Re: Debian at Systems in Munich

[Martin Schulze]

Alexander Schmehl wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> * Roland Stigge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [051002 23:04]:
> 
> > Debian will have a booth at Systems 2005[1] in Munich during the week
> > 24-28 October 2005. There are already some people from the local
> > Debian-MUC group that will help to run the booth, but we are still
> > looking for more volunteers.
> 
> How's planing going?  Could you create an entry for the event page at
> www.debian.org/event?  (Getting the version from last year from cvs and
> updating it should be okay.)

Attached please find the file from last year that should be adjusted.

Regards,

        Joey

-- 
If nothing changes, everything will remain the same.  -- Barne's Law

#use wml::debian::template title="Systems 2004 -- Report"

<p>After a two year hiatus, Debian (along other Free Software projects like
Skolelinux, KDE, OpenOffice.org and the various BSDs) had a <a
href="http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/photos/systems2004/p1010070.jpg";>booth</a>
again at the Systems expo in Munich, thanks to the <a
href="http://www.cul.de/";>C&amp;L</a> publishing house who sponsored the <a
href="http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/photos/systems2004/pa190039.jpg";>Free
Projects Area</a>. The booth was operated by the Munich Debian crowd, namely
Michael Banck, Jens Schmalzing, Robert Lemmen, Erich Schubert, Michael
Ablassmeier, Richard Atterer, Achim Bohnet and Simon Richter. The booth itself
was pretty small, only one half of a round table, about one square meter in
total, but at least there was some wall space around where we could place one
<a
href="http://73lab2.free.fr/debian_posters/ayo-debian_affiche_v5a_small.png";>Ayo
poster</a>, along with <a
href="http://73lab2.free.fr/debian_posters/01-affiche-ayo-debian-preview.png";>another
one</a> right above the table. Unfortunately, our booth was located quite in
the background and was not very easily visible from the main conference
corridor, so over the days we added some stuff like a sign with a big, A4
sized 'debian' on it and an A0 poster version of the <a
href="http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/flyer/flyer.pdf";>Debian flyer</a> next
to the one from Ayo (those Ayo posters are very nice, but they lack a bit in
contrast, so they are hard to identify as Debian from far away). As promotion
material for passing visitors, we handed out Debian flyers and <a
href="http://www.lenn-art.de/debian/2004_cover_fahrkarte_vorne.jpg";>LinuxTag
DVDs</a> (the latter for a voluntary donation, when we felt people would only
throw it away eventually anyway) and we sold the above mentioned Ayo posters
(quite some people requested T-Shirts as well, though). All the
merchandise/marketing material was kindly provided/shipped by <a
href="http://www.credativ.de/";>Credativ</a>.</p>

<p>Despite NetBSD being around as well, the <a
href="http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/photos/systems2004/p1010066.jpg";>Debian
booth</a> had the coolest piece of hardware, namely a <a
href="http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/photos/systems2004/p1010068.jpg";>Mac
SE/30</a>, running Debian stable on a Linux-2.2 kernel. Jens Schmalzing got it
installed and running over time, so we were finally able to showcase it.
As a general-purpose demonstration/information machine, we gladly accepted a
Shuttle XPC box with a pretty big LCD which Shuttle donated to all the free
projects. Additionally, Michael Banck's ThinkPad was around most of the time.
While the Mac was of course running text mode (<a
href="http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/debroster";>debroster</a> most
of the time), the other boxes ran the Debian GNOME desktop. For some time, we
also demonstrated Debian GNU/Hurd running the XFCE4 desktop on both the
Shuttle and the ThinkPad.</p>

<p>Jens Schmalzing and Michael Banck went to the expo area on Sunday and
started building up the booth. However, the Shuttle boxes had not arrived yet,
so this was pretty much limited to setting up the SE/30 and depositing the
information material in the storage area behind the booth. Systems started for
real on Monday and Michael was pretty busy setting up our booth a bit more at
the beginning. Some time later, Robert Lemmen arrived and we started to shift
our attention to the visitors. Attendance was <a
href="http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/photos/systems2004/pa180028.jpg";>pretty
low</a>. Monday morning though, so we started to worry Robert came along for
naught. He then invented our <a
href="http://people.debian.org/~mbanck/photos/systems2004/p1010069.jpg";>guerrilla
marketing</a> campaign, moving our presence to the edge of the Free Projects
Area, next to the conference corridor. He put a chunk of flyers and two empty
DVD covers on the prospect case, stood next to it and started talking to
passing expo visitors. This proved very successful, and we were quite busy for
the rest of the day (or rather, week). Luckily, Erich Schubert arrived at
around noon and had time to install Debian on the Shuttle which were delivered
by then. Once somebody wanted to know something specific or people found out
about our booth by theirselves, one of us moved back to the booth. It turned
out that if at least one visitor was standing at the booth, more people got
interested and stopped by as well.</p>

<p>The rest of the week went pretty smooth, we managed to have at least two
guys for almost all the time. There was a quite higher attendance and interest
than we projected, so we were usually pretty busy answering one guy's answers
while other visitors patiently waited for their turn. The posters sold very
well and a lot of people donated some money in exchange for a DVD as well, so
collected a good amount of money for Debian. Besides that, it was much fun to
man the booth, albeit exhausting. Of course, by far the most frequently asked
question was: 'When will Sarge be released?', followed by a small amount of
'what about amd64?' and 'wow, it exists?!?' questions when people saw Debian
GNU/Hurd running. The rest of the questions were a variety of more specific
ones. It was interesting to note that although Systems is a general-purpose
computer expo (and looking around, almost all displayed computers ran
Windows), except for very few visitors everybody knew about Linux and
considerably more than half of the passing crowd knew about Debian at least
from hearsay. Also, a lot of people (probably having read the announcement on
the events mailing list or Debian Weekly News) were die-hard Debian
users/admins who just came by to say 'good work' or talk about how they
use/love/hack Debian. Also, Andreas Barth, Rene Engelhard and Norbert
Tretkowski visited us briefly at the booth.</p>

<p>On Tuesday and Thursday, the Debian crowd got together after Systems in the
Augustinerkeller right in the heart of Munich. It was quite crowded (eleven
people in total) and the mood was really good on Tuesday, the first people
arrived at around 7 PM and Achim and Michael finally left the pub at 11:30 PM
after some beers. On Thursday, Jens Schmalzing, Siggi Langauf and Michael
Banck were around together with the KDE and Skolelinux guys.</p>

<p>Overall, the Systems was both much for fun and exhausting than we expected,
and we hope we will get some new Debian users soon(and maybe even some new
Debian GNU/Hurd users, who knows). Thanks to all the people helping with the
booth, most notable the non-Debian Developers Robert Lemmen, Achim Bohnet and
Michael Ablassmeier. And again a big thanks to C&amp;L for donating the booth
in the first place, as well as Credativ for the merchandise and Shuttle for
lending their hardware. It seems that for next year, Systems might
considerably enlarge the Free Software area, so hopefully we will be able to
present us even better then and other projects like GNOME or the Mozilla and
Apache foundations will be around as well.</p>

<div align="right">Michael Banck</div>