[kde-community] FOSDEM wrapup

[Adriaan de Groot]

On Wednesday 03 February 2016 12:58:58 Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> We had a good presence at FOSDEM this year.  Here's some notes while I
> remember.
> 
> Stall:
> One 1 short table this year.  We had a nice setup with ODROID board + HDMI
> monitor (alas it wasn't a monitor which could tilt) to demo low cost
> computers can run Plasma.  We had my laptop for KDE neon and a Nexus 5 in a
> stand for Plasma Phone.  a4 display stands had colour sheets describing the
> three projects.  Me and David brought the kit on the train (which is faffy
> but much easier than taking kit on a plane) with Rohan bringing his ODROID.

Thing to remember for next year:
 - extra power bar (3 outlets, maybe 5)
 - a good charger for the phone (charging from the laptop wasn't enough to 
keep it on all the time)


> I bought two large display banners for KDE and KDE neon which I've taken
> back to my house, I need to reply to e.V. treasurer about getting those
> paid for.  I also bought stickers for KDE (name badges and to give away)
> and KDE neon and have taken the spares back home.  I also bought the money
> box, a4 display stands, pens, tape and brought power extensions.

The name stickers were really nice (flying Konqui) and well received. It made 
up for out lack of uniformity at the stand (like many of the other stands had 
all their peeps in the same shirt).


> We had t-shirts which Jose brought along from those left over from Akademy
> as well as a money box and leaflets.

The Frameworks leaflets were really useful to hand out as a means of explaining 
"these are libraries that everyone can use in their Qt applications".

The T-shirts were a bit of a mixed bag. Some sizes were quite 
underrepresented. The very nice KDE India T-shirts could have sold more -- 
which you point in the sales lists.

> Saturday sales:
...
> We took over 300euro on the Saturday which Jose took home.
> Sunday we ended up with over 320euro which Jose also took along with the
> sales figures.
> 
> Jose can you post the sales figures here and confirm the amount you're
> transferring to e.v.?

Don't forget the floats added to the cash box. You may consider mine my cash 
contribution to KDE e.V. for this year.

> Saturday party:
> I booked the first floor of La Paon again in Grand Place.  No sponsors this
> year so I took 20euro off everyone who attended.  My guess of 200euro worth
> of finger food seemed to work very well.

It was a bit short of chunchy greasy bits, though. I would have liked 
something warm (or maybe I wasn't paying attention and it all got gobbled up). 
>From a social perspective, perhaps an introduction could have been held. I 
*think* I knew everybody there, but would have liked a moment to double-check.

> We had 22 people pay for food,
> less than last year I think which is to be expected since it was charged
> for.  After food was served I used the extra money to buy an additional
> couple of beers for everyone.

The best and fastest way to get served was to hand the waiter a 20 and say 
"beer". That meant no change, no fuss, no muss. And five decent beers.

> We had three talks in the Desktop room (more than any other project I
> think) which were well received, KDE neon, WikiToLearn and CMakeDaemon.
> 
> A telegram group was useful to keep in contact with people throughout the
> weekend.

Yes, the group was very useful. Also note:

 - there are *two* locations in Brussels with an Ibis Hotel next to a Novotel
 - Grand Place is very large. A better meeting spot is "in front of Le Roy on 
Grand Place"
 - get a hotel around La Brouckere, it's very convenient for evenings and for 
gettting to the venue.


Some things I personally think would improve the stand:
 - double- and triple-check who is going to be at the stand. I know this is 
hard at FOSDEM. I tried to be there a bit, and felt confusedly guilty about 
also running off to talks or to hang out with Paul.
 - if you're *not* at the stand, it might be better to congregate elsewhere. 
We often had a knot of KDE-branded (e.g. name-sticker) people in the corner -- 
me included -- who weren't accessible because of in-crowd chatting. That looks 
a little unfriendly.
 - Remember to arrange floats (change for in the money box) ahead of time.
 - Make a pot of money at the beginning of the day. Appoint one person runner 
to get water/coffee/sandwiches.
 - I should have asked for a "what's the spiel" explanation at the beginning 
of the weekend. It took a while before I heard -- from Rohan, Dave and Jon -- 
what that phone-thingy was and how to explain the Odroid. Also for old-timers 
like me, a reminder of terminology. Like: "Here we have Plasma Desktop running 
on low-powered (not cheap!) hardware. Here we have Plasma Desktop plus a bunch 
of KDE Applications running on a laptop. Here is Plasma Mobile on a Nexus 5." 


General thanks:
 - general (3-star) thanks to Jon for overall handling this year's FOSDEM 
presence
 - major thanks to Rohan and Dave, who seemed to be there all the time and 
always smiling.

Funny bits:
 - GNOME ran their demo machine off of my laptop's power cord all weekend.
 - Dave knows that I have Dave-commanding glasses that I can glare through.

[ade]