avoid that people leave their shit on the booth. The corridors are narrow, the boths are small, there are more and more people each year. If they all leave their Jackets, laptops and bags on your booth there is no room to operate anymore.
what do I need to know?
* You get two tables and a couple of chairs in a windy corridor * It's friggn cold and drafty * Don't try to plan anything, it's chaotic. * Have Pascals number on speed dial. He's the man. * Get drunk as early as possible :-)
what do I need to avoid?
* Belgian "Beer". At any cost.
Henne
On 01/12/2011 12:19, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 01.12.2011 00:07, Richard Brown wrote:
I'm volunteering to co-ordinate an openSUSE stand at FOSDEM this February
Cool :)
Even if you're not coming this year, I especially welcome advice and guidance from FOSDEM veterans. What worked in previous years?
- Bring the Touchsmarts, people like to grope things.
- Bring 12.1 DVDs, stickers and folders, people like to snatch things.
- Bring Beer and T-Shirts, sell them for 1€ and give the proceeds to the university. They will love you. (Pascal knows whom to give it to)
- Have 2 guys, you can rely on at any time, to be on the booth. People like to wander off into the awesome program. One minute it might seem that you have a gazillion people on the booth and the next one it's deserted because RMS speaks.
- Try as hard as possible to avoid that people leave their shit on the booth. The corridors are narrow, the boths are small, there are more and more people each year. If they all leave their Jackets, laptops and bags on your booth there is no room to operate anymore.
what do I need to know?
- You get two tables and a couple of chairs in a windy corridor
- It's friggn cold and drafty
- Don't try to plan anything, it's chaotic.
- Have Pascals number on speed dial. He's the man.
- Get drunk as early as possible :-)
what do I need to avoid?
- Belgian "Beer". At any cost.
Henne
I can only subscribe to the list given by Henne, except for the last bullet. At least Saturday afternoon, we will not have anymore Geeko Beer old Toast! :D
Accept luggage for 200€/day : clarify this with a printed panel. :D
Any computer placed on "our" table has to run openSUSE (SLE accepted), if not reformat it :D
Have also my phone in quick dial (for any french questions) Pascal will have so much things to be done in orga ....
Be early on site saturday, and ask that the booth stuff be on time (this one is hard to achieve ... )
2011/12/1 Bruno Friedmann bruno@ioda-net.ch:
On 01/12/2011 12:19, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 01.12.2011 00:07, Richard Brown wrote:
I'm volunteering to co-ordinate an openSUSE stand at FOSDEM this February
Cool :)
Even if you're not coming this year, I especially welcome advice and guidance from FOSDEM veterans. What worked in previous years?
- Bring the Touchsmarts, people like to grope things.
- Bring 12.1 DVDs, stickers and folders, people like to snatch things.
- Bring Beer and T-Shirts, sell them for 1€ and give the proceeds to
the university. They will love you. (Pascal knows whom to give it to)
- Have 2 guys, you can rely on at any time, to be on the booth. People
like to wander off into the awesome program. One minute it might seem that you have a gazillion people on the booth and the next one it's deserted because RMS speaks.
- Try as hard as possible to avoid that people leave their shit on
the booth. The corridors are narrow, the boths are small, there are more and more people each year. If they all leave their Jackets, laptops and bags on your booth there is no room to operate anymore.
what do I need to know?
- You get two tables and a couple of chairs in a windy corridor
- It's friggn cold and drafty
- Don't try to plan anything, it's chaotic.
- Have Pascals number on speed dial. He's the man.
- Get drunk as early as possible :-)
I will I promise :D
what do I need to avoid?
Well you could start by avoiding me , I talk tooooo much, more when I'm drunk :D
- Belgian "Beer". At any cost.
No way this is the 2nd reason I go to Fosdem
Henne
I can only subscribe to the list given by Henne, except for the last bullet. At least Saturday afternoon, we will not have anymore Geeko Beer old Toast! :D
I can bet on it ;-)
Accept luggage for 200€/day : clarify this with a printed panel. :D
Any computer placed on "our" table has to run openSUSE (SLE accepted), if not reformat it :D
+1
Have also my phone in quick dial (for any french questions) Pascal will have so much things to be done in orga ....
