Hi folks! A few of us GNOMErs in Portland managed to put together a booth for GNOME at OSCON. We managed to talk to a lot of folks, and share some ideas about what GNOME is, and where it's going. I think the booth went pretty well in general, we even had a few 'celebrities' stop by (Miguel, Jim Gettys, and Keith Packard, and so on). However, there were a bunch of things that we could have done a lot better, so I've been trying to write them up, so that we can have an even more kick-ass booth for the next conference (LWE SF, anyone?). Here's a list, a bit of explanation for most of the items, and one or two closing remarks. Notes for GNOME booths ======================== Need: 1) Way to hang poster 2) (tri-fold?) hand outs 3) Screenshots on stand-up "cards" 4) Banner for front of table 5) Spiel-type thing 6) Friends of gnome domations setup 7) Generic business cards 1) We've got this lovely GNOME poster, but it's really hard to hang up. It doesn't have any eyelets, so we ended up bending some hooks, and using stage tape to hold them onto the back of the poster. 2) Handouts! These can probably just be posted online, and printed out/folded by some volunteers who are working the conference, rather than shipping them all over the place. 3) It would be really cool to have some great GNOME Screenshots printed up on some sort of foam or paperboard backing, that we could stand up on the booth table. Bright colors and big pictures; things that people can see from across to room to lure them over to the booth. 4) Another banner that says "GNOME Foundation" or something for hanging on the front of the table would be pretty cool. It doesn't need to be as flashy as the big poster (nor anywhere near as big). Some good way to hold this one on the table is important too. 5) "Spiel type thing". Computer folks tend to be shy as a breed... This applies to both the attendees of the conference, as well as the folks manning the GNOME booth. We need to have some thoughts about how to get started talking to the people who come by about all the cool stuff in GNOME. 6) Friends of GNOME Donation setup. I'm not sure how things work on this currently, but it'd be really nice to have a way for people to make donations to GNOME at the conference, so that we don't just have to send them to the website to make donations. Even if we can't do anything with plastic, we ought to still handle everything else. While we're on donations, we had some people make donations in exchange for t-shirts, but we couldn't give them receipts. Receipts are an integral part of donations. 7) Generic Business Cards: We ought to get a batch of these printed up with a GNOME Logo, and a 'GNOME Foundation Member' title on them, and some basic GNOME contact info. Spots for folks to jot down their name/contact info would be pretty handy too. So, these are pretty much just the materials that need to go into a 'GNOME Booth Setup Kit.' We probably also need a webp age that has some more details. We at least need to know who to contact about getting the basic funding for these conferences (most of the conference organizers will be willing to donate the booth and space to us for free, but there are some other costs, like a table, and 'unionized labor' to set up and take down the booth. We also need to figure out if we can afford to have more than one of these 'kits', and if so, where they need to be stored so that they can be quickly shipped to the folks at the conference. Sorry this turned out so long, but I'd love to get to the point where GNOME has a booth that looks as good as the ones for the big companies who show up, instead of looking like it was thrown together at the last minute. Greg
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