So to try and do some mass mentoring via mailing list I am going to
ask a few questions/pose a few comment.s
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Karlie Robinson
<karlie_robinson(a)webpath.net> wrote:
Yesterday I attended the 19th annual Educational Technology [1] day
at
Ithaca College in Ithaca NY, USA. As you may have guessed by the title,
this show is focused on technologies used in k-12 as well as higher
education.
Note this is an education conference - don't hesitate to promote
Fedora at things other than Linux conferences.
I was camped out in the Ithaca Free Software Association [2] booth
for the
day, so I must extend a hearty thank you to Eric and Marty for their booth
hospitality. I also need to thank Charles Profitt of the Rochester
LUG/Ubuntu NY LoCo for giving me a ride to Ithaca (going green by way of the
So it sounds like this was a 'I heard about this at the last minute'
type event?
And even without a booth you pulled it off.
carpool). And last but not least, Brian Neil for volunteering his
time to
jockey all 320 disc in and out of my printing and duplicating equipment.
I met with a mix of Students, faculty and staff from numerous schools in
upstate NY (Elmira College, Cornell, Syracuse, University of Rochester, K-12
from the area Etc). I was also able to meet with community members. In
fact, the rush was more like a crush of people. For example, we had 300
discs at 9am when the doors opened. At 10:30 we handed out the last disc.
(I saved 20 sugar spins for my talk and I'm glad I did)
How many people do you think attended the conference?
While it's my preferance to keep a notebook handy to record contact info for
the people I meet with, this was darn near impossible. Instead I relied
upon my business card and the few I was able to collect. As of this
writing, I've made contact with those I had cards for and I've had one email
come in.
Two things - business cards are important - many still don't know that
Ian Weller developed and packaged an application to provide print
ready cards.
yum install fedora-business-cards will get you started.
Second - you should try and capture information about the people you
are talking to so you can follow up with them after the event.
My presentation of OLPC - What if..? was well attended. While I
didn't get
a head count, we made it to standing room only - so I would estimate 40-ish.
Immediately after my presentation I was again, mobbed with questions about
Math4, OLPC and Fedora at the booth. (good stuff eh?)
At about 2pm I was finally able to go visit the other booths and was stopped
in the main hall by David Weil, the chair person for EdTech. He thanked me
for coming on short notice and offered OLPC/Fedora/Sugar Labs space for next
year.
One final note, I was able to promote POSSE a bit so I hope we'll be able to
fill the bootcamp. Reply with questions.
Note that even though it wasn't her main goal when she showed up - she
pimped other Fedora initiatives.