Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Infopoint

[Richard Smedley]

On Sat, 2008-05-10 at 16:47 +0100, Paul Waring wrote:
> Simon Ward wrote:
> > Paul, Richard:  Do you have any left‐overs from previous Infopoints, and
> > maybe some advice as to what goes down well with the punters there?
> 
> I don't think I have any leftovers, and anything I might have lying 
> around would be long out of date (I did write an 'introduction to Linux' 
> leaflet and burn around 70 live CDs). In terms of what goes down well, 
> free live CDs seemed to work and demonstration machines to prove that 
> most of the myths about Linux are untrue (e.g. not being able to play DVDs).

Agreed - free discs went well (we can't sell them, btw, as
part of the conditions of getting a free stall).

Last meeting we had no discs and no hardware! I grabbed a
large Mozilla poster from my car and a stack of AFFS 
leaflets, stood in front of the stall, and button-holed
people with the immortal phrase ``are you interested in
software freedom''

This opener was quickly followed up (for the 70% of punters
who didn't back rapidly away ;) with a question asking
if they were familiar with Mozilla Firefox, and a quick summary
of the benefits of Free Software, and how they could find out
more and try it out.

At best it left people with a vague positive impression
next time they saw Firefox, OOo, or `Linux' in a computer
mag. [At worst they thought me a (fairly) harmless loony.]
Difficult to do more without any other materials, but
some of the conversations actually went really well ;-)

Times have moved on since I used bb [1] as a demo there,
but some old-school nostalgia can still attract eyes to the
stall. How about the old vlc trick of splitting a film 
between two laptops rotated through 90 degrees to make
a big screen?

Something like PsychoSynth [2] or PTheremin [3] controlled
by a WiiMote [4], perhaps?

Anything multimedia.

LTSP? FreeNX? Something AJAXy?

One idea: an old PC (700MHz, 384MB), a CRT, Debian with 
productivity & edu tools. A sign: "The homework PC:
Cost of hardware NIL; Cost of software NIL - 10,000
free apps for your children's education"
Free-as-in-beer is still quite popular ;)

Other posters / leaflets: ``Free of spyware / viruses / 
DRM'' etc.

It's a tricky balance between interesting geeks (it is
a computer hobbyists fair) vs interesting family
computer users who would benefit from replacing MS Windows
with a regular Ubuntu desktop (it is a cheap computer
and electronic gear market).

I'll stop wittering on, now [5] ;o)

 - Richard

[1] http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/bb/
[2] http://www.psychosynth.com/doku.php?id=about
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Cv4H670t0
[3] http://ptheremin.sourceforge.net/
[4] http://www.em411.com/show/blog/2744/&quote_id=99226&page_number=1
[5] But I'm happy to help edit leaflets.