[APAC] Event report: Fedora 14 Talk and media distribution, Old Dhaka, Bangladesh.

[mak]

Dear All, (sorry for cross posting)

It's been almost a year, since I've attended my last Fedora event on 25th
February, 2010. it was Asian University (Dhaka) Fedora 12 Release
party<http://maktrix.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/asian-university-dhaka-f...;.
Couldn't manage to put together my efforts and stream of thoughts to arrange
one – and I was unhappy. But, the "Fedora 14 talk and Media Distribution"
event overwhelmed me with joy. I did literally jump and screamed after the
event. I never thought there will be a Fedora event this big in a short
notice in my neighborhood. Well the scale of being big might differ in EMEA
or NA; but for me in Bangladesh it's huge.

It’s only a part of the crowd. The university authority did not let enter
more 1000 students for safety restriction of the hall. If I knew that the
crowd shall turn out this big, I would have asked them to arrange open air
in their football field.

I was able to produce 1000 Fedora 14 DVD (thanks FAmSCo) and distributed 800
of them in this event. Also give away T-shirts - only 300 of them. I didn’t
distribute them in the event. Volunteer took some and rest was handed over
to the faculty members for later distribution only to avoid seeing unhappy
faces of those who might not get one. They are going to have a pop quiz next
week to select and distribute T-shirts. Pop quiz will be based on my talk
:). Wow - I never even imagined.

The Vice Chancellor of the university was present and inspired the crowd to
use Free and Open source software and praised a lot for their initiative to
use Fedora. He announced they might start migrating to Fedora, once they are
sure with the support is available.

After my talk I started the distribution, by giving a DVD to the Vice
Chancellor; student-volunteer form the university distributed within the
hall and to the students where were waiting outside of the hall for two
hours.

I tried to give away few T-shirts within the QA session, to those who asked
questions. The student volunteer helped me a lot. Without them it wouldn't
have been possible to organize a successful event. Also, my fellow
ambassador Rejaul Islam <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rejaul> was
there from morning till dawn with me. I had to drop the idea to treat the
crowd with snacks and drinks; instead few of the volunteers were treated.

Blog post: bit.ly/ieCVAw

More photos: bit.ly/fIv7h8