Be early on site saturday, and ask that the booth stuff be on time (this one is hard to achieve ... )
--
Bruno Friedmann Ioda-Net Sàrl www.ioda-net.ch
openSUSE Member & Ambassador GPG KEY : D5C9B751C4653227 irc: tigerfoot -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+owner@opensuse.org
On Fri, 02 Dec 2011, Kostas Koudaras wrote:
2011/12/1 Bruno Friedmann bruno@ioda-net.ch:
On 01/12/2011 12:19, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 01.12.2011 00:07, Richard Brown wrote:
I'm volunteering to co-ordinate an openSUSE stand at FOSDEM this February
Cool :)
Even if you're not coming this year, I especially welcome advice and guidance from FOSDEM veterans. What worked in previous years?
- Bring the Touchsmarts, people like to grope things.
- Bring 12.1 DVDs, stickers and folders, people like to snatch things.
- Bring Beer and T-Shirts, sell them for 1? and give the proceeds to
the university. They will love you. (Pascal knows whom to give it to)
- Have 2 guys, you can rely on at any time, to be on the booth. People
like to wander off into the awesome program. One minute it might seem that you have a gazillion people on the booth and the next one it's deserted because RMS speaks.
- Try as hard as possible to avoid that people leave their shit on
the booth. The corridors are narrow, the boths are small, there are more and more people each year. If they all leave their Jackets, laptops and bags on your booth there is no room to operate anymore.
what do I need to know?
- You get two tables and a couple of chairs in a windy corridor
- It's friggn cold and drafty
- Don't try to plan anything, it's chaotic.
- Have Pascals number on speed dial. He's the man.
- Get drunk as early as possible :-)
I will I promise :D
what do I need to avoid?
Well you could start by avoiding me , I talk tooooo much, more when I'm drunk :D
As a member of the Kostas fan club, and somebody who is planning to come to FOSDEM (I really am!), do *NOT* avoid Kostas.
Especially if Kostas is drunk, he's a fun multiplier. FOSDEM in general is already very fun so:
Awesome = fun(FOSDEM) * fun(Kostas + Beer)
I would also recommend organizing as BIG of a list as possible for folks to hang out at the stand. Try to come up with some kind of schedule for being near the booth to answer questions and talk to folks about openSUSE.
Speaking from the experience of manning the booth at SCALE9x earlier this year, there's going to be a lot of fun stuff happening, and it's very difficult to keep the booth organized if you don't have some kind of agreed upon schedule planned out ahead of time.
Look forward to seeing folks there :)
Cheers - R. Tyler Croy -------------------------------------- Code: http://github.com/rtyler Chatter: http://twitter.com/agentdero rtyler@jabber.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hey,
On 02.12.2011 02:03, R. Tyler Croy wrote:
Try to come up with some kind of schedule for being near the booth
That is exactly what I would recommend to avoid. It won't work out because there are way too many openSUSE people around. And way too many of them have either talks they want to see, give talks themselves, meet friends etc. etc.
I recommend to have a base-crew of 3 people that man the booth at all times, do the rest (if one of the 3 want's to see a Talk or something) with the people that hang out. Keep it small, simple.
Henne
- -- Henne Vogelsang, openSUSE http://www.hennevogel.de Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson
On 02/12/2011 11:11, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 02.12.2011 02:03, R. Tyler Croy wrote:
Try to come up with some kind of schedule for being near the booth
That is exactly what I would recommend to avoid. It won't work out because there are way too many openSUSE people around. And way too many of them have either talks they want to see, give talks themselves, meet friends etc. etc.
I recommend to have a base-crew of 3 people that man the booth at all times, do the rest (if one of the 3 want's to see a Talk or something) with the people that hang out. Keep it small, simple.
Henne
Henne that's because Tyler (I'm so happy to see you again there dude) is too young
Tyler, take what you saw in Scale and multiply it by 4 at least :-) Then you will start to have an idea about what's the Fosdem mood is ...
