critics about our presence at LinuxTag 2004

Good evening,

Below are some points, which I (and some others) didn't like:

Booth:
======

- the "hacking" area wasn't avaible on the first days, so much Debian
  folks was sitting around at our booth, so visitors (if they weren't to
  afraid too come to our booth) didn't know whom to ask questions.
  Although we had an hacking area from the second day we should be
  prepared for the day when LinuxTag has grown so much that there is no
  space left for a hacking area.

Possible solution: Threw those who aren't assigned as booth personal,
  out of the booth. There was an internet Cafe with tables and net-access
  in the Stadthalle. You could have worked there.

- Another part of the problem was, that people were sitting in the back,
  showing visitors their back, and one showed them (while wearing a to
  short shirt and bending forwards to hack on his notebook) parts of his
  body, which didn't saw the sun recently.

  PLEASE! If you are at the booth:
  DON'T SHOW VISITORS YOUR BACK!
  AND DON'T SHOW THEM YOUR ASS CRACK!

Possible solution: Dark sunglasses for all visitors.

- If you are at the booth, and female visitors come to you, don't stare
  at their breasts (or at least don't dislocate to do so).

Possible solution: Don't allow female visitors to enter the exhibition
  hall.

- If you want to give away flyers, don't bring your printer (we won't
  have always place for that), and start printing them.

Possible solution: Print them before the event starts (so you even don't
  need to bring your printer), or print at the Sharp booth (BTW who loves
  to show you how easy it is, to print on sharp printers with Linux)

- If you had a long night, it might be that you get very sleepy at the
  booth, where the air often does not contain much oxygen. But please
  don't sit at the booth, head on the table. Luckily you weren't
  snoring.

Possible solution: Take 50ccm caffein intra cardial, or ask for someone
  to step in, while you go for a small walk at fresh air (there is such a
  nice park right behind the exhibition area.) Alternativly you can go to
  the hacking area and sleep there.

- Don't play screen for the beamer. Even if you don't wear our black
  shirts, the (nearly) white booth wall does this job much better.

Possible solution: Don't step in the beamer light, or if you need to
  pass, be fast.

- Booth people didn't note down when they sold something or collected
  donations, which made the final bill really hard
- Booth people didn't know how to use the systems at the booth (e.g.
  how to burn a disc)

Possible solution: Create the information file for the booth people
  sooner and add all informations they need, so they can read it before
  they arrive.
  
Possible solution 2: Kick somebodies ass and make a daily inventory
  (NO! Please don't force us to do this! People get hungry in the
  evening!)

- Booth people didn't know whom they could contact if visitors asked
  questions they couldn't answer.

Possible solution: Add more informations about their "specialities" to the
  informations for the booth people

- The staff from the subprojects were not at the booth all the
  time (but it was much much better than last year), leaving the "normal"
  Debian staff with questions they couldn't answer.

Possible solution: If you leave your subprojects booth, leave
  a) you cellphone number, so we can phone you back
  b) leave a big note, telling everyone (visitors included) when you
     will be back

- We run out of food to fast (okay, my fault). Well, the solution would
  be to buy more food, but I disliked the idea to throw away uneaten food
  at the evening, and didn't knew how much people will be arround the
  next day.

Possible solution: Buy more, give it away for free (to other boothes) in
  the evening, if we really have to much.

- The booth looked like a pigpen at the evening and in the morning.

Possible solution: Throw your rubbish in the garbage back instead of
  leaving it somewhere at our booth. Clean up in the evening.
  Write your name on your mug, so you don't need to take four mugs a
  day.

- There was much personal stuff (like backpacks) at the booth, which
  gave the booth a quite chaoting view. Although you might argue that
  this matches our project quite good, I would prefer if you wouldn't
  bring personal stuff which you don't need all the time to our booth.

Possible solution: Get a storeroom like last year, or bring your personal
  stuff to the hacking area (hopefully there will be one).

- People having a booth shift or space for their subproject, but
  didn't arrived in time.

Possible solution: Shit happens, I know that. But if something prevents
  you from coming to us, please tell this to us (and your project members) ASAP!
  (But thanks for informing us why you were not there, Adamantix.)

DebianDay:
==========

- Different people visiting talks at the DebianDay told me, that they didn't
  like the very short talks, they thought talk and discussion would
  take a full hour, not only 15 minutes.

Possible solution: Well, some of the talks might have been expanded with
  a deeper topic (e.g. how to create kernel-patch-packages or how to edit
  them so you can use them with newer kernel versions). I you even can't
  do this, ask Joey for the code and change it in a way that he can administrate
  talks which don't fill a full hour.

- Some speakers prepared their talk for the wrong audience.

Possible solution: If you are going to do a talk at a DebianDay next
  year, don't forget that the audience will be mainly Debian Developers
  and experienced users.

And finally some positive points I like to mention:

- The showcase, where visitors could see every piece of merchandising
- There were always people around when you had work to do, and people
  did the work assigned to them. All in all the booth worked quite well!
  Thank you.
- the installation demonstrations of our sarge pre-release
- the pre-release itself and the publicity it brought with it
- there were always enough people at our booth to sell merchandise,
  answer general questions AND to solve technical problems of some users
- That I didn't need to organize it ;)

This list is short so I think I should point out, that I really liked
our booth and how fine everything worked out! Thanks for your help,
thanks for your time, thanks for your work!

Please feel free to add comments or other points you liked or disliked.

Yours sincerely,
  Alexander

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