Hi all, happy second Passover holiday, and it's also Easter today and April Fools' Day tomorrow.
I'd like to write a short report about the booth we had for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software at the Olamot (= "world") Science Fiction/Fantasy/etc. conference that took place this year (March 2013) during Passover in Tel Aviv. See http://www.olamot-con.org.il/2013/ for the site - mostly in Hebrew. First of all, the obligatory photographs: * http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/sets/72157633111982891/ - from day two - I didn't bring a camera at the first day, and people challenged my claims on IRC, so I made sure to bring one along the next day. Other links: * http://www.facebook.com/pages/%D7%9B%D7%A0%D7%A1-%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%AA/167055123352441?ref=ts&fref=ts - the site of the conference on Facebook * http://www.facebook.com/zingabo - Amir Eldor - helped with the booth during the first day (thanks!). * http://www.facebook.com/moshe.nahmias.9?fref=ts - Moshe Nahmias - helped during both days (thanks!). * http://www.facebook.com/groups/98034147518/ - Israeli society for Sci-Fi and Fantasy. * http://www.hamakor.org.il/ - Hamakor's site. * http://www.mozilla.org.il/ - Mozilla.org.il. ================================= OK, here is the report: #. The booth was mostly well-organised: we had demonstrations of the programs involved, of the Raspberry Pi (which could run the Blender demo films adequately, but web-browsing/etc. was very slow), and of other stuff. There was a lot of swag and merchandise to give away for people who were interested. #. Many people stopped by and asked questions. If they told me they didn't know what open source was all about I gave them the Wikipedia as an analogy for online collaboration and the fact that «Everyone gives a brick, and in exchange, everyone gets their own house.» and said that that was the case for open source software too, where one can use a browser from organisation #1, a video player from organisation #2, an image browser from organisation #3, an vector graphics editor from organisation #4 , etc. #. We also ended up telling them that they don't have to contribute if they don't want to (just happily use the gratis "FOSS"), and that there are ways to contribute that do not involve coding (such as reporting bugs, trying to reproduce bugs, helping in the forums etc.) and that they can find help using web searches or various online forums. #. As you can see in the photos, the conference was very colourful with many people coming in costumes, or with various props, or otherwise well dressed, and lots of cool attractions. Geekery at its best. I recalled there were much fewer females in the Icon conference I attended back in Sukkoth at one year, and now they were all over the place. I noticed that some of the cultural references of the costumes have escaped me, due to the fact that my popular sci-fi/fantasy culture is stuck somewhere in 2001, but people were happy to tell me what they were dressed as. Very cool. #. The booth nearby was dedicated to registering people for the Israeli organisation of Manga/anime, and while they had a computer dedicated for the registration application (a desktop one written in .NET - :-( - long story), they didn't have a screen displaying the actual films. I told them they should in the future, and they agreed. #. We kinda lacked good business cards or sheets of papers that we give away, that we could note some URLs at the back. At least some people were able to E-mail stuff. #. Self promotion: I got an idea for a new screenplay during the conference: http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Summerschool-at-the-NSA/ - «The Hollywood actresses Sarah Michelle Gellar and Summer Glau conspire to take the NSA (= the United States government’s National Security Agency) out of the equation. See how they succeed in doing that. », which I started to write. I decided that my previous major creative writing project, http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Selina-Mandrake/ («Selina Mandrake - The Slayer (a Buffy Parody)») is now in a mostly usable state, and will be placed on the back burner, as I move to newer stuff. I also have collected four factoids about Buffy the Vampire Slayer so far: http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/facts/Buffy/ and hopefully newer ones are upcoming. Girl power! ====================== OK, this is my perspective, which may be skewed beyond all imagination. Thanks to everybody who helped with the booth. I'd like to share some more anecdotes in a later post, but this will have to wait, because I am anxious to go outside now before it darkens. Chag sameach! Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Beginners Site for the Vim text editor - http://vim.begin-site.org/ Flock aims to be the browser for the social web, but I found it to be the completely anti-social browser. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . _______________________________________________ Discussions mailing list Discussions@hamakor.org.il http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussions
