All,
Please review our event report from Ohio. Also a PDF version with photos
will be available on the event wiki page and will be posted on the blog.
"quote"
Ohio Linux Festival, Hyatt Regency Columbus, Ohio 29-30 September 2017
Event Report:
Andrew Ward (award3535), Julie Ward (jward78), Ben Williams (kk4ewt),
Cathy Williams (cwilla)
The Fedora community has been a steadfast supporter of this event
for the past 6 years. Ohio Linux Festival is the only major Linux
community event that is located in the Northern Midwest region, with no
Texas Linux Festival this year it is the only major event in the
Midwest. The event attendance in the previous few years has gone down
due to venue changes and event staff changes, but in light of 2017 the
event brought just under a thousand registered enthusiasts as the OLF
event president Beth Lynn Eicher (also a Fedora Ambassador) informed us
the morning of 30 September while we were getting set up, which this did
not count the walk-ins that showed up the morning of the EXPO opening.
So the attendance was most impressive as compared to the previous year’s
events and could be soundly stated that there was upwards of 1100 at the
event.
The first day was arranged for Professional Registrants interested
in training and was only targeted for that specific group. This gave us
the perfect opportunity to explore the venue and find out where our
booth was located and when set up could commence for the Expo. The time
also allowed us to check in with the event and get our badges settled. I
did peek into a couple of the training sessions to get an idea of what
the attendance was like. The rooms were approximately 40% capacity
during the talks, which was not a bad showing for the professionals. You
can look at what was scheduled at
https://ohiolinux.org/schedule/. The
Expo opening on the 30th was the main event and had a full schedule of
talks and with the expo hall opening at 8 a.m. we had got there early
and set up the table for the days business to begin. The first talk was
not scheduled to begin until 9 a.m. The expo showed a slow start to the
day but rapidly began to come to life after the first talk was over. We
decided to make a few DVD’s using the duplicator for the most common
desktop environments for distribution to interested individuals and the
Fedorator was set up and ready to go as well.
Our focus for the event was centered on the many varieties of
desktops Fedora has to offer and the versatility of the desktop
environments. Many who visited our table were aware of the Workstation
environment and were already using the software but were looking for
something similar to the previous Linux software they were using. Once
we inquired on what they were previously using we directed them to the
desktop that was most similar to what system previously installed on
their computers. For example, we had quite a lot of Mint users that
installed workstation and were not familiar with GNOME. This was an easy
explanation and pointed out the features in Cinnamon and Mate. Needless
to say, they were unaware that desktop environment was available from
Fedora. It seemed to be the most common point of our day. Cinnamon
happened to be our most popular desktop to handout with 70 DVD’s given
to those who were interested. When asking questions on how they felt
about Fedora almost all were very pleased with what they were using
within the Fedora community (those who were already running Fedora) and
with what they saw at our booth.
The Fedorator was a talking point as well. We did have a lot of
inquiries on what the function of the unit was. After showing off the
equipment used and purpose we demonstrated how to use the Fedorator. The
unit had a definite positive impact on the table. Several individuals
went off searching for USB drives so that they could use the Fedorator
to create a bootable USB Key. We did have one individual that was really
interested in getting one for use in his classroom. He currently is a
High School teacher that has incorporated Linux Distributions in the
curriculum for the Computer technology class. He was very interested in
how to get one or put one together. After a long conversation with how
he has the students try a Linux distribution in the labs, most of the
students have retained the Linux distribution for their personal
computers and taking home the media to use on other machines. I will
provide his contact information via sepcor to those who can provide
required material and specifics on, and, maybe a Fedorator can be
donated. We made no promises but would get him pointed in the right
direction. I believe this is exactly why we attend these community
events, this enthusiastic teacher was helping high school students with
a wide variety of software and was very impressed with Fedora and what
we do, and furthermore I also believe that we could help him with his
community with the promotion of Open source software and Fedora is a
prime opportunity to deliver a stable and usable Linux operating system.
