When? Where? What?

Participants

Fees

Practical

Stuff needed

paper, attachments, various

electronics

What else?

Report

The new Dipro season has been kicked off in Ghent. This time, they also organized the Dipro Photography fair, which supplied the visitors two tickets for the usual price of 5 euros. This fair was held in the two main halls on the ground floor of the International Convention Center (ICC) near the Citadelpark.

The booth of Ubuntu was coordinated by Matthew and had 4 extra volunteers (Pieter, Kenneth, Jan and Mike). Dieter couldn't make it and told us this the evening before. We had eventually three laptops, two pc's, an additional screen and a beamer).

There were some big advantages this time (if we look at the last one in Antwerp). There was a lot of moving space before and behind the tables, which provided us to put up a projection screen and use it at full size. Also we were more able to go into the crowd and talk to the people.

From left to right, we had the beamer with Matthew's laptop and his freshly bought Compaq pc, the laptop of Kenneth, with his extra screen, to show KDE, then Mike's laptop and finally a slim pc. The other slim pc was being repared. Behind us was a projection screen, a pillar which we decorated with six posters, and the inflatable Tux of Pieter (which we gave a chocolate Ubuntu hoodie). We also had two EEEpc's.

We had about 60 cd's available, but because of the fairs at Antwerp and Accenta in Ghent, we didn't want to distribute all of them. So we burned 25 cd's the day before and burned an additional 35 on the fair with three burners. We distributed at least 60 burned cd's, and about 15 original ones. Al people thought the new flyer design was better looking. Also the new poster was accepted. We sold 10 of them, and gave away 5 to Steven (because he helped create them). 40 posters are now in the eventbox of Jean.

The booth was correctly decorated with table cloth, posters, flyers, plastic stands with A4 and A6 flyers. Again the same complaints like before: "Working with laptop on the table is not easy when you and the visitor are standing in front of the table, we should find a simple solution to elevate the laptop('s) with a ± 30 cm high support."

From 10 to 15 h. : many interested visitors, we were permanently busy with questions, explanations and demonstrations (full manning of the booth with was necessary). From 15 to 16.30 h. : less visitors, but permanently 1 or 2 visitors with questions. Till 16.30 h. people came through with some questions.

Most visitors knew about Ubuntu and were interested by additional information. Some people did not know about the existence of Ubuntu, likely they were more interested by the photography fair than in computer, but we succeed to attract their attention. The (slide show) general presentation of Ubuntu has been successful for this public. We also met some visitors from last year who we helped and were still happy with it. One visitor complained about the support map, which really needs an update: people who aren't active anymore, need to be removed from the map. This man waited two months, got a simple yes to his first question and never received an answer on his second one. I promised him to help him.

Summary

It was a successful event for Ubuntu promotion, but maybe more regional people? Please try to save the people of West-Flanders for Kortrijk and Ostend!

Financial

Finance after reimbursement of the booth fee, 21,85 euro were transferred to Ubuntu-be account by Matthew.

Pictures

coming soon

BelgianTeam/ComputerFairs/Ghent_2009-09-06 (last edited 2009-09-08 02:22:38 by 212)