[Ambassadors] EdTech Day follow-up

[David Nalley]

So to try and do some mass mentoring via mailing list I am going to
ask a few questions/pose a few comment.s

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Karlie Robinson
<karlie_robinson at webpath.net> wrote:
> Yesterday I attended the 19th annual Educational Technology [1] day at
> Ithaca College in Ithaca NY, USA.  As you may have guessed by the title,
> this show is focused on technologies used in k-12 as well as higher
> education.

Note this is an education conference - don't hesitate to promote
Fedora at things other than Linux conferences.

> I was camped out in the Ithaca Free Software Association [2] booth for the
> day, so I must extend a hearty thank you to Eric and Marty for their booth
> hospitality.  I also need to thank Charles Profitt of the Rochester
> LUG/Ubuntu NY LoCo for giving me a ride to Ithaca (going green by way of the

So it sounds like this was a 'I heard about this at the last minute'
type event?
And even without a booth you pulled it off.

> carpool).  And last but not least, Brian Neil for volunteering his time to
> jockey all 320 disc in and out of my printing and duplicating equipment.
> I met with a mix of Students, faculty and staff from numerous schools in
> upstate NY (Elmira College, Cornell, Syracuse, University of Rochester, K-12
> from the area Etc).  I was also able to meet with community members.  In
> fact, the rush was more like a crush of people.  For example, we had 300
> discs at 9am when the doors opened.  At 10:30 we handed out the last disc.
>  (I saved 20 sugar spins for my talk and I'm glad I did)

How many people do you think attended the conference?

>
> While it's my preferance to keep a notebook handy to record contact info for
> the people I meet with, this was darn near impossible.  Instead I relied
> upon my business card and the few I was able to collect.  As of this
> writing, I've made contact with those I had cards for and I've had one email
> come in.

Two things - business cards are important - many still don't know that
Ian Weller developed and packaged an application to provide print
ready cards.
yum install fedora-business-cards will get you started.

Second - you should try and capture information about the people you
are talking to so you can follow up with them after the event.



> My presentation of OLPC - What if..? was well attended.  While I didn't get
> a head count, we made it to standing room only - so I would estimate 40-ish.
> Immediately after my presentation I was again, mobbed with questions about
> Math4, OLPC and Fedora at the booth.  (good stuff eh?)
>
> At about 2pm I was finally able to go visit the other booths and was stopped
> in the main hall by David Weil, the chair person for EdTech.  He thanked me
> for coming on short notice and offered OLPC/Fedora/Sugar Labs space for next
> year.
> One final note, I was able to promote POSSE a bit so I hope we'll be able to
> fill the bootcamp. Reply with questions.

Note that even though it wasn't her main goal when she showed up - she
pimped other Fedora initiatives.

> Notes at https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=User:Webpath/EdTech
> Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/23277267@N03/sets/72157615986454834/
>
> Karlie
>
>
> [1] http://www.ithaca.edu/edtechday
> [2] http://ithacafreesoftware.org/
>
>
>
> --
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>