Re: Conference Booth Organization

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

I'd like to throw in my 2 cents.  Yeah, the whole thing was kind of rushed
unfortunately.  I think funding requests need to go into a list so that
multiple people can look at it.  I had sent my booth stuff early june
to mid june.  (I can't remember)  I haven't heard any response.  I figured
everyone was at GUADEC so I waited till people came back.  So there was
a timing issue as well.  I generally like to do things early so that I
can plan properly.  But in anycase it all worked out so I'm okay.

What I would also like to add is:

a) cached media kits in various countries and regions.  That cuts down
   on international shipping which expensive to spend money on.

b) If you're going to talk about conference funding then you need to set a
   budget on how much you're going to spend on conferences per year.  That
   way you know how much you're willing to re-imburse people.  (hopefully
   the foundation has an accountant. :-)  My expenses for instances came
   to about 185 U.S. dollars.  Not bad.  But others might be more 
   expensive.

c) Need a budget on GNOPPIX cds.  When I researched this, I found that it
   costs about 2000 dollars.  Forget it.  Better to have people buy CDs
   from some bulk places and burn it themselves at a bulk burn fest or
   something.

Anyways those are some things I thought off.

> There will be fosscon in Malaysia
> http://opensource.mimos.my/fosscon2003/index.html
> 
> "FREE & OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE CONFERENCE 2003"
> 
> there is no booth specificlly for gnome there  but the organizer is kind 
> enough to give me some place to show my gnome l10n stuff.
> i cant afford a booth :(

Ask if they can waive the booth costs.  As a non-profit they might 
allow you to do that.  At OSCON, they let us have a booth for 
free (5K cost).  You can always make the argument that GNOME is a
volunteer based non-profit organization and can't afford to pay.  See
if they will reduce the costs.  Tim N. to the rescue? ;)

> anyway, it will be great if i have something from the foundation.
> so i plan to use/show my own box (with garnome) there.

Yes, thats what I did.  Showing off GNOME on a laptop is good too.
Please let us know what materials you might need so that we can take
appropriate action.

> i dont know whether a sole booth for gnome is needed or not?
> maybe speaker from gnome community?  next year???

If not you could always do a BOF?  You could do it yourself, 
there are lots of speaker notes from GUADEC that you could use 
and create a talk.

Anyways, some ideas for you.

sri