LinuxFest Northwest took place the last weekend in April, as usual, and
was an *amazing* event for openSUSE!
Prior to the event, I organized a social media schedule, posting to
Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus every day of the week prior, with
photos and info about our presence.
As an event sponsor[1], we received a 100sq.ft. booth space[2] in a
preferred area of the conference hall. This space was put to excellent
use, creating an open and inviting area[3], instead of the 'stand in
front of my desk' approach offered by most exhibitors:
* In the rear, a 21" HP Touchsmart PC was setup with openSUSE 12.3
and KDE, GNOME, LXDE, XFCE, and E17, providing a nice way to
demonstrate our desktop experience
* Next to the PC we had some space for doing Chameleon[4] and
Penguin[5] origami projects. (Origami is a great metaphor for
open source... you can expound on that yourself ;)
* SWAG was set off to the side, behind a 6ft tall whiteboard
(loaned to us by Attachmate Bellingham), to reduce the number of
people simply walking by and grabbing stuff, although we kindly
offered a kit (brochure, DVD, round sticker, system sticker) to
anyone who asked.
* The largest volume of the booth was taken up by a pair of lime
green (SUSE green?) lawn chairs, and Geeko-themed table.
The goal was to get people to 'come in' to openSUSE, and have a deeper
interaction with a smaller, interested group, rather than to just hand
out stuff to a crowd. We regularly updated the whiteboard with
presentation times & locations by openSUSE Advocates, our 'Articles of
Faith', and some questions/statements to spur conversation ("Ask me
about SUSE Studio!"; "Is your app built with OBS?"). And of course,
there was the bubble wrap. Loud green bubble wrap. Why? Just to make
some noise, and have some fun. That's the point, right?
Speaking of SWAG, we handed out 206 kits, which was fewer than I had
anticipated (I ordered 300), but I expect to consume the rest
distribution to the local LUG[6] and northwest US TAG offices. This was
the first year that a substantial number of people were getting openSUSE
via other means: "I already downloaded it"; "Can you put an image on my
thumb drive"; "Can you copy the Raspberry Pi image to my SD card"; etc.
The biggest change this year, over previous LFNW events, was that all
the booth staff were local. In prior years, I've worked with Ted Haeger,
Joe Brockmeyer, Alan Clark, Jos, and Bryan Yunashko here at LFNW; this
year I put out a 'call for help' through local channels, and had three
users (I'm going to call them Advocates from now on) step up to help:
Bryan Lunduke - a local developer and media genius/whore, Adrian Klaver
- a local Qt developer and avid fan of our KDE desktop, and Carl Symons
(who in the end was unable to attend due to family emergencies) - a KDE
contributor. We also informally picked up two more helpers: Chani
Armitage spent a bit of time hanging around since there wasn't a
dedicated KDE booth this year; and Caleb Gebhart, a local student who
(hopefully) has signed up for openSUSE+GSoC this year. All in all, it
was *awesome* having local help, and I expect to have more people
representing different facets of the openSUSE community next year
(although I wouldn't mind at all if someone flew in to have some fun)!
Jupiter Broadcasting, a WA-based podcasting network was broadcasting
live from the event, and recording interviews for use on the Linux
Action Show[7][8]. My interview[9] got a fair amount of positive
feedback, demonstrating, again, how we're trying to build an inclusive
openSUSE community, that is related to, but not subjugated by the SUSE
Enterprise.
I suppose I should mention the final attendance numbers[10]:
"We had 1250 registered attendees and it is estimated that we had a
total of about 1400 to 1500 people at the Fest."
I need to thank a few people who helped out behind the scenes...
although openSUSE would've had a presence at LFNW without them, it
wouldn't have been nearly as fun:
* Agustin Bethencourt, openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE, for approving
SUSE's sponsorship.
* Alan Clark, Director of Open Source(and more) at SUSE, for being
his usual amazingly helpful self, and getting me a banner and
brochures at the last minute.
* Darren Clark, Director of Development at Attachmate, for making
office resources available for use at the event.
Thanks guys!
In summary, LFNW was a fun, positive event, with a tremendous amount of
support for openSUSE. I'm looking forward to making our presence even
better next year!
[1] http://www.linuxfestnorthwest.org/sponsor/opensuse
[2] http://www.linuxfestnorthwest.org/sponsors/map
[3] http://goo.gl/HXL2u
[4] https://en.opensuse.org/File:Origami_instructions_chameleon.png
[5] https://en.opensuse.org/File:Origami_instructions_penguin.png
[6] http://blug.org/
[7]
http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/36476/linuxfest-nw-pt-1-las-s26e08/
[8]
http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/36666/linuxfest-nw-2013-pt-2-las-s26e09/
[9] http://youtu.be/8u3yUF9p9WQ?t=40m35s
[10] https://plus.google.com/111293764782511971489/posts/3RYn9qByAvU
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