:D
On 2011-12-01 12:19:09 (+0100), Henne Vogelsang hvogel@opensuse.org wrote:
On 01.12.2011 00:07, Richard Brown wrote:
I'm volunteering to co-ordinate an openSUSE stand at FOSDEM this February
Cool :)
Even if you're not coming this year, I especially welcome advice and guidance from FOSDEM veterans. What worked in previous years?
- Bring the Touchsmarts, people like to grope things.
- Bring 12.1 DVDs, stickers and folders, people like to snatch things.
- Bring Beer and T-Shirts, sell them for 1€ and give the proceeds to the university. They will love you. (Pascal knows whom to give it to)
- Have 2 guys, you can rely on at any time, to be on the booth. People like to wander off into the awesome program. One minute it might seem that you have a gazillion people on the booth and the next one it's deserted because RMS speaks.
True, but I'd even plan a bit more than 2 people if possible.
Thing is, there will probably be around 400 sessions during the weekend, with more than 20 in parallel at all times and, hence, it's very likely that people will want to see a few talks as well. Ideally, have people check the schedule once it's available, find their "must see" talks, and make a schedule. Only gotcha: the schedule will be published really late (that's inherent to the way FOSDEM works, projects arrange their own schedule for the devrooms).
Henne, as you won't be able to be there (*sad* :(), will someone else take care of travelling with the openSUSE stand and touchsmarts and stuff from Nürnberg to Brussels, as usual ? Are you coordinating on the Nürnberg side of things, or is someone else ? If so, whom ? :)
- Try as hard as possible to avoid that people leave their shit on the booth. The corridors are narrow, the boths are small, there are more and more people each year. If they all leave their Jackets, laptops and bags on your booth there is no room to operate anymore.
Well actually, we (FOSDEM) will move the stands to a different location, into a new building, which means that the corridors won't be narrow :) It won't be a lonely spot either, as there are several interesting devrooms in that building, as well as one of the main track rooms.
what do I need to know?
- You get two tables and a couple of chairs in a windy corridor
No windy corridor :)
- It's friggn cold and drafty
Not any more :)
- Don't try to plan anything, it's chaotic.
Yeah, it's definitely a *very* busy place, with insane amounts of people going around, and most of them will be people who already contribute to FOSS projects, so they're more likely to ask what's specific about openSUSE as compared to others, how the community is working/like, about OBS, openQA, etc... -- rather than "oh, what's this Linux thing ?" ;)
- Have Pascals number on speed dial. He's the man.
I'll broadcast it around to a few people who will go to FOSDEM in due time. Generally speaking, exchange phone numbers before going there, because you don't just randomly run into the people you want to see, it's too much crowd for that :)
- Get drunk as early as possible :-)
Be *very* careful at the beer event on Friday, or with belgian beer in general, and I'm not kidding, it's really strong stuff.
Actually, I rather had in mind that we (openSUSE people going to FOSDEM) will coordinate to go some place for food on Friday evening, before going to the beer event and then possibly some quieter place too. I can take care of arranging things, but I will need to know how many people will show up. And we'll prolly do the same for Saturday evening too. (No one is forced to, just a proposal :))
I'll send an email to the project list in due time (mid January).
what do I need to avoid?
- Belgian "Beer". At any cost.
Well, definitely consume with great care, it's not the kind of coloured water they sell in Germany ;) I recommend Tripel Karmeliet, Delirium Tremens, Kwak, ... :D
Oh, and if you haven't booked a hotel yet, definitely do that ASAP. Due to the large amount of people, and Brussels being a tourist and business hot spot anyway, several hotels are already booked out. For low budgets, one option that works surprisingly well is couch surfing: http://couchsurfing.org As of which hotel to pick, it's not that important as the venue is a little bit off the historic center and you'll have to travel by public transport or cab anyway (not an issue, explained at http://fosdem.org/2012/transportation)
If there are any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch with me, by email or on IRC (I'm "yaloki" there).
cheers
On Fri, 2011-12-02 at 07:34 +0100, Pascal Bleser wrote:
On 2011-12-01 12:19:09 (+0100), Henne Vogelsang hvogel@opensuse.org wrote:
On 01.12.2011 00:07, Richard Brown wrote:
I'm volunteering to co-ordinate an openSUSE stand at FOSDEM this February
Cool :)
Even if you're not coming this year, I especially welcome advice and guidance from FOSDEM veterans. What worked in previous years?
