Re: [Fsfe-uk] Linux User & Developer Expo

[Alex Hudson]

Hey Tom,

(Thanks for turning up to Expo, and for your formats work - much
appreciated, nice to meet you).

On Fri, 2004-04-23 at 17:23, Tom Chance wrote:
> Sorry for cross-posting but it concerns all three orgs.

Just for reference, we did all have a bit of a pow-wow, and we are
hopefully going to have a meeting sometime soon to hash out some
practical areas where we can work together more. As is often pointed
out, there are a number of areas where we have similar concerns and
should join forces.

> In general, I thought the .ORG village was pretty awful; there wasn't
> enough space, it didn't look inviting at all, and, whereas with the
> Debian booth it was clear when a passer-by was interested in your
> wares, for us it was impossible.

I will be sending some officious feedback on the village sometime late
weekend/early next week. The main problem I think was differentiating
the projects - for example, I even had someone ask me what the ".org
village" did and why they should join :o)

As for the stand, I did like being able to put up mini-posters on the
board. For AFFS, the width of the stand etc. was fine, although I think
a couple of people would have liked wider.

There is the whole "behind the stand"/"in front of stand" debate.
Sitting behind the stand would have meant no board to stick things on,
but I think would have meant more space for visitors to get to the
stand. Overall, I suspect I prefer the "behind stand", but I don't think
it would have made a huge difference either way. Being opposite the BBC,
on the other hand, definitely helped :o)

I don't envy the stand designers - there are certain physical
requirements (i.e., for the structure to be self-supporting) which rules
out some of the more progressive designs. For my money, though, the
Birmingham Village seemed to work the best, although I know not everyone
was happy with it. Part of why it seemed to work was the location too,
with the village kind of at the centre - having everything on one floor
seems to make things work better. I'm not sure the organisers can do
anything about the design of Olympia, however ;)

> Since the UKCDR, AFFS and FFII are all interested in similar things
> (the UKCDR and FFII in particular), would it not make sense to club
> together for one "campaigns" stall, similar to the Debian booth, where
> we could have more  space, and be further than 10cm away from
> competing stalls. Would we be able to get something like Debian had
> last week, at future expos?

Hmm, not sure. I think Debian got the stand they did on basically
practical grounds; they need to be there, but they also generate crowd,
which makes it difficult for people to move around. 

I'm not sure what the various costings, etc., would be, and whether or
not us three clubbing together would be practical on that basis (since
the argument is basically grounded in 'would like', rather than 'needs
to be'). I would also be a little worried about potential ghettoisation.
Potentially possible, though. After all, AFFS wasn't just AFFS - we were
also FSF/GNU, and have been AFSP, FSFE-ish and other things in the past
at the same time. We could have a freedom village all to ourselves ;)

Cheers,

Alex.