[Linux-aus] Linux advertising ..the push to mainstream desktop acceptance?

[Janet Hawtin]

Hi Rohan

A dozen people and some businesses running open source is
a goodly amount to have achieved. It all helps. And hopefully those 
people will be helping too in the longer term.

> This brings me to the point of the email, Linux Advertising - where is it?

Just my thoughts but advertising usually happens when people are aiming 
to make money because they are prepared to commit money to a project 
they are planning to have returns on.

Often volunteer groups are more informal about advertising because, as 
you are finding, it is quite easy to have a fulsome load of work using 
just word of mouth. There are some wikis that you can post your 
activities to and linuxau folk are interested in case studies to use to 
promote the kind of linux in the community projects youre talking about.

There is a group called OSIA which you can join if youre a business
aiming to work in the open source sector.
http://www.osia.net.au/

> I have an opportunity to open a shop in the rural areas of Darwin soon,
> and of course I'm going to be pushing Linux as much as possible (no M$
> posters in this shop!... I want Tuxes!). So far I haven't been able to
> find anything in the way of advertising and/or marketing for Linux thats
> as free and open as Linux itself.

What specifically are you aiming to sell.
This will help to make it clear whether a standard poster will help you 
or whether you need posters saying that you are purveying x service at x 
per hour and have a special coming up for new users.

Do you have good knowledge of specific distributions which you would 
like to promote?

There are some nice posters available from ELX such as
This one is very nice, informative and also generic.
http://www.elx.com.au/item/anatomyposter

There is some chat and links to resources here:
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/guerrilla-marketing/

> Does anyone know of a community project or the like that is making
> available advertising and marketing materials for generic Linux use?

Specific software projects and distributions will often have materials.
http://drupal.org/node/10769
Tux is available as a vector you can print out.
http://www.isc.tamu.edu/~lewing/linux/

Based on your email you have some good case study examples for
groups at the market running linux, and the people you are working with?
Would it not be good to chat with them to produce a fact sheet which
talks about a funky market stall using linux put them on your website as 
pdf files and share costs in the printing so that youre promoting both 
of your businesses? Same could apply to people if youre doing lots of 
support for people you could ask them if it is ok to do a factsheet 
about what they think about using linux and what they feel they are 
learning or gaining in the process?

> www.purplesock.net.au
Cute website. =)
Was wondering which open source software project
the paypal link contributes to?

Cheers

Janet