We know that's the truth, Sharan!! ;) LOL ....miss your smiling face,
girlfriend!!
A great big thank you to all who pitched in to make it a success!
~Melissa
From: Sharan Foga <sharan.f...@gmail.com>
To: dev@community.apache.org
Sent: Thursday, February 4, 2016 5:16 AM
Subject: Re: FOSDEM summary
Hi Daniel
Thanks for the summary. I had a great time and really enjoyed being on
the booth (and hey I can keep talking all day if I need to :-)
Thanks
Sharan
Le 04/02/2016 10:33, Daniel Gruno a écrit :
> Hi folks (cc press@),
>
> Thank you so much for an amazing FOSDEM last week!
> This was the first time the ASF has had a presence as a foundation, but
> even though this showed a bit, I think we had very productive
> interactions with people (never a dull moment!) and showed them what the
> ASF was about.
>
> This was also the first time we had the opportunity to showcase our new
> visual identity, which was very well received and was quite the talking
> point in many a conversation.
>
> I'd like to extend my most sincere thanks to especially Alexander
> Bezzubov, Andrus Adamchik, Michael & Mechtilde Stehmann and Sharan
> "Super Trouper" Foga for their tireless efforts at the booth. I'd also
> like to thank Roman, Claude, Greg and Rich for lending a helping hand
> when needed. We totaled 18 hours at the booth (plus setup) during the
> two days (10 + 8) and spoke with...well, a LOT of people about the
> foundation and its projects. We also had many interactions with other
> foundations and companies about our project and theirs (and how they
> could work together).
>
> While I was mostly sitting _behind_ the booth, I also got the
> opportunity to take a few photos of it, which can be seen at
> https://imgur.com/a/8beqB
>
> As for swag, I am both pleased and surprised to say we managed to run
> out completely _2 hours before FOSDEM ended!_. We gave away more than
> 800 powered-by stickers (760 or so), a few hundred project stickers, 40
> t-shirts, 100 pens, 50 key chains, 200 fridge magnets, 50 beer coasters,
> a few mugs and around 30 badges. We clearly need more swag for next
> FOSDEM ;)
>
> For the nicer items, we came up with a rule; "One conversation equals
> one free item", which worked super well. Compared to other conferences,
> even ApacheCon, we had a super busy booth, and only rarely had some free
> time without anyone asking us a question about the foundation and/or
> projects. We also had a nice cooperation going with the OpenOffice team,
> who decided to stay for a bit longer (and thus fill some of the big
> booth, so we didn't have to be 4 ASF people at it all the time, which
> was nice).
>
> As for the lessons learned, we definitely need to start organizing
> earlier next time, and get more of the prominent projects to join us -
> we especially had a lot of queries about Mesos and Spark at the
> conference. We would also really appreciate it if the foundation could
> send Melissa (or someone else) to be there in an official capacity.
> Doing this strictly as volunteers made us a bit jumpy as to who will
> watch over what if one has to go to a talk.
>
> We also desperately need one or more brochures about the foundation and
> its projects!!!
>
> The giant ASF banner has been passed on to the Stehmanns and will be
> used in other conferences in Europe.
>
> With regards,
> Daniel.
