Seems like *@fedoraproject.org was out so i'm resending my report... typos and all :D
I was waiting for Ma'am Magie to post the pics of our recently
concluded SFD celebration but since she's still probably recuperating
from the event, let me, in her stead, report what happened last
Saturday at the National Computer Center here in Quezon City.
Official registration was supposed to start 8:30 AM but when I
passed by the venue around 7:30AM on my way to my office, students were
already milling around the complex and a provincial bus was already
parked beside the venue. Talk about being early! When I returned around
8:45AM, the place was already packed and Ma'am Magie was already going
on circles :)
I was designated as the booth man by virtue of seniority :D (Truth be told, Ma'am Magie was busy organizing the whole event while Sir Engels was giving speeches).
The Fedora booth consisted of a tarpaulin, flyers, two LiveUSB Station
posters and my office laptop featuring Fedora 9. I originally planned
to bring my Asus eee loaded with eeedora to the event but I was locked
out of our office with no keys -- stupid me. A friend later took pity
on me and sent for his two laptops (both of which are Windows) and together we burned away those USB sticks.
Apart from burning LiveUSBs, I gave away flyers, cajoled SFD-goers
to try Fedora 9 using my laptop, gave impromptu talks about the merit
of Fedora and its difference with other Linux distributions (most of
the time - Ubuntu), met students, teachers and other professionals and
had a blast the whole time. Talking particularly with the kids made me
feel like a rock star :)
The major drawer of our booth was certainly the LiveUSB creation.
It would have been FreeMedia but early on, we have decided to do away
with the distribution of DVDs and LiveCDs because that would entail
spending money we don't really have much of. What meager funds we have
scrapped together were funneled into the whole event. I think our FreeMedia program could expect a lot more requests coming from the Philippines - I just gave away its URL.
Either way, we
had registered around 50 individuals who wanted to hear more
about the Fedora Project and possibly contribute themselves. These
included teachers who want their students contribute as ambassadors
and/or developers, students who wanted to make a case study in the use
of Fedora and professionals who are interested in holding
seminars/trainings in deploying Fedora in their line of work.
I'm now helping these guys get onboard the project. This is just first event so future events would certainly be better.
~ Herson