Please find my suggestions inline.
On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Tahir Hashmi wrote:
Event Title: GNU/Linux India Expo 2003
Dates: End Feb / Early March (Not early/mid Feb please!)
Just check out that the dates dont clash with highschool/collage exams otherwise we will miss some very good audience. May be we can postpone it till July/August when all the studants are relatively free.
Duration: 3 days / 1 week
Objectives:
[1] Conference on GNU/Linux, FS/OSS
[2] Exhibition of FS/OSS Student Projects from across the nation
[3] Stalls for commercial activity related to hardware/software
[4] Some fun events (Geeks vs. Nerds quiz? Geek of the yr. award?)
[5] Promotion of GNU/Linux user networking (Stalls of various LUGs)
[6] A press conference a day ??
DETAILS:
[1] This is quite well-known to us and needs no elaboration
[2] We provide a display area for students to demo their FS/OSS projects. "Students" means people who are not employed/have been employed earlier and are studying in an educational institution, incl. an open university.
[3] People desirous of Commercial activity will be charged for space. It would be great if we can have assemblers there who can offer pre-loaded PCs... how about a workshop for these before the event? Cheap CDs, on-the-spot installation etc. could be possible attractions.
We can contact Publishers or Book vendors like "Computer Book Shop" to have a stall there. Somebody like GTCDROM can also have a stall there to sell T-shirts, stickers, coffee mugs and similer stuff having Tux on it.. I am sure they will have a good sell there.
[4] Ah! what's an expo without fun?
LUG members from collages can suggest a lot of events. :-)
[5] We've gotta have a platform for representatives of various LUGs across India share information, develop contacts and highlight their achievements and aspirations.
[6] Sounds incredible but who knows, the Press might actually be interested. Anyway, we can post daily coverage on the web.
I think The press WILL be interested. I will contact a few leading Marathi news papers to cover the event.
To qualify for exhibition in the Expo, any given software may or may not be proprietary. However, the software MUST be available for GNU/Linux or any other FS/OSS based platform. This is necessary since there's no dearth of Free Software available for other dominant proprietary platoforms.
Attendance the conference must be charged. Entry to the Expo however should be inexpensive. I am in favor of a nominal (say Rs. 10 to 30) entry fee for the expo too avoid wanderers on the site.
Only stalls being covered under [3] must be charged. [4] May have an entry fee for participation but definitely not for audience.
I too second the thought of having a NOMINAL entry fee. Rs. 300-500 charged by "Linux Bangalore" seems too much for me even if I get stuff worth Rs. 300. I think our intended audience should include people who have heard about linux but are skeptical about different aspects. These people wont bother to come to the event if we charge too much.
Let us not think of management (outsourced vs. voluntary) currently. Of course, Saswata, Gurpreet and other volunteers can collect details about professional management and have them ready when the time for decision comes.
Everyone is free to comment on the above, make additions/changes/deletions and even fubar it.
Tahir Hashmi (VSE, NCST) http://staff.ncst.ernet.in/tahir tahir AT ncst DOT ernet DOT in
We can Also have a small exibition where a number of PCs running Linux can be made available for public access so that new ones can get a feel of Linux. we can show different window managers at work, different applications can be loaded on the PCs so that everybody can know that Linux has applications which are as easy or even easier to operate. we can have different posters/banners highlighting some of the Miths/facts which keep normal user away from Linux. eg. Having a dual boot system wont harm your Windose installation or ================================================= Properietary Software | Free alternative | ================================================ Internet Explorer |Netscape, Mozilla | MS Office |OpenOffice, KOffice | Outlook |Kmail, Evolution | Photoshop |Gimp | . | . | . | . | ================================================ etc.
My 2 paise.
Regards Aseem