Ambassadors,
Please read at your leisure. Also attached is a PDF file of the same
with pictures. Magazine and wiki page updates to follow.
Ambassadors Event Report
Southeast Linux Festival - Charlotte North Carolina
June 9 – 11, 2017
Attending Ambassadors:
Ben and Kathy Williams (kk4ewt/cewillia) (Fedora event coordinators)
Andrew and Julie Ward (award3535/jward78) (Event report author)
Nick Bebout (nb)
Dan Mossor (danofsatx)
Rosnel Echevarria (reher)
Fedora has been involved in this particular event since its first
festival in 2009 and has continued to be a vital part of the event
through 2017. The event is the only large scale Linux and open source
festival for the South Eastern United States. Even though there is a
large number of Linux Users Groups throughout the south this is the only
event that draws various communities together in celebration of Linux
and Open Source Software. There was a similar event in Orlando Florida
in 2015 called FOSSETCON, but the event coordinator announced that the
event would occur every two years vice annually. Hopefully the event did
not come apart for the fall this year as it normally is scheduled.
Most of the Ambassadors arrived on Thursday 8 June the night prior
to the event commencement. The actual event began on the 9th at 9 am
with the first set of speakers’ sessions to kick-off the event. The
Fedora booth setup began at 7:35 am that day due to the uncertainty of
attendance numbers and since the attendees were actually showing up
early. We had the booth put together by 8:20 am and started making
Fedora 25 Media Desktops. We always provide a different variety of items
and demonstrate the different desktops offered by Fedora. We also had
some remaining F25 pressed media that was available for distribution.
The booth also was equipped with the IBM Laptop with the multi desktop
environment (available for demonstration of various desktop
environments) and the ever so popular OLPC. We also have a selection of
stickers and case badges available for visitors stopping by. The Fedora
pens were the popular swag item for the first two days until our supply
was depleted.
The first day was busier than expected. The previous year’s
attendance on the first day was minimal due to weekday vice weekend.
Friday turned out to be a busy day for all of us. Even though the Expo
Hall Flex Day (Optionally open on a per-exhibitor basis) we were glad to
be open and ready to demonstrate and assist with any Fedora issues. We
took the opportunity to walk around later that morning while several
talks were in progress and noticed that there were no other operating
system vendors there other than BSD and Pogo. Ubuntu who had been a
staple along with us at this event was quite peculiar and alarming.
There were a lot of familiar faces with booths that included Pogo,
Linode, Percona, and some new attendees such as Black Duck. This gave us
a unique opportunity in promoting Fedora. Usually at these events you do
have the hard-lined folks towards Ubuntu and since they were not in
attendance we did not see or have the questions of why should I use your
product. Although there still was a presence of Ubuntu users that were
actually interested in using Fedora since the unity desktop is no longer
the default. This time we did get a lot of how do get this to work with
Fedora questions as well as what is the difference between Mate and KDE.
Ben, Nick, Dan, Ross, and I all fielded many technical questions on
several variants with desktops and driver problems. They ranged from
MacBook pro driver questions with wireless cards, through video driver
problems encountered while loading and running Fedora. The first day we
all were busy with question answering and demonstrations. We actually
were the busiest booth of the day, and attendees actually were very
interested in what we had available and were quite impressed with the
knowledge of our Ambassadors. The majority in attendance on Friday was a
mixture of novice and experienced Linux users and was there for learning
and help with their personal desktop environments. Almost every person
we met was not in search of corporate/enterprise functionality but there
to better their own experience and knowledge. I guess you could
correlate this to the “Average Joe” or “Average Jane” individuals
looking for something better to use at home and how it functions with
applications available to Linux. Most were just looking for a better
Operating System than Windows but were lost on what applications were
available similar to those they were using in Windows.
Two of those individuals that were lost in the sea of applications
and availability came up from Jacksonville Florida (from the LUG I
attend) with a lot of confusion on how to find software they were
looking for. One had a specific need and didn’t know where to find
applications that he needed and felt overwhelmed with the
applications/software is listed on various other platforms. When you
search for an application it tends to be a sporadic listing of various
sources but no examples or specifications listed. He was quite
frustrated with trying to find the right application for his specific
need. After discussing at length what the end product need to be, I said
that I could help with that. After showing this person the Labs section
on Fedora specifically with the scientific capabilities listed with both
the Robotics and Scientific Labs bundles that he was not aware of. He
also was not aware of the various desktop environments available with
Fedora. I presented him all the various live desktops available on a
removable hard drive he provided, and the available Robotics and
Scientific Lab media as well.
By mid-day on Friday we had already given out approximately 100 F25
pressed media DVD’s and about the same for the various desktop
environments Julie had created using the DVD duplicator. It seemed that
Gnome desktop was the most popular desktop environment, and taking a
second the Cinnamon desktop that totaled about 50 percent of the Gnome
desktop environment. There were many questions about Gnome and what was
the difference between the other desktop environments. Mostly what the
user was taking away from the various desktops was what they were most
comfortable with. We demonstrated all of them at various times with what
the customer was looking for. Most liked the feel of Cinnamon and Mate,
and others really liked the Gnome environment. I showed a few
individuals what my desktop looked like and the tools I used to get the
appearance and feel for me. Many individuals were not aware of the Gnome
tweak tool and its capability to change the appearance of the
environment from the default. Since we had all the desktops available
it was quite easy to find out what individuals were looking for and
many of our own personal laptops were available to show how easy it was
to personalize each type of desktop. Since I was running Gnome, Ben was
running Mate, and Ross running Mate as well, there was vast differences
in appearance and what was running. I think that when people left our
booth that day we had achieved giving the choice of Freedom and Friends
to everyone we met.
