[CentOS] Linux World Expo - London 25th + 26th Oct 2006

[Karanbir Singh]

Dag Wieers wrote:
> I remember when I was at the Fedora booth on FOSDEM that it's hard to get 
> attention with just a bunch of hardware that is doing something. Often 
> what attracts people is fancy graphics or a presentation with interesting 
> bulletpoints.

LinuxWorld, unlike FOSDEM, is very much overshadowed by the commercial 
guys - the biggest, most flashy areas tend to be the guy guys like 
Redhat, IBM, Novel etc. And to quite an extent its driven by these 
commercial guys. Fosdem is a very different sort of setup.

Also, one thing from last year - lots of people ask about where / how to 
get help if they get stuck, so whatever handout we do - must include 
some url's for help/support.

> I'm not sure how crowded it is (FOSDEM is really crowded) and what 
> facilities we have. I'm thinking of bringing my laptop, either to do some 
> work when that's possible or to showcase something.

We just get the stand, nothing on the inside of it - but we did get a 
few power sockets. Lance has some furniture, are you going to bring that 
along this year as well ?

> But it's nice to know what the punchline is going to be. If someone is 
> leaving the booth, what points do we want to get through. There are so 
> many things we can say that we have to stick to something simple and 
> concise ? (And add to that whatever is in the context of the interaction)

My usual punchline with CentOS is simple - IF you need the support and 
have big bucks to pay, goto Redhat, but all means. However, if you want 
something different ( like more filesystem support, more third party 
pacakges, dont want to / cant afford to pay much ) then CentOS is for 
you. Another thing that really hits hard and fast is the community. RHEL 
has almost zero community around it - everyone moved to fedora, and 
therefore unstable / short lifespan distro. CentOS on the other hand has 
massive momentum on the community side. I think its always important to 
highlight this.

>>> I figure that handing out CD's nowadays would not be very useful.
>> Maybe not, but we do have some t-shirts and mugs
> 
> Are there any posters or something big to put at the background ? How can 
> we get a glimpse of bypassers if there's a crowd in the front of the booth ?

Standing outside the stand, in the middle of the aisle that people are 
walking down - always works :)

> Versatility ?

yes, you can do whatever you like with it and not have any 
change-in-support or change-in-circumstances.

> New technologies like virtualization ?

i am not sure if we want to talk Virtualisation as yet - its not really 
there yet, in the core distro ( 4.5 will bring Xen, but its not due out 
for a while yet )

> Ok, based on the feedback here we can refine it for FOSDEM and future 
> exhibitions. It would also be nice to have a press-kit. (artwork, summary, 
> facts and numbers, contact-person, timeline, new technologies, progress)
> 
> Anything worth putting in a magazin should be mentioned in a press-kit. 
> Usually exhibitions like this one have an official press-area with the 
> press-kits available.

that would be nice, if someone was to start this section on the wiki, i 
am sure more people would get involved and kick in.

> 
> 
>> Wikis seem good ...
> 
> Can I get edit access ? :)
> 

done! You should now be able to edit / add content ( remember the 
centos-docs list :) )

maybe we should have an 'Events' page on the wiki, and then sub-pages 
for each event that people are going to represent CentOS at.

-- 
Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219 at icq