FOSDEM Experience

Hey guys

I spent some time over the weekend helping with the FOSDEM booth. It was an
interesting experience. I've compiled some of my thoughts about what worked
and what didn't. We can probably use this list next year.

= Plasma 5 Showcase =
* We only had 1 system running Plasma 5. Ideally we should have at least
two. This way multiple people can interact with the system.
* Our system was loaded with a stock Kubuntu 15.04. While this was awesome,
for future conferences we need to NOT provide a blank system. We need a set
of stock images, music, videos, and maybe even some fake accounts which
emails + calendar data. They need to see what a real system looks like.
* We need a set of talking points which everyone knows about. This means
when we're talking about Plasma 5, we need to know which parts to
highlight. I mostly went with how pretty it looks.
** What Plasmoids should we be showing?
** Which applications should we be highlighting? We mostly showed Dolphin
and Amarok. While both of these are amazing applications, none of them
really shows a wow factor. We need applications running in order to show
off kwin.
* Perhaps we need better videos running in the background show-casing
Plasma + Frameworks + Applications. We need this to be running on a
separate monitor. This FOSDEM we either played a Plasma 5 video, but that
meant people couldn't interact with the system.
* We need a fancy looking keyboard + mouse. It makes the stand look more
attractive.

Side Note: A conference booth might be an interesting place to do some
usability studies about how people interact with our system.

= T-Shirts =
* The new konqi is really cute, and kids seem to love it. We are however
missing kid sizes. Also, many parents suggested just having the konqi,
without the KDE logo.
* kde-india shirts are also quite popular.
* FOSDEM really seems to bring in a number of kids + families. Having toys
and other merchandise might help.

= Social Media Presence =
* The Gnome people started posting on social media, to drop by their stand
and hi-five Karen Sandler if they use gnome. It seemed like an interesting
approach. Perhaps we want to be tweeting/blogging/what-ever to tell people
to come to our stand.

= Flyers =
* The KDE Frameworks flyer really helped.
* We need more visual merchandize which people can pick up and take.
Perhaps flyers about different kde projects?
* KDE is huge. And we need to accurately highlight different parts of it.
Also since FOSDEM has a fairly technical audience, we could be talking
about individual projects which we normally cannot/should not with just
users.

= KDE Presence in the conference =
* This year we barely had any KDE talks - Just GCompris.
* We need more talks and more people talking / promoting KDE.
* Someone had the idea of doing a sprint sometime around FOSDEM, that way
everyone can come to FOSDEM later.
* We (or maybe just me) need more KDE merchadize apart from tshirts.
Basically something we can wear, which shows. Tshirts don't work when it is
super cold.

--

Overall, it was a fun experience. Most of my suggestions are simple, the
main limiting factor is having someone do the effort and actually
coordinate and follow through. Johnathon Riddel did a good job in
organizing stuff this year.


-- 
Vishesh Handa


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