aKademy 2006
IFSO has been allocated a desk at the 2006 KDE aKademy conference. We hope to use it to emphasise the importance of software freedom. One idea is to put up our poster and 3 A4 pages saying "Talk to us about", "Software Patents", and "GPLv3".
Hand-out material
We already have some materials (somewhere?), but they're not right up-to-date. A one-sided A4 sheet of who IFSO are, why software freedom is important, IFSO's recent activities, how to get involved.
I've attached to this wiki page a suggestion for the flyer. Feel free to make changes etc., otherwise can somebody print out a couple of dozen? We have business cards too I think, which would be good for this kind of event. --Ben.
Staffing schedule for our desk
Ideally we need to cover the times of the conference itself as well as some setting-up and taking-down time before and after.
The person staffing the desk will miss the talks going on at the time, of course.
The table below is divided into slots. It may be further subdivided if needs be. Please add your name to slots.
Saturday 0830 -- 1100 | Malcolm Tyrrell, Saturday 1100 -- 1400 | Ciaran O'Riordan, Saturday 1400 -- 1600 | Ciaran O'Riordan, Saturday 1600 -- 1830 | Malcolm Tyrrell, Ciaran O'Riordan Sunday 0900 -- 1100 | Ben North Sunday 1100 -- 1400 | Ciaran O'Riordan, Brian Cleland Sunday 1400 -- 1600 | Malcolm Tyrrell, Ciaran O'Riordan Sunday 1600 -- 1845 | Ciaran O'Riordan, Hugh Gibbons
Glenn says: I expect to be around for the entirety of both days; I'll be helping Marcus with some of the other Akademy stuff but I can fill in any gaps in the schedule that come up.
Ciaran says: On Saturday I'll probably have to nip out at a not-yet-known time for a family dinner, and on Sunday I've to do a presentation from 13h45-14h30. Also, I shouldn't bring the materials home since I'll leave for Brussels on Wednesday, so if someone else can also be there for the closing, that'd be great.
Afterwards
Thanks to Malcolm, Ciaran, Ben, Brian, Hugh and Paul for all your time. A few things occurred to me:
The handouts and flyers are of limited effectiveness. People just don't take them. During the event we discussed having some glossy coloured flyers printed up, perhaps in the style of the FSFE trifold flyer.
We sold our entire stock of T-Shirts on Saturday. If we had more I think we could have shifted them, too.
The desk acts as a good focal point - I had several Free Software related talks with people just because they knew where to come. But just sitting behind the desk waiting for people doesn't do anything to interest people who are not already knowledgeable. I had better results mingling with the crowd and mentioning IFSO. Of course, this was easier for me since I was working as part of the local team anyway, so people expected to approach me. -- GlennStrong