Re: Some perspective on how unimportant the board currently is.

[Germán Poó Caamaño <gpoo ubiobio cl>]

El sáb, 29-10-2005 a las 12:47 +0200, Rodrigo Moya escribió:
> On Sat, 2005-10-29 at 19:09 +1300, Glynn Foster wrote:
> [...]
> > If you need funding for what you think to be an important project, ask.
> > If you need travel assistance to speak at an important conference, ask.
> > Just ask, it's not going to do any harm. We may not have the finances to
> > help everyone, but I'm sure that we'll make an effort for the important
> > things.
> > 
> ok, so here is my petition :)
> 
> for the hackers meetings in Spain (3 so far), it would be nice if we
> could have t-shirts, cd's, etc, to hand over to people showing up. I
> guess for Chile that would help also.

The material will be more effective depending of the audience.
For instance, in a "Hacker's meeting", CD's doesn't have the same
"demand" as T-Shirts; except if the audience includes newcomers or
potential helpers/hackers.

But T-shirts are more expensive than CD's.  However, stickers are
cheap and effective in any instance.  I don't know if the Foundation
could help providing material every time is needed; but could be
better a mixed model (excuse me if I sound stupid).

I think it possible to sell T-shirts at a minimum price; and use
that money for more t-shirts, stickers, etc.  But an initial
capital could be needed, and then make a report to the Foundation
about how the money was invested.  Being realistic, no more than
10 t-shirts could be sold in every meeting (but in Chile there are
conferences/meetings almost every month; not all of them dedicated
to GNOME in a exclusive way; but at least every time is one of the
topics).  Good enough.

On the other hand, let me talk about a recent experience.
Sometimes people get afraid to approach a speaker because they 
look "the community", "the hacker" or just "the speaker" as a 
kind of God.  

So, in a recent conference, I gave around 600 GNOME's sticker.
I took contact directly with people and it was a good excuse.
Also for them, every time they asked for stickers I asked back
if they are using GNOME/Linux, how much time, etc. etc.  Some
of them asked how to get involved, etc.  We broke the barrier.

Probably it sounds plain, simple and stupid.  But it's incredible
how people get stuck even getting in touch; moreover when you
need a point of start.

-- 
Germán Poó Caamaño
http://www.ubiobio.cl/~gpoo/
Concepción - Chile