It is hard to describe this teachers enthusiasm in words, his
expressions said it all to us.
Throughout the day we answered many questions on what desktops are
available and some of the upcoming changes with Fedora. There were many
questions relating to how Red Hat is involved as well as why I should
use Fedora over what I currently use. Every event that we attend the why
should I use Fedora question comes up at some point, not as often as
when the Ubuntu group attends events, because you always get the
hardcore Ubuntu users when they have a table set up. This year Ubuntu
was not present, but the same question did come up as well (always
does). This time the Debian user asked why I should shift to Fedora. We
do explain the differences between the two operating systems and the
support network set up with Fedora, but we leave the decisions to the
user. On almost every occasion that same person comes by the table again
and will pick up a DVD or Fedora Stickers and make the statement I will
give it a try. With that one person coming back to pick up media from
our table is always the reason why we (Fedora) are there to support
those who want to switch. One comment did stick out during the event. We
had one individual approach us and ask why our table was so busy,
everything is happening here so I had to come and see why, the other
side of the expo has no one was really there, everyone is at your table.
The day continued on with various questions and individuals who were
curious of what and who we are. Truly we had a very busy day with the
festival. Throughout the day we had a survey available for those who
desired to give us feedback on our product, the booth, and anything they
wished to feed back to Fedora. We tried to complete this electronically,
but found that most did not want to enter any information and have it
publically sent out on the internet or the fear of social media posts.
The response that we received for having hand written surveys seems to
go over a lot better than expected. We didn’t think that the
overwhelming response that we did have with the surveys. All of our
printed copies were filled out and returned to the booth. There was a
wide variety of questions relating to how you heard about Fedora to what
operating system do you currently use. We also inquired about if the
individuals would be interested in getting involved in the project with
some surprising results. Here are some of the results from the surveys;
Fedora Booth Experience
6
17
7
0
0
Excellent
Great
Good
Satisfied
Poor
Fedora Future Involvement in the Project
9
12
9
Yes
Maybe
No
Availability of Various Desktops
27
3
Yes
No
How Did you hear about Fedora
9
6
6
9
Already using
Internet/Online
Festival or Event
Other/Word of Mouth
O/S currently using
24
15
11
4
Linux
Fedora
Windows
Mac
Some Users Identified Dual boot
Member of Linux Users Groups (LUG)
6
19
5
Yes
No
Unanswered
There were some significant statements identified on the surveys,
one in particular that a user read the Linus Tovards preferred to use
Fedora, so the user identified that he immediately shifted to Fedora and
has been using it since. The most interesting discovery from the surveys
was the word of mouth discovery of how they heard about Fedora. This
truly showed that Fedora is gaining popularity within the Linux and open
source community just with person to person communications, this small
sample of the community growing. It’s hard to say what made the
popularity of Fedora other than its stability and technically advanced,
or it could be the support channels available, even the project itself
could be the flagship.
Another good point that was revealed from the survey was the
probability of future involvement in the project. Most were favorable,
while the no’s were limited to the insufficient time to get involved or
experience level being a factor keeping them from being involved.
Whatever their reasoning the number was less than 33% of not any
interest in becoming involved with the project. Interesting enough the
survey also pointed out that most of the individuals that filled out the
survey were not members of any Linux Users Group. This number is quite
surprising considering that the area has several groups that are
community involved. For those who traveled from Indiana and filled out
the survey also have a few groups that are quite community active.
In summary, we felt that the Ohio Linux Festival was a very
successful event. The fact that attendance was up significantly did show
the area growing in the Linux community interest. The attendance truly
shows an interest in the open source community and we can safely state
that Fedora made a large impact on that event and the community as
discovered by just how many did visit our table during the Expo, and by
our survey that shows a very good experience was given to all who
visited the Fedora Table.
"unquote"
--
V/R
Andrew Ward
award3535(a)fedoraproject.org
award3535(a)tds.net
award3535(a)gmail.com