GITEX 2007 (The Final Post)
by John Babich
As the organizer of Fedora's first presence at GITEX - now that I have
had a week or so to reflect on (recover from) the show - what went
well and what can we do better?
WHAT WENT WELL
* PLANNING: By giving Red Hat plenty of advance notice, Red Hat
graciously provided us with a demo pod and HP desktop. The desktop
with integrated Intel graphics allowed us to wow the passers-by with
wobbly windows and rotating cubes - eye candy, but eye-catching,
important at a large show. A special thanks to Veronique Borel, who
organized Red Hat's presence at GITEX.
* BLOGGING: Posting about the Fedora Project at GITEX was well worth
the effort. Incidentally, we were the top page rank for GITEX on
Google for quite a few weeks. Thanks to the Fedorans who encouraged me
to blog.
* ONE-ON-ONE: Lloyd Almeida and I, as Fedora Ambassadors, spoke to
dozens of people about Fedora and FOSS. Lloyd, who works in Dubai,
made contacts for the linux user group he hopes to start up soon.
Thanks, Lloyd, for your invaluable help and enthusiasm.
* MEDIA (CDs and DVDs): All told, we distributed hundreds of media to
the crowds. Red Hat shipped about 400 Fedora 7 DVDs to the show, which
were put to good use. Red Hat and the RH partners were very helpful in
spreading the word about Fedora. They gladly handed out Fedora DVDs
and Live CDs. Thank you to my fellow RedHat EMEA, OpenNet MEA,
Margirus, AMD and IT University booth dwellers.
* BROCHURE: The Fedora Project flyer in both English and Arabic was a
great tool. The excellent artwork gave a very positive impression of
the Fedora Project. Thanks, Ahmed Kamal, for your bilingual design.
* OLPC: The OLPC XO laptop was well-displayed and caused quite a stir.
I was able to speak to several VIPs about this significant educational
project. Yes, the technology is cool, too. Thank you to the Red Hat
and Fedora people involved in the OLPC project.
* BUDGET: On a personal note, I stayed within my modest budget in a
very expensive city. Thanks, Bill, for putting me up and putting up
with me.
WHAT WE CAN DO BETTER
* I personally printed the two-sided flyers on a deskjet printer at
Bill's villa. Next time, I'll get them professionally printed.
* More Fedora ambassadors would be very welcome. Lloyd and I could
only cover 3 out of 5 days of the show. (We did have some ambassadors
who volunteered, but were unable to attend due to the prohibitive cost
of flights and hotels in Dubai.)
* I would like to present a booth talk on the One Laptop Per Child,
perhaps in a more official capacity.
CONCLUSION
Going to the GITEX commercial exhibition, with a little help from my
friends, was definitely worthwhile. I believe we, as Fedora
Ambassadors, were able to inform people about the advantages of free
and open source software. I found it personally rewarding to
demonstrate the OLPC XO laptop and to introduce people to the Fedora
Project.
Best Regards,
John Babich
Fedora Ambassador
16 years, 7 months
Fwd: Media for Lug
by Thomas Chung
Any volunteer?
I believe he's a college student from Canada.
http://www.cegepsherbrooke.qc.ca/
Regards,
ps. I'm on vacation until Sept 21.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rémi Goyette-Allaire <savanconinus(a)hotmail.com>
Date: Aug 31, 2007 9:18 PM
Subject: Media for Lug
To: tchung(a)fedoraproject.org
Hi M. Chung,
I would like to know if it would be possible to send 80 sorted
cds/dvds or fedora 7 to our lug.
We would like to distribute them, since we had lot of demands for it
and that we do not have a burner. If you can't do it directly, could
you put me in contact with someone that could do it?
Remi Goyette-Allaire
Lug of Cégep de Sherbrooke
________________________________
Émoticônes : Lorsque les mots ne suffisent pas pour s'exprimer
16 years, 7 months
REMINDER French Meeting today 1830 #fedora-meeting
by Thomas Canniot
This mail is a reminder for today´s meeting for French ambassadors and
_every_ interested people.
2007-09-16 / 18:30 UTC
IRC: freenode
#fedora-meeting
Ce mail est un rappel pour la réunion des ambassadeurs francophones,
qui aura lieu ce dimanche (16 sept) à 20h30 heure de Paris sur IRC
(freenode) #fedora-meeting .
Thomas Canniot
16 years, 7 months
GITEX 2007 Presentation
by John Babich
As requested, I uploaded my GITEX 2007 Presentation, which was quickly
done as an exercise in code reuse, in this case, Greg's Linux Asia
2006 slides. Thanks, Greg!
I did, however, update it for Fedora 7 and added a few pithy insights
of my own. I put in transitions to show off OpenOffice.org Impress. I
also think it's important to explain that this was produced completely
in OOo Impress on a Fedora 7 system, especially at a commercial ICT
exhibition.
The intended audience is the open-minded, non-FOSS ICT professional.
Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice.org, not explicitly mentioned in the
presentation, are two FOSS apps which are an excellent bridge from
using a certain proprietary OS to switching to Fedora. I used them as
examples in my talk, I think, to good effect.
The wiki page link is http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Presentations.
and the title under the OVERVIEWS section is
"All About Fedora (GITEX Edition), John Babich".
