LinuxTag 2001 July 5th - 8th, 2001 Stuttgart, Germany

Infomail #5 -- Accommodation, lifts, hints, booth structure -- June 15th, 2001

Since there are only 20 days left until LinuxTag starts some people already started worrying

1. Accomodation

   I'm a bit confused that no more than 25 people have registered for a sleeping space in the gym hall or in the appartment. If you have other accommodations, that's fine. But if not, please tell me so the people who actually provide the service can plan properly. But if you still need a place to stay, please use the text form from here to register.

2. Lift coordination

   If you need a lift or can provide a lift, you may want to check what LiHas is providing.

3. Hints for setting up the booth

   Some information I gathered from a couple of exhibitions where I was involved in one or the other way.

   The booth should present the project and its work in question. Please remember that most visitors are non-developers. Thus easy explanations and signs are appreciated.

   • In general flyers (and giveaways) are useful since visitors can carry something home, they can look at later again and remember the project or its products.

     If you want to provide flyers, think about the amount of flyers. We expect some 20,000 visitors. Depending on the strategy you plan to use to distribute flyers, 500 to 5,000 should be sufficient.

     You may also want to think about how to present these flyers at the booth, i.e. just putting them on a table or using a professional flyer-holder (e.g. MaxiPapier has some for DM15 or similar).

     One word about the format of flyers. A4 flyers are too large in general. A5 looks better or even A4 double-folded. That's a size which fits into nearly every pocket.

   • Plain white walls look boring. If possible you should use them as presentation space by pinning posters and signs at it.
   • If there are several different sub-issues, architectures or sub-projects that you plan to demonstrate at the booth, provide a sign that contains some information about the architecture or the subproject that is shown on the computer below the sign. This will help people understand what's going on at the booth. Please note that A4 is small when talking about walls that are more than two meter high and one meter wide (per segment).
   • General posters. Many universities provide a possibility to print large posters (A0, A1) at cost price. Use this possibility and provide posters so visitors can get an idea on what's happening on the booth/project.

     Last year I provided a printing service for for the projects that attended the exhibition, but unfortunately can't do this again. However I still can provide some information on creating the posters as well as examples.

   • Use badges for your staff. It looks more professional if booth staff wear badges and can be detected as booth staff.
4. Booth Structure

   I'm going to get the booth arrangement done this weekend. If you want to persuade me on one or the other and haven't done already, tell me your plans, but be quick as there will only be time this weekend. I plan to tell you as soon as possible who large the booths will be so will still have a chance to intervene if things aren't that well as you had hoped.

   There will be two general classes of booths this year. For smaller projects I'll get a nice wooden computer table. Normally two such tables will be groubed with one part of a wall in between. Larger projects will get an area surrounded by walls (well, not on every side, but you guessed that already) with tables, bars, chairs and stuff. I'll give you a list of furniture and pictures from last year tomorrow.

5. Unused boxes

   If you get loaned machines or monitors that are delivered in boxes, be *very* careful with these boxes. You will need them when giving the things back to the loaner who will probably be pissed if they don't get things back in original boxes.

   This is a quote from another show from another guy from a not so far futu^Wpast:

   GUARD THE MONITOR BOX WITH YOUR LIFE.
   DO NOT LEAVE IT ON THE SHOW FLOOR.

   Same goes for the CPU box, but not so urgently, since it's HARD to find something to replace a 21" monitor box in a pinch. At ALS we got screwed by this, the cleaning crew threw away the box and Sun was gonna be mondo pissed.

6. Transporting large computers or equipment

   If you have to move large computers or equipment (like a powerwall) you can drive directly into the exhibition hall by car or truck. If you plan to do this, you'd better come early since there are lots of vehicles in the hall already. Go to entrance east (``Ost''), security will guide you there.

   When you drive into the hall, you'll have to deposit DM 50 on a normal day and DM 100 on wednesday. You'll get the money back when you get out of the hall in time. That is, a truck has three hours, a delivery van has two hours and a regular car has to get out of the hall after one hour.

   On wednesday all motor vehicles have to leave the hall at 8pm so the cleaning team can actually clean the exhibition area.

   Half an hour after the exhibition closes (thus at 4.30pm on sunday) the doors are opened again and vehicles may enter the exhibition area again. This requires a caution of DM 200.

7. Hints for booth security

   During the nights our booths are *not* secured in general. However there will be security staff in the exhibition hall. It should be very difficult to carry out a computer or monitor. However, please obey the following rules:

   • No computer may be open, all boxes have to be closed. If something is open, there's a fair good chance that "something" will be missing at the next morning: RAM, processor or something else.
   • Small pieces, especially important or valuable ones, must not be stored visible. Move them into a box below some table during the nights and guard them during days.
   • Everything that could be carried away easily (a beamer, a laptop) must not be stored on top of any table. Move it to the farest corner below a table.
8. Social Event

   There will be a social event, some sort of party, on Friday evening. It will take place directly at the fairground. We're going to have something to eat and drink. The regular fee is EUR 30,--, however, the plan is to provide a reduced fee for you. I *hope* that this will work and acknowledged, but it isn't yet. There will be live music and there should be enough space so people can dance or chat, whatever they like.

Regards, Joey