Re: OSCON

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

On 01/29/2012 02:16 AM, Sri Ramkrishna wrote:
> I manned the GNOME booth at OSCON for 3 years.  It just seems that the
> participants there are not really interested in Linux desktops in
> general.  They are all cloud/web apps type of people.

The best booths are the ones that engage people passing by.

I had a few ideas but they may be way out there... could be cool for 
OSCON, though.

1. Croud-source something we need that isn't getting done
 - The classic example was last year, there's a project aiming to 
create audio learning materials to go along with words and images. They 
have English down pretty well, but could use others. I can't remember 
the name, unfortunately... I suggested that they could set up a 
recording booth, and take advantage of the international make-up of the 
audience to get recordings of different languages. It becomes a demo of 
their tools, and an opportunity to get contributions at the same time.

OpenStreetMap does something similar, hosting mapping parties in the 
evening after conferences in places where they have booths.

Do we have something where we could engage the public and get material 
we could use later? Translations? Mallard docs? Something where we can 
show a checklist and see everything going to green as people do the work 
during the conference would be cool!

2. Interactive demo booths
 - Something like a coding competition, where on Day 1, you pair people 
off to write a Shell extension to do the same thing as a bake-off, the 
winners do something else on day 2, and on day 3 you have the final. I 
haven't thought this through fully, but the fact that you can write 
shell extensions in JS should appeal to the web & cloud crowd, no?

3. Some way to follow through
 - My experience of GNOME booths is that we rarely have a call to 
action for after the conference. We don't collect email addresses for a 
newsletter, or ask people to do anything in particular. It'd be nice if 
we used contact with a highly technical audience as an opportunity to 
get some new contributors. What might that be? Signing up Friends of 
GNOME might be a start, but also having some way to sign people up for 
an announce mailing list (not paper & pen! No-one ever types all that in 
again - either a form that stores contact details in a Mailman 
compatible batch subscription format, or a proper connection to the 
announce mailing list, and a follow-up afterwards with a call to engage)

> The booth would have to be focused on applications or integration with
> cloud, a11y, or online services to get traction IMHO.  A booth for the
> sake of just showing a GNOME desktop is not very inspiring or useful.

Web APIs and cloud/online services sounds like a great focus!

Cheers,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org
Jabber: nearyd gmail com