Debian @ LinuxTag 2003

Hints after LinuxTag 2002

These issues came up after the last LinuxTag and we should probably take care of them in our plans for the next LinuxTag presence.

• The beamer was a big win. It used to attract people when somebody was working on the machine and the scree was made available to other visitors. This should be kept.
• The agreed schedule for presentations wasn't exactly followed, it wasn't widely announced anyway, so no big deal.
• Food for the booth was missing, some KDE people bought some 'Brezel with Butter' each day to fill the worst gap during the day. As long as we have a backstage area, this could be handled off booth without a problem.
• Last year it took about three days to throw out 5,000 CDs. It may be useful to straithen the policy on giving them away or produce more CDs so they last for all four days.
• We also sold 72 apt mugs in three days.
• A bounty box for spontaneous donations was missing.
• Asking for a donation in return to a free CD is ok, but we should not insist in getting a donation. So if a visitor doesn't want to donate some money to the Debian project, fine, he should be able to get the CD as well. However, this requires some new thinking with regard to CD production. Less CD's are handed out if the visitor is asked to add a donation in return, and we may be able to pay for the production without sponsors as well.
• It seems that we don't need shifts next year. As long as there's a hacking area near by it works well without and last year there were some people on the booth without a shift. We only need one who is the Boothmaster, just in case it really gets too crowded and we need to send some DD off the booth.
• We should have some computers at the booth and every computer has one person from Debian associated with it. Additionally, every demo-point shows only one topic, like Installation, SE-Linux, package-building, apt-get, ...
• Scheduled demonstrations at the booths are fine, but requires some coordination. The timetable needs to be published and a large clock (even a paper clock would make it) is required to announce the next demonstration. To get a feeling for this, just wander around at the next CeBIT show and watch professional booths. Not everything they do is good, but we can learn from somethings.
• Displaying movies or animations at the booth is interesting for visitors, but creates license trouble, since for music GEMA has to be paid and for the animation the movie company has to grant permission.

  What we can do, I guess, is go to some web pages and display their content while a crowd is behind you watching your actions. So, for example check Maijer - Toy City and download one or another animation to display. Another idea would be to use Erich's Woody comet, or some movies that the Paderborner Computer Cluster rendered.