[clug] Re: Open Source promo stall

[Darren Freeman]

On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 10:28, Antti.Roppola at brs.gov.au wrote:
> Some ideas:
> 
>  - Get Computer Fairs to give a freebie stall. The idea of people
>    handing out free software should have reasonable promotional
>    value to them. And it's not going to need to be more than a metre
>    or so of frontage.

and also demonstrating the software - people will be more likely to boot
off a CD they saw working.. if we get a freebie demo computer for the
day it will likely have XP on it - so that proves that Knoppix doesn't
hurt XP.

can we get a small inflatable Tux? I just want one is all ;)

>  - Moderate demand. Will we need to be prepared for hundreds of people
>    grabbing CDs only because they are free? Will we be able to burn CDs
>    that fast? Maybe charge a modest sum (say $2 per CD)and donate it to
>    a charity on behalf of us, the fair and whoever donates the blank CDs.
>    That should avoid the "gimmee" crowd and also get a little publicity.

The price could be lower than that, really, and a donation of CDs is no
longer necessary in that case. If you charge more than the CD costs you
can be self-sustaining and still pay for the volunteers to have pizza
for lunch!

What would be really nice is if the organisers were OK with offering CDs
for sale at the entrance when people have their wallets out already.
Make it like a bargain for the people who already paid for entrance.

>  - Have other stuff like promo literature from FSF.

definitely.. but not the free software song ;)

> I've got a junk boxen and a (slow) CD burner somewhere and would be happy
> to help out with that kind of exercise.

I have an Athlon 1.2GHz with Mandrake 9.1 and a 12x burner. We could ask
to borrow some burners from the guy next to us - prove how fast and
reliable their burners are under linux by doing a CD every couple of
minutes! Plus parallel up the burners.

> Antti

I'm not convinced we can pull everything together by the next fair since
we deserve to have enough time to get it right the first time. But we
should be able to decide on it tonight and exchange contact details.
Then we can organise it properly.

We should also invite all the other Aussie LUGs and other groups to do
the same thing on the same day, and declare that day to be Australian
Free Software Day. See if RMS and Linus will come for a visit ;) We can
then get leverage to put it in the newspapers that we are doing it.
Maybe even get on TV, my friend at ComputerBank SA (a charity donating
Linux boxes to the poor) got on TV because of the feelgood factor, which
we definitely have if we add some community spirit.

Have fun,
Darren