SXSW 2011

SXSW 2011

From the SXSW website:

SXSW® Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, 
scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders, the incredible new SXSW Trade Show and an 
unbeatable lineup of special programs showcasing the best new digital works, video games and innovative ideas 
the international community has to offer. Join us for the most energetic, inspiring and creative event of the year, 
taking place March 11-15, 2010 in Austin, Texas.

We'd like some North American members of the Fedora Design team to network and mingle at this event. Note that Diana Martin is attending to present her findings from the Fedora anthropological study as well.

When and Where

• Interactive conference March 11-15, 2011 Austin Convention Center TX USA
• Tradeshow March 14-17, 2011 Austin Convention Center TX USA
  • "The four-day trade show celebrates and encourages the creative and technical sharing between the film, interactive and music industries while permitting all of the 35,000 sxsw registrants (platinum, gold, film, interactive & music) access every day."

Booth

• electric is approx $68 per drop
• a wired internet connection is $500
• there is free wi-fi
• we are offering a 20% discount off the listed rates if booked and paid by september 24, 2010 - making the cost of a 10x10 with pd just $1600
  • it comes with 2 exhibitor passes (these grant access to the trade show only) and 1 platinum badge.
  • additional badges may be purchased for the lowest rates that we sell them for ($900 for platinum or $450 for interactive) through nov. 12.
• dvds, stickers and flyers are all great to distribute from your stand. the only restrictions apply if you are giving out food or illegal materials :).

Rough cost-estimate:

• Booth: $1600
• Electric drop for booth: $80
• Wired internet connection for booth: $400
• Platinum pass (Mo or Emily): Free
• Interactive pass (Mo or Emily): $450
• 2 exhibitor passes (One for Spot, one for Jared): Free
• Airfare (Emily): ~$483 (CHS<=>AUS guesstimate, kayak.com, AA)
• Airfare (Mo): ~$260 (Delta on kayak.com)
• Airfare (Spot): ~$260 (Delta on kayak.com)
• Airfare (Jared): ~$289 (Delta on kayak.com)
• Hotel (Mo & Emily): $677
  • Clarion Inn & Suites, 31 Aug 2010 on kayak.com, 2200 S. IH-35 Austin, TX 78704, United States +1 512 444 0561 www.clarionhotel.com, $98 + $15 tax / night for 6 nights
• Hotel (Spot & Jared): $677

TOTAL $5156

Ideas

• Fedora USB creation
• Talk at one of the ancillary events (submissions already closed for main event)

Deadlines

Name	Owner	Date
Registration Deadline	* Máirín Duffy	24 Sep 2010

Working Plan

Okay, here is the rough working plan for the booth.

CD handouts

• Currently, we have 750 Fedora 14 LiveCDs.
• CommArch has offered $3000 of budget in Red Hat's Q4 for this event. The plan is to make more LiveCD handouts (approx 4000) with this money.
  • Best case: We generate a custom SXSW live image with apps such as gimp, inkscape, (blender?) and custom background art and sleeve art and have it produced quickly. We need to have an image ready for the printer so that A) It can be made in time for SXSW and B) We can have it expensed and transferred by the middle of next week (Feb 16).
  • Fallback 1: If Design Spin is in functional state, we rush that through with sleeve art.
  • Fallback 2: We have 4000 more Fedora 14 LiveCDs made. (not optimal, because it does not have FOSS designer tools)

Photobooth

The plan is to have the majority of the booth space taken up by a photo booth where attendees can have their picture taken with Tux against a Fedora blue background, then that picture is uploaded to a Fedora space on the internet, and a monitor in the booth displays a QR code link to their picture (and a URL and a preview). When they visit the URL, they see their picture and an informational page about Fedora and FOSS.

• Acquire a penguin suit of sufficient size that either spot or Jared can wear. (spot has emailed a vendor who sells a tux clone mascot costume at a seemingly reasonable price http://cgi.ebay.com/Festival-Christmas-Pretty-Cute-Penguin-Mascot-Costume-/330521125130?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4cf498210a)
• Backdrop - Fedora Blue fabric to hang on back wall, or professional kit if we can find one cheap (mo asking colby)
• Lighting - Either use what Red Hat has (if available) or buy some ($400?)
• Camera with tripod - ???
• Computer - (Process pictures, upload to internet, generate QR code screen)
• LCD monitor - Sits on table, points out of booth, shows QR codes, pic previews
• Program - It would be nice to have a custom app that handled the process of uploading pictures and generating and displaying QR codes

Stickers

• Small stickers - Basically mikons for their badges, but not from mikons, too expensive ($.50 per sticker)
  • Ideas: CC, opensource.com logo, red hat logo, fedora logo, tux, generic (this is what i do logo art)

• Big stickers - Unique sticker per day. Budget permitting, tie collection of the four big stickers to a giveaway drawing on the fourth day?

Flyers

Handout brainstorm:

• Cards that will slide into the badge plastic (need to get measurements)
• Letter-size sheets

Handout content ideas:

• GNOME Shell promo?
• The open source you don't know is open source (Facebook? Makerbot? RH reference customers? OLPC? JQuery? Android? Ruby on Rails? Twitter?)
• Blender foundation materials - movies & training materials, CC-licensed
• Open source => green / organic
• Talk to Red Hat's marketing dept. to see if they have something pre-made & small that could be handed out to promote open source / Fedora / software freedom
• How you as a creative can change the world by contributing to open source
• Flyers targeted at specific creative folks / use cases:
  • Web designer
  • Photographer
  • Fontographer (don't forget to mention both fontforge and also open-license fonts!)
  • Web developer
  • UX designer
• OLPC case study
• Interviews with Fedora users
• Jobs
• Sampling of the great open license assets out there for creatives to use in their own work
• Overview of creative tools, how to download, how to learn more
• How to create a live USB stick from going to fedoraproject.org, step-by-step

We want to compel people to ask:

• What is Fedora? (and open source)
• What does it do?
• How do I help?

What does success look like? Folks coming away from our booth:

• Trying out Inkscape / Blender / Gimp for the first time
  • even if it's on Windows / OS X
• More aware of FLOSS, its impact
• More likely to contribute to FLOSS
• Interested in attending the Libre Graphics Meeting / Aware of it
• Aware of Fedora and what makes us different from other Linuxes
• What Creative Commons is and why to use it in their own work
• What's in it for me to contribute to Fedora / Open source
  • Innovation frontier
  • International recognition
  • Part of a million+ user OS
  • Low-cost tools
  • Open-license assests
  • Make the world a better place (stories?)
  • Bridge the digital divide
  • Build a portfolio (students)
  • Work with really smart people
  • Skill building / learning new skills / mentorship
  • Ellen Lupton / design it yourself / self-sufficiency
  • Meet like-minded people & make friends (net neutrality, open standards, open content, etc.)

Various assets we can pull in:

• XKCD
• Blender videos
• Fonts
• Creative commons / Obama & OER, music (Reznor?), Flickr
• LGM magazine
• Brushes / Deviant Art / Flickr
• AIGA Digital Foundations, FLOSS-ified
• Truth Happens?
• Gimp 100
• Sita Sings the Blues

Need an elevator pitch....

Booth decoration

• Get event box for tablecloth
• Fancy banner for back wall?

Team

• Máirín Duffy
• Emily Dirsh
• Tom Callaway

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