[Linux-aus] CeBIT - a success!

[Pia Waugh]

Hi all,

CeBIT was on from Tues - Thurs last week, and the Linux Australia stand,
demo zone and panel sessions were all a huge success! We constantly had
people bustling around the stand and demo zones, we spoke to loads of people
who were interested in the community aspects of FOSS and I believe that we
will see many more people coming to the next few SLUG meetings. There were
also some people from interstate who will hopefully go to events in QLD, the
ACT, and VIC at the very least. So keep an eye out in the other states. This
means we all need to be warm and welcoming while we teach any newcomers how
to get the most out of FOSS and how the community tends to work. It was
really great to see so many technical people that have been using Linux and
other FOSS software for a while talking about coming into the community.
This is the kind of quality growth that is good for everyone :)

We gave away thousands of FOSS CDs (Ubuntu, The OpenCD and Fedora Core 5).
In fact we ran out of CDs on the first day and had to scrounge for more so
thankyou to Peter Baker, Peter Howard and Solutions First for offering more
CDs! We had to be very selective for the next few days about who we gave
them too, but I think I can safely say most CDs we gave away went to
extremely enthusiastic people who will actually use them and get into FOSS.

We showed off a range of tasty technology and hardware, from XGL on the
desktop, to embedded and server configurations from NICTA.

The range of visitors was truly increadible. From students, kids, retirees,
business people, Government people, embedded device manufacturers, people
looking for jobs, and much more. The diversity was great as we could talk
about the community aspects of FOSS on so many levels.

The volunteers that helped out were amazing. They all did our community
proud by being wonderful FOSS advocates and representatives to a huge range
of visitors. Everytime I saw someone engaging with a new person to talk
about FOSS, I felt proud to have such a great group of people beside me.
Many thanks to all those below, and anyone else who helped out, in
particular to the people who were there everyday, to those who took time off
work (or called in sickies), and to our penguin wearers. Photos should be
available soon. Steve's camera came in very handy as we had visitors pose
with the penguin :)

- Steve Walsh
- Lindsay Holmwood
- James Purser
- Mike Carrington
- Craige McWhirter
- Jon Oxer (organiser of the demo zone)
- Billy Kwong (Tuppa)
- Terry Dawson (penguin)
- Mary Gardiner (penguin)
- Tony Green (penguin)
- Sridhar Dhanapalan
- James Dummay
- Andreas Fischer
- Jeff Waugh
- Lloyd Fairhall
- Mark Phillips
- Mark Sargent
- Ryan Verner

I don't know everyone that was on the demo zone, but thanks to Craige,
Gordon Hubbard, and anyone else that helped out there. (Hopefully Jon has
this list of volunteers and can follow up with their names :)

Also the OSIA stand did really well, with Donna and co running that, and all
the Open Source businesses that had stands seemed to be constantly busy.
Rock on everyone!

Cheers,
Pia

-- 
Linux Australia                                         http://linux.org.au/
 
     "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once
     forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all and the earth
                 itself to nobody." - Jean Jacques Rosseau