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.