Sorry for the lateness - I just found this in my "Drafts" folder. I
blame the corporate email system ;-)
LFNW 2015 was April 25th & 26th, in Bellingham, WA. openSUSE sponsored
LFNW again this year; thanks to the board for making this happen.
As usual, we "had a lot of fun!" As a sponsor, we were entitled to a
100 sq.ft. booth space, which was setup in the 'openSUSE Lounge' design
once again this year. The lounge design provides a calm place for
people to sit down and relax for a few minutes in an otherwise crazy
conference floor space. Our volunteers can sit back and spend time
chatting with users, or other enthusiasts with questions, or go to the
'workbench' in the back to sit down with a laptop and solve real
problems. The Booth Box supplied us with an abundance of media, both
DVDs and thumb drives, as well as swag that was very popular with
passers-by. We make a point of bundling the DVDs inside the "What's
Cool" brochure, so guests of the show don't just walk away with install
media, but at least a general idea of the community and tools that make
openSUSE unique.
Morning meeting at the openSUSE Lounge:
https://plus.google.com/events/gallery/c4aqcfn8o62uvkgvqodbvlu07oc?pid=
6142240621319176434&oid=109797684537320994845
LFNW 2015 had record attendance again this year, with about 1850
registered attendees, and an uncounted number of unregistered attendees
(it is a completely free and open event, so registration is optional).
In the conference hall we felt this on Saturday, with big loud crowds.
With a crowd of that scale, its hard to make good connections from
handing out some of the items in the booth box, so we worked with LFNW
organizers to use our materials as effectively as possible. The
majority of the openSUSE thumb drives went toward the event's "world
famous" raffle, where the announcer mentioned, with nearly every
giveaway, "and an openSUSE thumb drive". It was great to hear him say
"openSUSE" fifty times over the course of the hour :-) The openSUSE
coasters were allocated to the event's Saturday night party, and were
preliminarily placed at tables and booths, and handed out with beers
until they were gone. I was informed by a few attendees on Sunday that
they pocketed the coasters instead of using them for their beers as
intended.
Saturday's crowd:
https://plus.google.com/events/gallery/c4aqcfn8o62uvkgvqodbvlu07oc?pid=
6142258520193779986&oid=101366257805402002854
--
James Mason
Technical Architect, Public Cloud
openSUSE Member
SUSE
jmason(a)suse.com
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SUSECon 2015: Register at
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