Re: critics about our presence at LinuxTag 2004

Good morning,

* Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> [040629 01:41]:

[ hacking area ]
> Now that you mention it: Something that really annoyed me last year (I
> didn't go this year, but I doubt this has changed) was the rude tone in
> which the people that were not on their shift were asked to leave, even
> while they were talking to visitors.
>
> Not a permanent solution, but workable: Have a *visible* hacking/hanging
> out area where people can gather. Yes, visitors may happen to ask those
> people some questions, but I think it is more important to show that
> Debian is after all a community effort. Hiding everyone who is not
> "official" is not a solution.

We had barly enough space for us and the subprojects. I don't think Joey
will give us a 50m² booth next year, so I think this won't be possible.

Imagine you are a unexperienced user, visiting the booth of a software
project, and what you find is a bunch of hacking nerds, don't even
noticing your presence, and two or three guys standing arround, busy
with other visitors.

It might say "Debian is a comminoty effort", but it definitely tells our
visitors, that we don't care much about them.

> Duh. Nothing to say about that. At least I didn't hear about Debian
> people offering them money, as some M$ people did a few years ago.

Did they? Wow, that's bald, even for MS.

> Having an own printer is IMO a necessity. Basically, it sucks when you
> have pointed a visitor that had a concrete question to a web page that
> answers it and you need to scribble down the URL; printing stuff out at
> the booth helps a lot here. Printing flyers is something different, yes.

IMHO it is a better solution to mail visitors URLs than to print out web
pages.

A printer is not a necessity, we had quite good boothes without one. I
would say, it is a "nice to have", if you have the space and nothing
else to show.

Yours sincerely,
  Alexander

-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-events-eu-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org