Booth space for LWE New York.

[Nat Friedman <nat nat org>]

Hey guys,

About 9 months ago, Helix Code reserved itself a 70' x 30' booth for
LWE New York.  Now, it looks as if this is more booth space than we
need or can reasonably fill.  But, the space is already paid for (and
dearly!) so there's no sense letting it go to waste.  So I would like
to offer a 30x20 chunk of the space as a donation to the GNOME project
to use to create its own booth.

Helix Code doesn't want any kind of association or advertising with
the booth.  We'll create an aisle between the GNOME booth and ours,
and it will be separately labeled and everything.  We just thought
that this was a chance to turn our problem -- too much booth space --
into an opportunity for the GNOME project.

This would be by far the largest community-project booth at the
conference.  Most projects get a 5x5 or 5x10 space in the dot-org
pavilion, setup a table, and have one or two people handing out
brochures and stickers.  Renting a 30x20 booth like this would
probably cost somewhere around $25,000.

Of course, the booth would have to be filled.  I figure we can setup
some tables and inflatable furniture and bean bag chairs and have a
GNOME hacker's lounge.  There can be some computers for demoing GNOME.
Helix Code will glady contribute to a joint fund to purchase or rent
these items.

As far as staffing the booth goes, I suspect it will be at least
somewhat self-staffing as GNOME-savvy people are drawn to it and
decide to take a load off for a while.  But, of course, we'll need
more than this, so perhaps we could issue a call for volunteers on the
mailing lists?  Again, if cash needs to be produced to subsidize
flying some GNOME hackers to the conference, we'd be glad to do our
part.  We'll also provide some of our hackers to staff the booth, if
that's amenable to people here and on the board.

The only reason I can think of for the GNOME project not to want this
space is because it would be next to the Helix Code booth, and thus
might be cartographically biased.  Putting an aisle between the two
booths should help, and we pledge not to put any Helix Code
monkeybuttons around the booth or anything like that.  We want this to
be a neutral GNOME project booth, a place where we can show our unity
and love and have unwashed european hackers stinking up the whole
place.

Okay, maybe not the smelly part, but all the rest is true.

What do you guys think?

Happy new year,
Nat