[Fedora-ambassadors-list] FOSDEM 2006 Report

[Hornain Frederic]

Dear Thomas, Alex, Ambassadors,

As promised, I have done the FOSDEM and it was a really great experience and for sure I will be there next year. 
Thanks for your trust my friends.
Thanks also to Alex Maier, Thomas Canniot, Mathias Saou, Dag Wieers, Andreas Kupfer.

BTW, sorry for the delay.

Previous the event.
 Indeed, I had reserved a booth without any knowledge about how it was going on. 
 What it was -I think - quite normal for the first "Fedora Group" participation, isn't it ?
 The thing is that I was just in time for the reservation so I had to take what it was available. 
 Anyway, we were quite happy with what you had.
 In addition, no conference was planned - maybe next year ;) -. I prefered to start small in order to get experiences and think bigger for the next time instead of doing somthing which could have been regrettable.
 Then, I have preparded some hoardings, business cards and have ordered to the Fedora Marketing the DVDs and the Tee-Shirts I was going to redistribute during the event.

Saturday
 Here we were ! 
 Our booth was between the "Open Wengo" one and the "Ekiga" - New name of Gnome Meeting - one. Our neighbourgs were really nice.
 At the begining I was alone but after few minutes some fedora developpers who were at the FOSDEM and who were surprised to see the Fedora booth resquested me if they could be represent the project with me.
 For my part, they were OBVIOUSLY WELCOMED.
 Indeed, I was suprised that each one was from different nationalities.
 So our group was from this moment composed of Mathias a french living in Spain, Dag a deutch living in Belgium, Andreas a german and I a french living in Belgium.
 A Real European Fedora Group.
 We had all kind of visitors - geeks, newbies and others -, questions, requests, discussions and so on so for - see below -.

Sunday,
 Accompagned of Thomas, Andreas, Dag, Mathias, I represented Fedora all the day.
 Same than above, we had all kind of visitors - geeks, newbies and others -, questions, requests, discussions and so on so for - see below -.

At The end of the event
 All DVDs and tee-Shirt were gone.

Frequently Asked Questions 
 What is Fedora ?
 What is the difference between Fedora and Red Hat ?
 When the next release will be available ?
 What will be in the new release ?
 Do you a have a live cd ?
 Are you a developper ?
 What is the difference between you and all the other distributions?
 Why should I use Fedora ?
 Do you have a tee shirt sized L ? - I havn't got only XL, XXL, XXXL -

Booth
 The Booth was composed of three chairs and one tables.
 We had wifi and RJ45 connections.

Celebrities at the Event.
 Richard Stallman.
 Mark Spencer from Asterisk.
 Ian Pratt from Xen.
 Jon Trowbridge from Beagle.
 Michael Meeks from Open Office.
 etc... 

Celebrities at the Fedora Booth
 Richard Stallman.
 Jeff Johnson, the conceptor of RPM.
 Tom Tromey GDB Engineer and his collegue from Red Hat.
 Alasdai G. Kergon LVM Developper from Red Hat.
 Tristan Nitot from Mozilla Project. 
 Others guys from Red Hat.

Non IT people.
It can be explained cause the venet was based at the "Université Libre de Bruxelles". So, saturday people who were studiing laws and others were curious about Fedora.
We give us a free DVD and convinced us to try and have fun on their non currently used PC.
FYI, ask Thomas about his presentation to a psycho girl - she studies psychology - on Sunday. :) You will be surprised. he has really great fun with her.

Good Points
 The position of our booth. It was really strategic. We were lucky this year cause this specific place was not requested. 
 Presence of Fedora at this event.
 Free Fedora DVDs and Tee-Shirts.
 Flyers. Thanks for that Thomas :).
 Clever, smart and nice peoples at our booth.
 The presentation of kadishi. Thanks for that Thomas :).
 Big flat screen instead of laptop screen. Thanks for that Thomas :).
 Nice behaviour with Open Suse, Gentoo, Debian.

Bad Points
 Not enough space.
 No talk - conference in room - planned.
 No Boards neither advertising.

Improvments
 Maybe we could have sweet-shirt instead of tee shirt for ambasasdors cause it is cold in February at Brussels.
 Ask for a bigger booth.
 Plannification of Talks.
 Be the point of "rendez-vous" for Red Hat and Fedora staff. - I will told a world with Alex about that.

Hoping that all have been said.

Finally, sorry to be not often on the IRC due to the security policies of my company.

If you have any remarks or questions, feel free to contact me.

BR
Fred