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Re: Review: Linux World Conference & Expo in Frankfurt



* Michael Banck <mbanck@gmx.net> [021117 23:26]:

> - Booth building-up
> 
> Can't really say much here, as I didn't hear my alarm and arrived quite
> late to bring the beamer with me :-/
Quite interessting story about that.
But let me first thank Jan Haase, who picked my hardware and me up, and
brought everything to the exhibition area.

I don't know why, but I allways thought our booth would have two walls.
I must have looked very confused, when I recognized on Sunday, that the
worksman are not going to build our last wall, but laying carpets ;)

Of course needed to move the furniture to other places than planed, but
I think the booth was okay.

A small problem was the beamer, which has been organized by Achim Lange
from Network Appliance. His company is in a small town, on the border
of Frankfurt. Because he got ill, he was unable to bring it to us, but
he was able to organize the possibilitie to get the beamer picked up by
one of us on monday.
At this point I should thank Daniel Priem, who offered to come more
than 100km from Schwaben (?), just to pick up the beamer and bring it
and some blank-CDs to us.

> The booth only had one wall, so we could not put too many posters
> there, as the beamer was using most of it.
The walls were grey, so I was a little bit worried, that it would be
impossible to see anything on them.
Luckily I was wrong.

> We had to share one DSL connection with the whole .org-Pavillon,
> but most of the time it worked out.
Funny thing about that, too. Beside some smaller securetty holes (One
guy gave access to his printer to everyone; I think Jörg send him a
swirl), we found out, that someone was running a dhcp server (every
booth in the .org pavillion got a small ip range).
When I was doing a installation demo with a visitor, and was just
telling, what dhcp is, and that the visitor should choose "no" to enter
some values manuely, he allready hijacked a ip from some other booth. I
don't now, from which one we tooked it; nobody asked us, if we where
using one of their ip's ;)


> Two notebooks on a small table
That is the right point to thank my brother, Joachim Schmehl. He
offered his notebook (allthough I told him, that I was going to delete
all stored data :)


> - The Staff
At this point I like to thank Gerd Boerrigter, who offered his help
manning the booth and some sleeping places, and the guys from the
Frankfurter Linux User Group, who offered some hardware, too.
I'm very sorry, but as you have seen: Our booth was quite small, and
not fully usable to place all the interessting stuff, because of the
"missing" wall.

> One of them even wanted our autographs on his newly-bought LinuxTag
> Debian CD-Set...
That dutch guy was very nice. He didn't want to take one of our
"wunderfull, expensive" LinuxTag CDs, so he bought a complete CD set at
the LinuxLand booth, and come back to let us sign it.

> Regular debian users with very specific questions that we tried to
> answer.
We had some PowerPC specific questions, too. But no one of us had any
experience with that architecture. On the second day we found out, that
one of the guys at the Pro-Linux booth had a PowerPC Notebook (of
course with Debian running on it), so we send them to their booth.

> Celebreties. Klaus Knopper [..] experienced a debian install for the
> first time ever.
That was a small guilt from the practical Linux in Giessen. He did not
believe me, that it is possible to install Debian without leaving the
install menu to an console.
I think this guilt has been paied back :)

> We had flyers and LinuxTag-CDs. Some people asked for posters [..]
When guys asked me for posters, I told them, that it is very expensive
to print them, so we can neither give them away, nor can sell them, but
I told them, that the posters are available on the Debian site.
One of them thanked me for that information, and perhaps he will even
print us some new posters (if I can find his business card and ask him
again); the old one look a little bit damaged.

> Virtually nobody gave any donations in exchange for CDs, it's a
> business thing after all.
We collected ~50 EUR. I'm sorry that I didn't transfered them. I just
moved, and the list how many donations we got is ... well ... in any
cardboard box.

> I think flyers were out on thurday, too, not sure.
No, there are still flyers left. There are still 700 flyers left. If
you need some, please contact Michael Meskes.

> Oh, and LinuxLand 'donated' some PC-case stickers with a debian swirl
> to the developers, after some talking-in.
Hehe, I asked them, how much they cost. Really! I would have paied for
them!
Perhaps I should not have stroken my Debian name tag, while asking him
;)

> Alexander Schmehl walked a couple of
> visitors through the installation on wednesday and thursday which caught
> the interest of other visitors even more :)
It is quite easy: Oh, you think Debian it is not easy to install
Debian? Do you have 27 minutes? Then have a seat, I erase the disk,
here as a CD, good luck :-)

> Perhaps we should put a sign 'Installation demonstrations on demand'
> somewhere at the booth next time, I think it was a very nice
> demonstration.
Good idea!

> - The Social Event/The Evenings
> 
> Sorry, I was not able to attend those, more or less being on holiday at
> my parents.
You missed a good party! Sponsored by AMD, the organizers rent the
basement of the "Römer" (that is, where our city goverment resides, not
cheap). Of course they hired very good party service, which made a very
good buffet. Food and drinks were for free, and the only rub of it was
the music.
I think the DJ wanted to get early to finish, so played his music with
increasing loudness ;)

But no problem! Our table was as far away from him as possible, and
when it became to loud there, too, we moved before the door :)

> Overall, did I say I was really happy to be there?
Me too. Allthough I got some freaky mails and phone calls (We like to
talk to the boss of the debian company, may we make an appointment?), I
enjoyed the time with all of you very much.

Last, not least, we should thank the sponsors of that event, wo paied
for our booth, the furniture and the internet connection, and Antje
Käppel, from the exhibition organization. Allthough he had much work to
do for the paying boothes, she had allways time, when I had a question.


cu
Alex

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