Booth requirements

Running a booth is important for public visibility for the Debian Project but is new to several people and not everybody can use his long-time experience, this is something I (Joey) would like to share mine.

Organisation

1. Since Debian is a non-profit organisation and neither Debian nor SPI have acknowledged to spend funds on booths, the Debian Project depends on sponsored booths.
2. If you want to run a booth at an exhibition you should negotiate with the administration if they want to provide a sponsored booth for a large and famous free software project.
3. Once the project will be able to use a sponsored booth you have to ensure everything is in place when you need it. You should negotiate about power, tables, chairs, walls for posters and, if possible, internet connection.
4. You should also ensure enough people will be interested in running the booth since running it with one person only may not be that much fun.
5. If this all has been done, you may contact events@debian.org to share the information and move it to the web pages.

Technical things

• You should at least have one computer and monitor at the booth directed to visitors to demonstrate things.
• Depending on the size of the booth more machines make sense. People are especially interested in seing non-ia32 boxes since only very few own some but they all know that it is good and expensive hardware.
• You have to provide the following if you plan to run a booth:
  • Power cables
  • Power divider/expander ("Mehrfachsteckdose")
  • Power cable extender (long cable)
  • Network cable
  • LAN hub/switch

  It's quite likely that the administration will only provide you with one power socket and eventually one network connector. You will have to spread it around on the booth on your own.

• You should use some large posters (A1/A0) with the Debian Logo, World Map, and others to make the booth look nice and informative for visitors.
• If possible provide flyers describing the project. Joey has about 3,500 of German/English flyers you can request for a booth.
• People like t-shirts and stuff, so if you can produce some and the administration allows you to sell them, go ahead and do so.

Staff

• I'd say that you need at least two people to run a booth. This will ensure that one of them may leave the booth to listen to a talk, get some fresh air, use the toilet etc.
• If possible it's always good to be able to provide a talk about "Debian" or some technical issues, if the exhibition targets at more experienced people.
• Depending on the size of the booth not too many boot staff should be at the booth directly. Why? Quite simple, do you want to run the booth for the Debian people or for new people who want to learn about Debian? If there are 20 people at a 5qm booth, no visitors will be able to look at the systems or ask questions.
• You should also be prepared that you will speak the whole day long. The more people staff the booth the less one has to talk to visitors.
• Usually a lot of unexperienced people will visit the booth so you should be prepared to ask a lot of stupid questions.

Merchandise

Since the Debian project has been evolved there are several merchandise articles that can be bought by visitors at several large events. Below is only an incomplete list of items.

• There are nice redish Debian posters made by ayo (Noèl Köthe)
• There are Debian lanyards (Jörg Jaspert)
• There are T-Shirts (Jörg Jaspert)
• There are small pins (Noèl Köthe)
• There are bilingual Debian flyers (German/English, Noèl Köthe)