- Bring the Touchsmarts, people like to grope things.
- Bring 12.1 DVDs, stickers and folders, people like to snatch things.
- Bring Beer and T-Shirts, sell them for 1€ and give the proceeds to the university. They will love you. (Pascal knows whom to give it to)
- Have 2 guys, you can rely on at any time, to be on the booth. People like to wander off into the awesome program. One minute it might seem that you have a gazillion people on the booth and the next one it's deserted because RMS speaks.
True, but I'd even plan a bit more than 2 people if possible.
Thing is, there will probably be around 400 sessions during the weekend, with more than 20 in parallel at all times and, hence, it's very likely that people will want to see a few talks as well. Ideally, have people check the schedule once it's available, find their "must see" talks, and make a schedule. Only gotcha: the schedule will be published really late (that's inherent to the way FOSDEM works, projects arrange their own schedule for the devrooms).
Henne, as you won't be able to be there (*sad* :(), will someone else take care of travelling with the openSUSE stand and touchsmarts and stuff from Nürnberg to Brussels, as usual ? Are you coordinating on the Nürnberg side of things, or is someone else ? If so, whom ? :)
- Try as hard as possible to avoid that people leave their shit on the booth. The corridors are narrow, the boths are small, there are more and more people each year. If they all leave their Jackets, laptops and bags on your booth there is no room to operate anymore.
Well actually, we (FOSDEM) will move the stands to a different location, into a new building, which means that the corridors won't be narrow :) It won't be a lonely spot either, as there are several interesting devrooms in that building, as well as one of the main track rooms.
what do I need to know?
- You get two tables and a couple of chairs in a windy corridor
No windy corridor :)
- It's friggn cold and drafty
Not any more :)
- Don't try to plan anything, it's chaotic.
Yeah, it's definitely a *very* busy place, with insane amounts of people going around, and most of them will be people who already contribute to FOSS projects, so they're more likely to ask what's specific about openSUSE as compared to others, how the community is working/like, about OBS, openQA, etc... -- rather than "oh, what's this Linux thing ?" ;)
- Have Pascals number on speed dial. He's the man.
I'll broadcast it around to a few people who will go to FOSDEM in due time. Generally speaking, exchange phone numbers before going there, because you don't just randomly run into the people you want to see, it's too much crowd for that :)
- Get drunk as early as possible :-)
Be *very* careful at the beer event on Friday, or with belgian beer in general, and I'm not kidding, it's really strong stuff.
Actually, I rather had in mind that we (openSUSE people going to FOSDEM) will coordinate to go some place for food on Friday evening, before going to the beer event and then possibly some quieter place too. I can take care of arranging things, but I will need to know how many people will show up. And we'll prolly do the same for Saturday evening too. (No one is forced to, just a proposal :))
I'll send an email to the project list in due time (mid January).
what do I need to avoid?
- Belgian "Beer". At any cost.
Well, definitely consume with great care, it's not the kind of coloured water they sell in Germany ;) I recommend Tripel Karmeliet, Delirium Tremens, Kwak, ... :D
Oh, and if you haven't booked a hotel yet, definitely do that ASAP. Due to the large amount of people, and Brussels being a tourist and business hot spot anyway, several hotels are already booked out. For low budgets, one option that works surprisingly well is couch surfing: http://couchsurfing.org As of which hotel to pick, it's not that important as the venue is a little bit off the historic center and you'll have to travel by public transport or cab anyway (not an issue, explained at http://fosdem.org/2012/transportation)
If there are any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch with me, by email or on IRC (I'm "yaloki" there).
cheers
If possible could someone bring a monitor with at least DVI in, preferably HDMI? Reason I ask is that the ARM team should be able to have a unit to display, running openSUSE ;-)
Thanks,
Andy
-
Andrew Wafaa -
Bruno Friedmann -
Henne Vogelsang -
Kostas Koudaras -
Pascal Bleser -
R. Tyler Croy -
Richard Brown