Southeast Linux Fest 2012

The event was held in Charlotte North Carolina June 8th through the 10th. I had the chance to meet and work with some of the most amazing people. This was my first event as an Ambassador for the community. I was quite impressed on how many showed up to contribute their time. My mentor and his family (Ben Williams) were wonderful in showing me the ropes.

(NB trying to hide behind beefy)

I immediately got started at the booth starting in burning the latest release F17 Beefy Miracle. As the event seemed to warm up, more and more of the attendees were interested in what we had at our booth. By far, the Fedora booth had the most swag, media, and personnel support than any other booth set up in the building. We strive to deliver our product with the most knowledge and customer service as possible. We were running out of Media fast.

(NB and Ben at the booth)

(John and I burning media)

As an added benefit, the Beefy Miracle shows up with Tux.

Once the speakers had commenced, it slowed enough for me to get caught up with the media production. Even though we had enough, the 64 bit DVD install media went fast. The idea of the Hot Dog for charity food drive had lots of good comments. We collected almost a full barrel of food and $190 in cash before the end of the event. Many of the people we had visiting the booth were very pleased with the hot dogs and stopped by to thank us for the wonderful job and how different the event was with the food drive and the “Beefy Miracle”.

Saturday I began at the booth at 8 am and finally called it a day at 6 pm with one small break to get checked in to the hotel room. We traveled up from southeast Georgia early that morning and got right into the event. I also discovered that many of the visitors to the booth were more than interested in the product but were also interested in future releases of Fedora. I was proud to explain what I knew about the future of Fedora. I fielded lots of questions about why I use Fedora over the other products, the answer was simple; great products need no explanation. I explained to many people that the ease of use is unequaled to any other product. Most novice users look for an effortless installation, and Fedora displays the most easiest install to date. For the more intrinsic technical questions I was glad to have the other more experienced ambassador's were there to help. For the most part I was able to complete my first event without difficulty.

Sunday began at 9 am with opening the booth and answering more questions and distributing media for another 4 hours. Jamie Williams and I commenced tearing down the booth about 1 pm. Several special requests for 32 bit media that morning were made and we were able to produce the items requested and deliver the product to our customers. Again, the customers were pleased with our ability to produce what was requested in a short period of time. Once the booth was torn down the charity food drive items and cash were turned over to one pleased and grateful representative. I look forward to attending my next event with more of my fellow ambassadors.

Please enjoy some of the other pictures that were taken at the event.

Sincerely,

Andrew Ward (award3535)

Fedora Ambassador North America

Kingsland Georgia