GTALUG @ LinuxWorld Canada Planning meeting

[Colin McGregor]

Ok, as everyone (I hope) knows the Linux World Canada
show is coming up April 24-26, and GTALUG will be
there. I will be having a planning meeting March 6th,
7:00 PM at the Starbucks Coffee shop inside the Yonge
& Eglinton Indigo book store.

Some things to consider before the Monday meeting:

- We have a signed agreement with Plum Communications
(the firm running the show) for a 10' x 10' booth,
location to be determined. There are some (modest)
strings attached as to what we can/can not do in the
booth, which I will be going over with everyone.

- The NewTLUG meeting will be happening at the show,
with the topic being a distribution comparison (ie:
why would you say pick Debian over Mandriva or ...).
Not sure where Herb stands with speakers on that but
he may be looking for a few more speakers willing to
promote their favourite distribution.

- I have confirmed we are to get 1,500 Ubuntu CDs plus
an Ubuntu conference pack with 4 T-Shirts, 200 Ubuntu
leaflets and 200 Ubuntu stickers. All this stuff will
be free to GTALug. How to divide up the likes of the
T-Shirts (key volunteers? business card draw? other?)
is still an open question.

- I have approached Mandriva asking for CDs, so far
without any response.

- We have a budget from the board, so there is some
money available for photocopies and other key
expenses.

- The consensus among the people I spoke to was that
having power in the booth last year was not worth what
it cost us. So, unless someone can show a really
pressing reason to do otherwise the plan will be to
use laptops (and their batteries) to provide computers
on-site.

- One idea that seems to be very popular is to have
give-away items to encourage people to stop and talk
at the booth. Besides the Ubuntu disks, there is talk
of chocolate/candy. Now, for budget reasons they have
to be inexpensive and for sanitary reasons the food
will all have to be individually wrapped, but beyond
that the question is open, what would cause people to
stop to chat? Hersey chocolate Kisses? Werther's
Original (butter-and-cream toffee)? Other? Also, what
sort of attention should we pay to allergy (i.e.
peanut) and religious (i.e. kosher/halal) concerns? 

- If budget allows I would like to do metal case
badges for handing out at the show. But this is
looking like the lowest priority / highest cost item
on the agenda, so will be the first item to be dropped
in case of problems. So, need to put together a final
budget ASAP.

- Flier distribution, we have some colour fliers from
Plum Communications for distribution at our meetings,
and we have a PDF file for printing out and passing
around. Need some people to do leg work here.

- Creation of a GTALug flier for handing out at the
show. This MAY just mean taking last year's flier and
changing references of "Toronto Linux User Group" to
"Greater Toronto Area Linux User Group".

- Banner. One of the board members is looking into
getting a banner made up, but that is not yet nailed
down. As with the fliers last year's banner can not be
reused because of the name change.

- Putting together an "Exhibitor" list for submission
to Plum Communication. These will be the people
walking the show floor representing GTALug (and yes,
for multiple reasons which I will go over at the
meeting, I will be encouraging people to sign up for a
regular (free) show admission badge :-) ).

- Putting together a GTALug press release for the Plum
Communications website.

The above is a start, no doubt there will be other
things that will come to mind between now and Monday.

Colin McGregor
--
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