Southern CAlifornia Linux Expo

[Patrick Wagstrom <wagspat iit edu>]

> Hello!
>
> Somehow I ended up being the point-man for the Gnome booth at SCALE,
> which is fine. That is only if you faithful Gnomers help me out with a
> few answers to some questions.
>
> First off, where is the North American event box? The wiki don't mention
> it.
>
> Second, is there anyone else out there who could volunteer there time?
> If we could be three people out there, it would be great. This is
> important enough to be a subject line of a separate e-mail, so stand by!
>
> Third, what is the foundation willing to pay for? Travel, lodging, event
> box shipping, material printing...
>
> Cheers.

Eitan,

I'm not on the board, and won't be attending SCALE, but I did manage the
booth for the Ohio LinuxFest in September, which was the first use of
the box outside of Boston, where it normally lives.  So I can give you a
few pieces of advice.

First of all, it's helpful if you're willing to pop down a few dollars
and make some customized signs for the even.  I just modified some of
the SVG files on the GNOME wiki and had them printed at the local kinkos
for about $10.

Secondly, see if there is a way that you can accept cash at the event.
Why is this?  Well, the GNOME event box comes with a cash box and
information for becoming a friend of GNOME.  We had some interest in
this at OLF.  People wanted to pay on the spot.  However, the bigger
point of interest was swag.  Everyone saw the swag you get from becoming
a friend of GNOME and wanted to purchase them.  If possible order some
t-shirts, mugs, and stickers for GNOME and sell them for a bit over what
people pay online.  Then return the profits to GNOME.  Nice way to make
a contribution and people will pay extra for instant gratification
(however, you'll have a small amount of money at stake here).

Finally, the box comes with an AOpen MiniPC and two monitors.  the
MiniPC can only take one monitor, so make sure to bring a laptop.  Spend
some time thinking of cool things you could do to demo some of the
abilities of GNOME.  At OLF most people were were interested in
multimedia bling on the desktop.  iPod synchronization with banshee was
a big hit, and if jdub and I could have gotten itunes sharing I'm sure
that would have been great too.  Additional highlights were Tomboy,
F-Spot, and Ekiga.  Of course XGL bling was big too.

Anyway, that's just from my perspective.  Rock out at SCALE.

--Patrick