Re: GNOME at SCALE 12x

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me>]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 4:11 PM, Paul M Edwards <pauledwards gmail com> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I'm writing to provide a post-SCaLE 12x debriefing-style follow-up.
>
> Here is a picture I posted of the booth setup and some volunteers:
> https://plus.google.com/105665929212275882883/posts/BjhbJK8fJpK
>
> Things actually went quite well in spite of the last-minute nature of our
> preparations. I was able to get 8 shirts printed for the volunteers (8

Paul,

I cannot express how happy I am to see that things have gone so well.
We definitely need to get better at preparing for these things.  I
think now that we both know what to expect we can plan better.  Best
thing to do is to start putting events in the calendar and then use
the engagement meetings to plan better.

We really need to get our U.S. event box in shape, it has some really
old computers and we need a U.S. side banner as well.  I will help
drive these things so that we can easily ship them.  Perhaps we can
engage your step brother in printing some t-shirts?

Please let us know the bill for the printing and the t-shirts so that
we can re-imburse you.

> offered, but 6 showed including myself and my wife) and 100 of the Gnome
> Love fliers to hand out**. Many visitors asked about obtaining shirts, some
> even offered to pay. I advised that we only had enough for the volunteers

Yeah, it would be good if we had more t-shirts.  I love the black and
white one that you were wearing in the photo!


> and that shirts in a similar design and other choices could be purchased on
> gnome.org. There are quite a few fliers left which I'd be glad to mail to
> the Gnome Foundation or directly to someone who may need them for an
> upcoming event.

We don't really have a store on gnome.org.  I'm not sure we even have
a pointer to where to get GNOME paraphenalia. :(  Something we should
correct.

> The hardware I brought performed more than adequately, though there were
> some occasional hiccups... I upgraded my on-hardware installation of Ubuntu
> 13.04 & Gnome 3.8.x to Ubuntu 13.10 & Gnome 3.10.1 about a week before the
> expo and I wasn't able to fully smooth out the niggling glitches before the
> show. You'd think I learned my lesson, but no, as I also applied an update
> to the Fedora 20 VM installation on Saturday morning, the first day of the
> show, which resulted in the Settings/Lock/Power buttons and other Top Bar
> items becoming huge... However, I suspect it may have been reconfigured by
> someone else while I wasn't looking because I can't reproduce the issue on
> an earlier snapshot of the same VM. Here's a screenshot:
> http://goo.gl/61DiyD

Ah yes, the let's upgrade right before the conference. :)  I have done
that as well.  It never ends well. :)


> Several visitors took the opportunity to complain about specific and general
> functionality of Gnome Shell which has and/or does cause them to have
> difficulty using it or, in some cases, not be willing or able to use it.
> Many of their complaints were regarding the lack of configurability and
> reduction of features vs. Gnome 2.x. Fortunately, many of these same users
> were unaware of the Extensions functionality which, once explored, seemed to
> abate or even eliminate their complaints. One visitor who is an
> administrator for a large deployment of GNOME users had some specific issues
> regarding Nautilus choking when users run over their disk quota, and a
> couple other similar problems specific to enterprise use. I was able to help
> point him in the right direction using some targeted Google Search queries
> which he snapped pictures of for later review. However, some users'
> complaints were not able to be mitigated immediately or even at all... One
> blind user in particular who represented other differently-abled users,
> including those with limited vision, explained to me two specific issues
> which I promised to follow-up on for him and his associates.

I would love to hear about the administrator who has a large
deployment of GNOME users.  Did you get his card by chance?  Nautilus
choking on disk quota is interesting we should talk with Cosimo about
that.

> I'm willing to lead the effort again next year and hopefully we will be
> better prepared... I would like to have had a banner and a couple posters
> framing the booth to advise what GNOME is and its feature highlights, as
> well as more [knowledgeable] volunteers to share the GNOME Love. Perhaps
> next year I'll even be able to attend a talk or two. ;-)

Excellent!  I'm so happy that we have some volunteers to keep doing
this next year!  Looks like from your G+ page you can get more
volunteers too!  Woohoo!


> **Please advise me regarding who to contact for a receipt so I can claim the
> expenses as a donation to the Gnome Foundation on my 2014 US taxes.

Please mail board gnome org regarding your receipts.  We will take
care of it there.  Probably need photocopies of the receipts etc.

sri