Fedora Boot for LWCE:SF
by Jesse Keating
Now that FUDCon2 is over, and we've pretty much decided to not have a
FUDCon3 in SF can we put some serious resources into planning the Fedora
Booth for LWCE:SF?
We've had a couple booths under our belts now, and I think it's time for
us to progress beyond the 'tossed together last minute' feel of the
booths that I've seen. Not to take away from any great effort that
booth people have put in in the past, just having a booth is an amazing
amount of work. But with more and more people willing to help out I
think we have the opportunity to do a bit more.
Having some systems in the booth is good, having them DO SOMETHING is
even better. Since we're not going to have any FUDCon talks, I thought
doing some mini presentations in the booth using the systems might be a
good way to draw some people over and show them what it really is.
Personally, I'd love to do a mini talk on kickstart complete with a
system being kickstarted. By the same token somebody (or myself) can do
a talk in just regular installs because I feel that the installer is one
of the best parts of the distribution, and it is unique. Rather than
talking about 'and this is how the new openoffice.org looks on OUR
distro! See the widgets!?' we can talk about what really sets the
distribution aside.
In past LWCEs I've been to, the majority of the crowd are 'why would we
use your distro' and not 'how can we contribute to your distro', so I
think pitching our mini-presentations toward _users_ and if they proceed
to ask about contribution, then we can have side discussions about
contribution. Maybe we could score a little round table or something so
that people that want to talk contribution and project stuff can sit
down and take a load off instead of stacking up in front of the booth
and blocking the way for people that want to take a look at the shinys.
I also think we should have a good diversity of arches represented, an
Intel box, an AMD box (dual cores anybody?), I'll have my Apple laptop
but maybe a mac mini would be cool for the table. I'd like to do what
some other booths have done, have one system (or maybe all systems w/ a
switcher) plugged into a projector and the projector projecting on the
back wall of the booth or the corner of the booth or something like that
so that people bring their eyes up and look ahead instead of stooping to
look at table level monitors or whatnot. It could also free table space
for systems instead of having a bunch of (heavy) monitors stacked up.
Of course, there is the swag aspect too. I assume we'll have t-shirts
galore again (do they HAVE to be white?), CDs or DVDs of the distro
(maybe we can ping vendors again for vendor branded ones rather than
paying to master them ourselves), but what about some higher class items
for the people that have a sit down talk about contributing (maybe even
an extras contributor account sign up kiosk)? We won't advertise the
items so that we don't get freeloaders just faking a talk to get swag,
but for those that have a genuine interest we can give them something to
thank them for their time?
Anywho, these are my thoughts for now, I'm sure I'll have more soon.
I'd like to start a wiki page for the booth planning, anybody have a
preference where this page goes?
--
Jesse Keating RHCE (http://geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team (http://www.fedoralegacy.org)
GPG Public Key
(http://geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)
Was I helpful? Let others know:
http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=jkeating
18 years, 5 months
reports from FUDCon2?
by Paul Stauffer
Anyone who attended FUDCon2 care to give us a report on how things went?
- Paul
--
Paul Stauffer <paulds(a)bu.edu>
Manager of Research Computing
Computer Science Department
Boston University
18 years, 5 months
Re: Cool Fedora schwag idea
by Greg DeKoenigsberg
So here's the meat of the argument:
On the one hand, you want to recognize people. Why?
* To thank them for their achievements.
* To hold them up to the world as exemplary.
* To encourage others to follow their example.
But on the other hand, such recognition is inherently exclusionary --
because some achieve, and some don't.
The letterman's jacket is, I see clearly now, too highly charged for too
many people. I liked the idea because of the "geeks inherit the earth"
message, all the way down to the letterman jackets, but I see clearly that
it's too easily misinterpreted, and as much as I'd like to disagree, I
can't.
Still, I think that the notion of pins/letters/merit badges/etc. is a good
one, and I would argue that it *should* be exclusionary. Either you
earned it, or you didn't.
So maybe just the pins, awarded for excellence. Wear them on your Fedora
ballcap brim, or your T-shirt, or hanging from your pierced left nipple.
How does that idea feel to people? A bit less ugly-clique-ish?
***
As an aside: to me, this is the real value of this group -- discussing
ideas like this. Figuring out "all of the messaging behind Fedora" is a
strategic problem that will take time to figure out. But working out
tactical questions like "better schwag" and "names for FC5" and
"fund-raising activities" is an ideal use of this group's time, IMHO.
