IT360 Show April 30 - May 2, 2007

[Colin McGregor]

--- John Van Ostrand <john-Da48MpWaEp0CzWx7n4ubxQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 12:09 -0500, Colin McGregor
> wrote:
> > I trust everyone here knows that the IT360 trade
> show
> > is coming up April 30 - May 2, 2007. This show
> will
> > include the old LinuxWorld Canada show. So, as
> with
> > past LinuxWorld shows, GTALug is hoping to have a
> > booth at the show (and yes I expect there will be
> > discount deals on show passes for GTALug members,
> > details to follow). Still, there are some
> questions to
> > be resolved, like:
> 
> I asked the question of "what audience do you want
> to hit and with what
> message" before and essentially got the answer of
> everything. To be
> successful I think it needs to be more clear than
> that.
> 
> Based on your recent post has it narrowed down to a
> membership drive? If
> that's true I think it is the right direction.

Yes, the primary focus will be getting new members.

> A single page handout makes perfect sense so does a
> bonus for membership
> that is suitable for the amount of revenue. Aside
> from that it only
> makes sense to give out stuff obtained for free.
> Contact Red Hat,
> Novell, Ubuntu, Google, IBM, Lenovo, etc, for free
> stuff. I'm sure if
> you give them enough time they'll come through for
> you. I'd be glad to
> take on the Red Hat task for you.

I'll get back to you on that, There are folks involved
in the group who work for RedHat, and I would like a
word with them first...

> Then I think you need to spend some time on the
> handout. The audience
> you had said you wanted before was anyone including
> enthusiasts,
> newbies, IT professionals, decision makers, network
> and storage people.
> You may have to narrow this down a bit to fit on a
> one page handout.
> 
> Do we have an graphic artists on the list? An
> attractive handout would
> make a difference.
> 
> It may be time to line up your most attractive
> presentations for the
> months following the show and hope that they attract
> new members.
> 
> What about guerrilla advertising? Is there anything
> we could do on the
> show floor that could draw attention? Maybe have
> staff wear scrolling
> LED name badges that read "Join TLUG Today" (or
> something better) and
> have them walk around the show floor. Wear them on a
> hat and it may be
> better. Or some custom tee shirts with a suitable
> message.

Well, several years ago I did an LCD based name badge
for a science fiction convention using a BASIC Stamp
(using an earlier version of this):

  www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=27100

and a 16 character x 1 line display sort of along the
lines of what you see here:

  www.411techsystems.com/html/lcd_outlet.html

I put the who thing in a blue plastic project box,
programmed it in BASIC (I could get messages of up to
about 170 characters long, which wasn't bad given how
(very) little memory the BASIC stamp had), and I could
run it all for about 1 day off a 9V battery...

So, that sort of guerrilla marketting can be done, but
... Other that hauling my original LCD badge out of
retirement, and seeing if I can pull together enough
parts for another badge from bits currently kicking
around home, I don't see a cost effective case for
smart badges here... Would be a fun project to revisit
though :-) . Would also be interesting to find out if
there are other cheaper solutions that would work
(when I did my LCD badge, the BASIC Stamp was about
the cheapest, smallest pre-assembled controller I
could get my hands on...).

Still other guerrilla tactics are worth looking into,
for example I remember the one science fiction
convention were the people promoting an upcomming
convention were all wearing vests made from the same
cotton print fabric, so if you saw said vest you knew
you were talking to someone very involved with said
convention ... Some sort of ... "gender agnostic" ...
clothing item might be an idea (I'm not a T-Shirt fan,
and ties are likely to be ... problematic), still...

> Finally make sure the show staff all on the same
> page. We don't want
> someone selling to hard or two softly and we want
> both the message and
> the goal to be clear.

True, and as with last year I will be going over what
we can/can't say in the booth with volunteers...

Colin McGregor

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