Re: Disappointment about the appearance of our CLT booth

Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <tolimar_at_debian.org> wrote:

Hi,

> organizers themselves approach us about the booth and they inform us,
> that they regularly take pictures of all booths and decide based on
> these pictures where and if to place a project the next year and how
> much space to grant it, we've really blown it!

I see that as a really good thing. Solutions Linux is the perfect
example of what happens when organizers don't do that, and it's not
pretty.

> Think about it... You go an exhibition, and there is someone siting at a
> booth, turning his back to you while hacking or watching a video, even
> with headphones covering his ears so he can hear better. Would you ask
> this person a question or step closer to see what the booth is showing?
>
> So, the question is now, what can we do to prevent things like that from
> happening again. We already have the old booth checklist [9], a

For what's described in the previous paragraph:
 - throw away those chairs
 - ban personal laptops

Laptops should be in their bags, unless required to give a demo that
can't be given on the demo machines (you had none, granted) or to
check something specific.

People manning the booth should be briefed about their behaviour on
the booth, what's right and what's wrong. If they don't behave, have
them leave the booth, they're not helping anyway.

That's roughly how I managed our presence at Solutions Linux those
past years, except I haven't had to show the door to anyone. It's hard
for geeks not to touch their laptops for 3 days in a row, but with
enough prodding they can manage it, really. And the next year they
know how it all works and some don't even bring their laptops again.

Bottom line: if our presence is going to suck, it's better to cancel
it.

Now, about demo machines and merchandise. Merchandise is painful to
manage, it's very time consuming but it can and should be done if at
all possible.

For demo machines, my plan for next time is to rent a couple of
machines for the week. It's easier than arranging for and relying on
people to bring hardware, and in the end it's cheaper than acquiring
hardware that won't be used that much and will have to be shipped
around etc.

I know just how hard it is to make a nice booth, and it can't be done
alone. It's teamwork, and if there's no committed team, there's no
booth.

All of the above is IME.

JB.

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