in infinite wisdom Amol Hatwar spoke thus On 02/15/2006 03:28 AM:
Disclaimer: These are my opinions and doesn't reflect that of FSF in particular. Also, this was my first time at Linux Asia 2006, so I am not aware of tradition and expectations towards the event.
LA has always been a marketing event. Did you count the number of people who gave their presentations on powerpoint ? I was there in 2004 and I had given up any hopes of anything good ever coming out of that event. Even in 2004, they gave ILUGD a stall that was cut off from the main area. From what I remember - the main area is reserved for the sponsors.
Besides that, our stall was an easy target for freebie mongers. There was a small card that was circulated with stall numbers on it. Get it signed/stamped at at least 15 stalls and get a freebie. Guess what? Stalls in the Org mela had no stall numbers at all! They weren't fetured on the stall directory or the stall map.
I am sure the stalls in the main area were the ones featured on that card. If I were to guess (from my experiences of last year), the stalls featured would be Novell, Intel, IBM, HP, RedHat.
General visitors to the stall included young students who wanted to do something on Linux but had no idea what; and middle-aged to old managers who knew that Linux runs somewhere in their organization but no idea of exactly where. I'd say 95% of people that came fell into these categories easily. People who knew about FSF was quite surprised to find an FSF stall. These guys got the GNU sticker.
The main purpose of that event is to attract marketing, not hackers. Maybe FSF.in needs to tailor its message to that end ?
We were expecting Bhaisampayan to come and talk on Django. His last minute ditch wasn't going to go down well.
OTOH, see the benefits. The audience were saved from going over to the Dark Side ;-) . Did you use the slot to preach about PHP5 to the heathens ?
Vinod and Milind)
Why are you wearing a tie ?