[ubuntu-uk] Non-technical events?

[Rob Beard]

On 19/07/10 11:53, Alan Pope wrote:
> Hey!
>
> We seem to be quite good at turning up to technical events such as LUG
> meetings, technical conferences and other self-organised events and
> telling everyone how great Ubuntu is. However we seem to spend a lot
> of time preaching to the converted, speaking to people who already run
> Ubuntu or some other distro, rather than 'converting' people who have
> little or no exposure to Ubuntu.
>
> Amber Graner recently wrote about her experience evangelising and
> advocating at a local Goat Festival. She was also interviewed about
> this on the Full Circle Magazine podcast recently.
>
> http://akgraner.com/?p=471
> http://fullcirclemagazine.org/2010/07/15/full-circle-podcast-10-trawling-the-internet-for-a-goat-festival/
>
> When I heard about this it made me think that it's something we should
> think about. Not specifically Goat festivals, but non-technical
> events. I wanted to canvass the group to see what events people might
> want to have a presence at. I'm not (at this point) asking for
> volunteers, but just ideas of events where people go and we might be
> able to have a stand where we could talk to people about Ubuntu and
> how they might want to use it.
>
> These could be non-technical business events, they might relate to a
> specific sector such as education, or they could be cultural events
> like festivals. Anything goes really. I'll start the ball rolling with
> a fairly generic example that pretty much anyone here can do:-
>
> Village Fêtes - these attract families from all walks of life, and
> would be a great opportunity to have a public stand at little or no
> cost to run. Other attractions could include simple games (always
> popular at Fêtes) with prizes perhaps donated by community members,
> sponsors or (if willing/possible) Canonical. With summer coming it
> would be a great opportunity to get geeks _outside_ in the sunshine
> and show off what we have to offer.
>
> What events local to you would you like to see a stand at?

Well a few of us in the Devon & Cornwall LUG try and get to events when 
we can, unfortunately our resources are limited (there are at best about 
10 of us out of say 200 or so) actively going out to events and this 
mainly seems to be in South Devon although I believe a couple of members 
in Cornwall have been doing bits and pieces.

Such events I can think of that we've attended are a local community fun 
day (kind of like a fete) where in the LUG we had a stall and handed out 
free copies of Ubuntu 9.04 (this was last summer) and copies of The 
OpenDisc along with flyers about Ubuntu and The OpenDisc, stickers for 
the kids (Paul Sutton who is on this list printed a load of Tuxes on 
small round Avery labels).

I think in the end all the discs were snapped up along with some flyers, 
I believe we managed to get one new member come along to our LUG meetings.

We also had a stall at the Exeter Hospital Radio Fun Day back in 2007, 
we managed to get a couple of PCs for this and a generator so we were 
able to demonstrate Ubuntu (7.04) running on the PCs.  We were trying to 
sell copies of Ubuntu (self burnt discs) and The Open Disc to visitors 
along with giving out flyers.  We gave away quite a few flyers but 
didn't do so well selling the discs (the idea was that the money raised 
would be donated to the Hospital Radio funds).  It also didn't help 
being a really sunny day with no shade so a lot of the time no one could 
see the screens.

Both these events though were non-technical community events.  I think 
part of the problem is those of us who went along aren't that confident 
talking to strangers (I'm getting more confident).  It's been nearly a 
year since we've done anything but with summer coming up I'm hoping that 
we might be able to get to a couple of more events such as a Surestart 
Childrens Centre event coming up in August.  I'm hoping we might 
possibly be able to setup a couple of machines running Tuxpaint and have 
a stack of discs to give out and possibly follow it up with an install 
day or maybe offer to assist folks if they decide they want to migrate 
to Ubuntu or dual boot.

Rob


> I also posted this on my blog where there may be other suggestions.
> http://popey.com/blog/2010/07/19/ubuntu-at-non-technical-events/
>
> Cheers,
> Al.
>