Hi,
On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 5:29 PM, Brian Exelbierd <bex(a)pobox.com> wrote:
This is great, however I don't want there to not be a badge. The
badge
gives us some data value in fedmsg, so let's keep it but not push it
heavily.
I am not against the badge, it is a nice feature, but just let's not
make it look like if someone has not registered for badge or Fedora
Account, that we don't want to talk to him.
If you start the conversation with "Sign in!" it kinda looks scary.
> Usually there are quite a lot of Fedorians at FOSDEM, I think we
can
> make it easier to join the booth, if we will be more open about
> joining. For example let's have a schedule printed at the booth and
> let people randomly running around to sign on sight for particular
> time slots - hour or two of booth work. I think it would be nice
> experience for some of those Fedora users, who don't have time or
> desire to commit to the entire event. Let them sign for just a
> particular hour - it would be easier for them to participate, it would
> be easier for others to find them.
What do we need to do to get these folks on board? I am happy to do a
social for people who work the booth - is that incentive to find those
folks?
For just a random participant at a conference, who is not a famous
kernel maintainer or even speaker, it could be hard to find a crowd to
talk to. Even when there is 8000 people around - you don't connect to
them. So my idea is that booth needs to be such a connector. (I
personally use it for that)
So my idea is not about us going somewhere to socialize, but for
making booth the socializing place of its own.
In practice I see it somewhat like this:
* we get a banner with huge letters "open hours" or "ask me about" or
"Fedora meeting point"
This could be a dedicated banner or simply an A3 paper pinned on top
of existing banner with some tape, whatever works, but the bigger the
better.
Now there should be three columns: time slot, name/fas and topics. And
there should be a pen. And any Fedora contributor can sign himself in
a time slot.
* week before the event we announce the Fosdem Open Hours on
fedora-devel@ and suggest people to sign in for time slots in advance
They don't have to present their projects, they don't have to be open
source "celebrities", they don't have to be Ambassadors, they just
need to talk about Fedora for an hour. Meet other users.
* we can also reach out to Fedora-related FOSDEM speakers directly and
suggest them to have a "follow-up" Q&A hour at the booth after their
talk
When I do a talk at a conference, these follow-up questions are the
most interesting part of it, and 5 minutes after the talk are usually
not enough. Then I think it is a great opportunity for a speaker to
extend the Q&A session and have a dedicated place for it.
* let Fedora contributors sign in for time slot on site, while they
are passing by.
At huge conferences there is always a time when you don't know what to
do, because the room you wanted to get in was overcrowded, or you have
a break in your schedule, or whatever. So let people come to the booth
during that time and announce themselves and work as Fedora Ambassador
for a bit.
For those who have signed, we shouldn't promise the only on-topic
questions and deep meaningful discussions, we should promote it as a
"meet the crowd" thing. The topics should work as possible
conversation starters, but no one should be limited to them. If it
happens that you end up discussing the specific pull-request you are
reviewing - it is awesome, but if it just an hour of talking about
"why Fedora", while you've signed with the "kernel message bus"
topic
- that should be totally ok too.
Optionally:
* design special t-shirts for those who signed in and came, like
"Fosdem 2018 Fedora AMA"
Now there might be problems:
- no one wants to participate
Maybe this idea doesn't work and people are actually quite busy and
have more of the interesting stuff to do at a conference than I think.
Then we just populate the open hours list with some inputs from the
Ambassadors themselves. We are Fedora contributors as well. So we can
put our names and our topics, and this will also help us to organize
Ambassador shifts in a better way.
- inexperienced people at the booth
We always need at least one experienced ambassador to be at the booth,
coordinating those who came temporarily. In the end it is the
Ambassador who is responsible for the booth equipment, swag and so on.
- space at the booth
Currently we don't have much space near the booth stand, and it
sometimes gets overcrowded, so that people who talk don't let others
to get the swag. We need to optimize a space a bit. I think if we
don't clutter it with clothes and boxes we can setup a dedicated
standing corner for talking which would be on the side of a table. May
be get a barstool in that corner as well.
Feel free to discuss and disagree :)
--
Aleksandra Fedorova
bookwar