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 ?
Why are you wearing a tie ?
--
_.-, raj shekhar
.--' '-._
http://rajshekhar.net
_/`- _ '.
http://rajshekhar.net/blog
'----'._`.----. \
` \; WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE
;_\ -- God's Last Message to his Creation