Best Regards,
John Babich
Fedora Ambassador
16 years, 7 months
Preliminary GITEX 2007 Report
by John Babich
Fedora Ambassadors:
Here is a preliminary report on Fedora's first presence at GITEX,
which just finished in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Note: The Fedora Project wiki page for GITEX is now at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/PastEvents/2007
I was able to volunteer all day on Saturday, 8 September, the opening
day of the show, Sunday, 9 September, and most of Monday,10 September.
Lloyd Almeida, a fellow Fedora ambassador working as an animation
artist in Dubai,did a terrific job of representing the Fedora Project.
A special thanks to Lloyd.
Keep in mind that GITEX is one of the world's largest ICT trade shows,
with an emphasis on commercial offerings. Free and Open Source
software (FOSS) is still very much in the minority at the show.
Highlights:
- Red Hat, our corporate sponsor, did a great job with the booth and
generating interest in linux and open source.
For instance, there were only five daily GITEX IT Solutions newspapers
published. On Monday, OpenNet MEA, a Red Hat partner, was the cover
story, featuring its new agreement with Red Hat, complete with a photo
of a gentlemen with a red hat at the RH booth. Since Red Hat was the
only major open source linux company present among thousands of
companies, this was an amazing piece of publicity for FOSS.
- The Red Hat partners in the booth, OpenNet MEA, Magirus, IT
University, and AMD, were a great bunch of people. They helped
distribute Fedora 7 DVDs and Live CDs to their potential customers and
anyone interested. They also directed people to us who had questions
about linux in general and Fedora in particular.
- One Laptop Per Child was well-publicized. There was a dedicated demo
pod for the OLPC XO laptop. People were actually taking pictures of
the laptop like it was the crown jewels. There was tremendous interest
in promoting the OLPC laptop in the EMEA region. Many people wanted to
buy one on the spot. I was privileged to demonstrate it and answer
questions for people as an unofficial spokesperson.
- The synergy among Red Hat, OLPC, AMD and the Fedora Project was
fantastic. Because Fedora linux is the base software for the OLPC XO
laptop, as well as RHEL5, with AMD providing the OLPC CPU, I was able
to tie together all the organizations and explain how open source
provides a virtuous circle of collaboration which is all too rare in
the corporate world. AMD had just announced it was open sourcing ATI
video drivers, so I could explain the advantages of open source, open
standards, and unencumbered binary drivers. AMD also announced the new
quad-core Barcelona CPU during the show.
- There was great interest in localization (l10n),
internationalization (i18n), and translation. We showed, for example,
how GNOME supported three dialects of Arabic (Lebanese, Eqyptian and
Saudi). I also promoted Transifex, and the Fedora Documentation and
Translation Projects.
- I gave two booth talks on the Fedora Project to an audience of IT
professionals just becoming acquainted with FOSS.
- One attendee literally praised God when I gave him a Fedora DVD,
saying that he was unsuccessful in downloading it for the past few
weeks. We forget that there are large sections of the world which
don't have reliable, high-speed internet connections.
Finally, thanks to everyone in the Fedora Project who helped out.
Finally, I posted some photos at www.photobucket.com. See the
slideshow (flash plugin required) at
http://s190.photobucket.com/albums/z242/jmbuser/?action=view¤t=0a4f...
Best Regards,
John Babich
Fedora Ambassador
16 years, 7 months
Fwd :[ IMP ] Call for participation: Freedom toaster alike project at WBUT.
by susmit shannigrahi
Hi *,
Hopefully you are all aware of the recent activities at WBUT.
After successful install-fests and establishing a public mirror
consisting of different Distros [Its up, details are coming once we
harden the box],
the WBUT-LUG is going to undertake another ambitious project which is
much like the Freedom Toaster project.
First we are going to place the machine at WBUT so that people can
come and burn
the distros they want. We also look forward to spread that to
different colleges.
Hereby we are calling for participation in the freedom toaster alike project.
People in and around kolkata is preferred , so that they
can come down personally, but they need not be WBUT students.
Please note its not going to be a replica of the freedom toaster
project. We shall write our own softwares and change the specs
according to our needs.[so that participants can spend a few sleepless
nights :). ]
We are also going to make our own kiosk, so we also need people who
can do mechanical engg jobs.
For any further quary or expression of interest, please post a message
to the list with your details. Alternately you can contact me or idg.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks and regards,
Susmit.
--
ssh
0x86DD170A
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/SusmitShannigrahi
16 years, 7 months
Regarding Software Freedom Day 2007
by Abhishek Singh
Dear All,
I really apologize for not being active in the mailing
list as well as IRC meetings. Actually, these days, I've been busy with
my research regarding "Business Incubation and sustainable models for
developing countries".
This is just to inform you that we're celebrating
Software Freedom Day 2007 (see
http://www.tuxolta.com/wiki/index.php?title=Software_Freedom_Day_2007)at
Nepal. The event is sponsored by High Level Commission for Information
Technology (see http://www.hlcit.gov.np), a wing of the government of
Nepal. They have also exhibited positive signs for revising the ICT
policy of the country and regarding FOSS as an necessary element.
On my part, as an ambassador, I'm presenting on
Fedora 7 which includes the following topics:
* Fedora Project: An introduction (very brief)
* Why Fedora 7
* GNOME (on F7)
* SELinux
* Xen
* some discrete apps (yet to be finalized)
Moreover, I'll be distributing 250 DVDs of F7 (which has been sponsored
by my university) at the event. I need some help to prepare for my
presentation, specially SELinux and Xen. I hope to hear from you soon.
Thanking You.
Regards,
Abhishek Singh
16 years, 7 months