10:44 a.m.
Hi,
Not sure if people know, but in February 2001 I've organized an event
in Aveiro to promote Linux (I was back then the responsible for PLUG
online Documentation, PLUG as in Portuguese Linux Users Group). This
event was supported by SuSE GmbH (donated 2 crates of merchandise, cd's,
retail boxes, t-shirts, pins), Sun MicroSystems (500 CD's of Star Office
5.1), Red Hat (some stickers) and some other local companies (hardware
manufacturers, service enablers etc).
This event had over 400 visitors in the 2 days we were "opened" for
public. We used Aveiro's Congress Center for this.
Congress Center:
http://www.cm-aveiro.pt/www//Templates/GenericDetails.aspx?id_object=2748...
http://www.av.it.pt/aveirocidade/pt/congressos/index.htm
http://i.olhares.com/data/big/178/1780535.jpg
After this background, I was thinking in organizing another event, this
time to promote Fedora. From the previous experience, I know that if we
don't advertise, they can spare us some space in the Congress Center for
free, if we advertise, we need to pay. Back then we payed around 450$US
for the two days.
My idea was to do something different. First, no Congress Center,
instead ask for space on my University and host the event At IPAM Aveiro
(Portuguese Institute for Marketing Management).
http://www.e-u.pt/ResourcesUser/InstituicoesImagens/IPAM.gif
http://www.ipam.pt
IPAM is starting it's internationalization project, being present in
Portugal (Aveiro, Porto and Lisbon), Spain (Madrid, cooperation with
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos), in Brazil and Netherlands.
Aveiro school was appointed to be the center of it's international
community.
Through IPAM we can most likely get an anfi-theater for any
presentation/conference, rooms to be used and free space, with bar,
parking, etc.
I would also like to focus that the City of Aveiro has the former
Center for Telecommunication Studies (former CET), now known as Portugal
Telecom Inovação S.A., the Research and Development unit for Portugal
Telecom, where I worked in the past packaging and maintaining our Red
Hat 6 plataform on IBM RS4500 (replacing the Sun equipment and
Slowlaris).
Either way Aveiro also has one of the biggest Universities in Europe,
and in 2050 the biggest. Aveiro is the technological telecommunications
platform in Portugal (Portugal Telecom has operations worldwide in the 5
continents), and was responsible for great accolades, like the first
pre-paid GSM Card in the World, the second country in Europe to
establish a phone network without operator (automatic switching),
amongst other things.
There could be no better background for this.
My thing:
# Organize an event to promote GNU/Linux and Fedora.
# Gather support for space and resources in IPAM (to go zero costs).
# Promote a couple of background events related to Linux
- Possibility of someone from Fedora to present it?
- I can ask one of GNOME Brasero's maintainers also to speech (Luis
Medinas is from Aveiro).
- Corporate view of open-source by Portugal Telecom Inovação?
- Maybe someone from Red Hat ?
GOALS:
# Give to know and Promote Fedora.
# Promote Fedora with IPAM (see this as a first approach to try and
get IPAM involved with the Fedora community).
# Gather the local native population for this promotion event.
# Attract and attack the small business to favor open-source (might be
of interest to Red Hat).
Anyone, pull out comments, goals, objectives, pros, cons, anything
relevant. Keep in mind that the main event (despite of any other
involvements such as guest speakers and such) is the promotion of Fedora
as a reliable free alternative either for normal people, students or
eventually to new IT professionals. I can gather some manpower on local
LUGS and gather corporate support if required (hardware manufacturers,
open source enablers, etc).
I have also some bonds with ANSOL (http://www.ansol.org), the FSF
Portuguese branch, and also can get their cooperation almost for sure.
Also regarding to Aveiro, there is currently one company that is
supplying the students laptops through the governament. I know this
company for over 15 years and have developed work for them in the past
(installing and configuring Linux Servers (Red Hat) and Workstations
(SuSE). They currently use the Portuguese Caixa Mágica distro for their
pre-installed computers. We can try an approach to them as well so that
we use Fedora. We have something that Caixa Mágica can't offer, decent
support to new users. I've been lurking on the #Fedora channel, and such
resources are valuable and can make a difference in our favor here
(anyone has status of Portuguese PT_PT implementation on Fedora?).
I know this might be of interest to Fedora as a Community, and if it
is successful we might open new doors to our sponsor, Red Hat.
If we move on such thing, I would consider the following:
- March (too close and important city events)
- April/May (full of students events)
- June (exams)
- July (no great events on schedule)
I would point for May or July if such is to be done. I am making
myself available to develop contacts, rally support, find a space (I'll
try to go to zero costs) and do necessary local arrangements.
Is this of interest to Fedora? The event itself I was thinking on a
old fashion Linux Install Fest.
Waiting for feedback from the list.
Nelson.