So thanks for all of your helpful input. Thanks even to Seth for the
public ass-whipping. :)
--g
_____________________ ____________________________________________
Greg DeKoenigsberg ] [ the future masters of technology will have
Community Relations ] [ to be lighthearted and intelligent. the
Red Hat ] [ machine easily masters the grim and the
] [ dumb. --mcluhan
18 years, 5 months
Fedoraproject.org website
by Hrishikesh Ballal
Hello All,
A couple of things. I spent sometime last week trying to "checkout" the
website from the CVS. I followed everything that as was written on the
Fedoraproject.org website.. entered my GPG key etc. but with no luck.. I
tried to check out particular modules out of the CVS and did not get
anywhere.. so I emailed the repository administrator and am awaiting a
reply. I hope someone can help me with that here. Anyway.. When I saw
the Fedoraproject.org website (for the first time), I had a hard time
navigating it finding the right info. So I started tinkering around with
CSS and came up with a layout.
I did not know if there is a "test" fedora server it can be uploaded and
everyone can see it.. so I uploaded it on my own site.. at..
http://www.hrishikeshballal.net/other/fedora/ ...
Can you please take a look at it and give me some feedback on the what I
have so far so I can work on it later this week. As you can imagine all
the links etc are broken.. I wanted to create a better layout. I am no
artist and I don't know if we have one on this list.. I guess we need a
"logo".
I am not sure if anyone else is working on the website / layout,maybe
he / she can take some ideas from it. But if you have any suggestions,
comments brickbats on it please feel free to reply. Thanks
Hrishi
18 years, 5 months
Attention, Interest, Decision, Action
by Jeremy Hogan
Note the mild subject adjustment, uttered most notable by Alec Baldwin
in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Anyway, the thread needed a quick bump, I have some F/OSS marketing
experience that I think I can lend.
This project is getting ahead of itself re: defining discrete and
ongoing roles, establishing baseline metrics, and decisions about who
belongs here. There are some basic questions/assumptions you can line
out first.
1a)What is Fedora?1b)Who is it for? (Today).
Answered partly on the homepage nicely:
"The Fedora Project is an open source project sponsored by Red Hat and
supported by the Fedora community. It is also a proving ground for new
technology that may eventually make its way into Red Hat products. It
is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."
That may or may not need to change as the NPO emerges, but it doesn't
answer who it's for. If it's not for the average end user, then a
whole suite of distros are out for comparison. Developers, hobbyists,
enthusiasts, professional IT interested in the future direction of
RHEL, etc.
2)Who else is in that space?
Only SuSE is built this way (community feeding and fed by a big
publicly held sugare daddy with a large install base, and market cap
of 3-5Billion. No, Mandriva not out of the game, and if you threw out
F/OSS values you could throw Sun in mix, but it's fair to focus toeard
SuSE/Novell.
3a)What is Fedora? 3b)Who is it for? (Tomorrow).
Some TBD, of course, but you'd hope that if today's mission succeeds,
that you'll still have Developers, hobbyists, enthusiasts,
professional IT interested in the future direction of RHEL, etc.
Now, if Fedora *is* to be comared to Ubuntu, the core mission would
have to reflect that to a degree, and comparisons and metrics should
be made. And you can add more Ubuntu-esque users. If Fedora definition
were to stretch from "proving ground for Red Hat" to "proving ground
for Linux Innovation" or similar, then you can add small IT companies,
tech savvy internal IT staff, and even an eco system of VARs for
SMB/SME -- *cough cough* -- I mean people deploying and supporting it
for others. And the verbage invites spin-off projects. (Still seen as
to Red Hat's benefit).
#3 is what needs rounding out before you decide you goes out saying
what to whom, and in what medium.
When you get through 3, you need only two more:
4) So what?
What is unique and/or important about feature x, or relationship y? If
I agree that I understand Fedora, and that it is for me -- so what?
Every line of you PR, and every slide in your deck has to answer that
question, or it's noise.
5) Who cares?
You now have your sniper shot of a message. You can stand up, in
confidence, and explain what Fedora is, and articulate what it is not.
(And why Ubuntu is them, and you is you.) You add that to the answer
to part b, of question3, and you no who this should resonate with. And
you go after events, and online venues where they are and talk to
them. Or when the come to where you are, they know quickly whether and
how they fit in. No dancing, no marketing buzzwords. Recruit active
participants, but you should be open as many interested onlookers as
possible.
4 and 5 have potential for looping.
%POST
Then...
-FAQ the hell out of 1-5 on
-use PRWeb or a similar free service regularly (not feature releases,
more like "Fedora guy writes free book in native language" type stuff,
create news -- recognition is a core human need, get lots of it and
attract lots of folks)
-press contacts (invite a NewsForge editor to an exclusive at FudCON,
send the LiveCD out for reviewers -- I like the documentary idea, but
there's only so much of our collective navel the world needs to gaze
into, give the project a broader context)
-a media kit (zip file of the logo, the About statement, and ONE sheet
giving the FAQ and spiel, contact info for one/two people at the most
to follow up with)
-an event or street team "SWAT" kit (swag like LiveString bracelets and LiveCDs)
-etc
--jeremy
18 years, 5 months
