[Novalug] Interim FOSE note

Jon LaBadie novalugml@jgcomp.com
Thu Mar 25 12:31:46 EDT 2010


The FOSE show finishes up today.  Yesterday I helped
staff the TUX.org booth with Rich, Peter, Jerry,
and Nick.  If I've forgotten anyone my apologies and
I've omitted all last names as I've forgotten some.

Two big changes this year, the FOSE exhibit area is
combined with two other government security conferences
(think metal detectors, SWAT vehicles, wound clotting
bandages, etc) and the TUX.org booth has some eye candy.

As was true last year, we had give aways, two LINUX
magazines (LINUX Journal and LINUX Pro) and current
release distribution CDs from Ubuntu and Fedora.

Because of the two changes and a favorable booth location,
I felt the traffic and interest was much higher this year
than last.  Many people stayed at the booth talking to
one of the staffers for 10 and 20 minutes at a time.
The traffic was sufficiently high that there are virtually
no magazines or CDs left to give away today.

I think the biggest impact came from the eye candy.  Rich
and Peter (and maybe others of which I'm unaware) set up
a pair of servers with a kiosk display and keyboard.  The
kiosk could show several of the local LUGs home pages and
more importantly, samples of several open source applications.
These included openNMS (network management), Moodle
(classroom management), orangeHRM (human resources management),
a customer relations management tool, and several others
I'm forgetting.  Gee, you'd think Open Source is all about
"management".  ;)  This is an on-going project that you can
view, and assist in, at http://www.ossinaction.org.

Jerry added a lot to the eye candy with two versions of the
OLPC (One Laptop Per Child).  And Peter used his laptop to
good advantage when people asked about things not on display.
One thing I found interesting was the low degree of overlap
between people interested in the OLPC and the apps on display
in the kiosk.

I have to mention one other eye candy that attracted some
attention.  Someone (I have no idea who) had a roll of
yellow plastic tape printed (think the "crime scene" tape
seen on TV shows).  It was printed with "WINDOWS FREE ZONE"
and was used to line the booth's table and top edge of the
booth backdrop.  Lots of enthusiasts asked for pieces of
that tape!  I meant to get a piece for myself, but didn't.

Congratulations to all who worked to get things ready for
this years FOSE presence.  You made it a real success in
my humble opinion.

Jon
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  novalugml@jgcomp.com
 JG Computing
 12027 Creekbend Drive		(703) 787-0884
 Reston, VA  20194		(703) 787-0922 (fax)



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