As the day continued Ben and Nick had some events on the schedule.
Nick hosted the GPG Key Signing session and Ben was scheduled to conduct
the amateur radio study guide cram session in preparation for the exam
the next day. Both events were scheduled after the Expo area had
closed, so both had a late night of events and also had the speaker’s
dinner that evening as well.
The next morning (the 10th) we began to set up with the anticipation
that it was going to be busier than the previous day. The booth was set
up and ready to go by 8:20 a.m. By this time we already had visitors at
the booth, they actually began asking questions at 8:15. The first
scheduled talk was not until 9 a.m. that morning nor was the expo area
due to be open until 9 a.m. but we are always ready to help and to
answer questions our visitors may have. The morning progressed to be the
busiest we have had in a long time. This I believe was attributed due
the fact there was no other non-Corporation operating systems present
which made us the only one available to the users. We also had some
repeat visitors that always make it to the event and spend a lot of time
discussing upcoming changes and features with Fedora.
There were some individuals that showed up to the booth that
required some assistance in configuration and driver issues. Ben
Williams aided in loading and configuring one individual’s laptop
successfully. We received a lot of praise from this individual for
assisting correcting the problem and loading the laptop with one of
Fedora’s Desktop environments. Several people inquired on a number of
driver issues regarding wireless cards and video driver issues. All
questions were answered or either demonstrated on how to correct the
issues. Most problems were corrected on the spot with the available
equipment or definitive answers give to each person. The one significant
event that stood out was a return customer from the previous year a
young boy was entirely fascinated with Fedora. Last year Nick helped him
choose a specific desktop environment and his father was quite
interested in the SOSA spin. So Nick had provided his contact
information to the father of this enthusiast and it wasn’t long before
they started communicating on getting Fedora his computer. This year,
the family returned and spent a significant amount of time at the booth.
This young man is only 8, his name is Carter, and with some help from
Nick, he demonstrated all of the different desktop environments, and
once Carter picked the environment that he liked (I believe it was
Cinnamon) we provided the media for him to load. Carter was quite
pleased to see how easy it was to run a game (Minecraft) on a Fedora PC.
He spent a lot of time at our booth playing the game until his father
said it was time to leave and learn more at the event. Several times
during the day Carter stopped by to just play with the different
desktops and a little Minecraft. As the rest of the day went on we all
were busy discussing points about Fedora and upcoming features the day
began to wind down. The next event was in Ben Williams’s court with the
Amateur Radio License Exam. There were 28 that took the exam (General
and Technician) with a passing rate of approximately 50% (estimated).
Nick also had the GPG Key signing event at 8 p.m. A long day for all.
Sunday, the last day of the event, still had a full day of talks
scheduled until about 4 pm. Ben and Nick both had talks scheduled that
day. The booth was ready by 8:30 a.m. and we were ready to get started.
Although the traffic of people was not the same as the previous days,
but we did have more of the repeat individuals including Carter and his
father, there were many more questions we were asked. One in particular
came back to the booth to thank us for the previous day’s assistance.
This was the one individual we discussed earlier that was lost in a sea
of applications. He let us know that he loaded Cinnamon the previous
night and starting working with it. He was quite impressed and came back
to let us know that he was quite happy with the software (I received and
email the day after the event ended; Quoted “I really enjoyed the show
and meeting with you guy. I got the Fedora Cinnamon loaded it looks
really good. The Fedora Lab's looks like it will do everything I need
for my engineering work. I am waiting for the 16GB memory I ordered for
the I7 Asus so I can get everything setup properly. I got some Fedora
Live disks from your bud to give out at Jaxlug and JaxDlug. You guys
have a good week talk later.”). As mentioned earlier, both of these
individuals are from North East Florida (Jacksonville), took the trip to
Charlotte specifically to attend this event since there was no other
event in the south east, they both last attended FOSSETCON in 2015 but
found this event far more informative and well organized.
The event ended later in the afternoon. Most of the major
contributors had begun to pack up in mid afternoon when the crowd
started to dwindle as well did we. The remaining media was given out to
individuals that would bring the items to their local LUG including the
North East Florida individuals (they would provide the media to the
JaxLug and JaxDlug). The even officially ended at 3:45p.m. on Sunday 11
June 2017.
To answer the question “Why” does Fedora attend Southeast Linux
Fest. Well to start, the obvious was Carter and his father. To have such
an enthusiast so interested in what we do and the product we represent
goes right to the Four Foundations of Friends and Features. After
spending time using each of the available desktops and choosing the one
that was right for him (remember he is only 8). His father only guided
him when he asked for help but was making his own decisions on what he
wanted to accomplish with his laptop. Everyone of us at the booth was
quite impressed with with this young man. The other obvious subject was
media production of our variants in desktops. The duplicator produced
225 desktop environments for distribution with all available spins. We
also gave out another 200 F25 media DVD’s during the event. All locally
duplicated spins were given out and the rest of the media brought to the
event was given to those individuals that would further distribute them
to local colleges and Linux User Group meetings.
Here some other things that we accomplished;
Aided the installation of three laptops with Fedora
Demonstrated the various lab environments available
Answered numerous questions on device driver installation and configuration
Demonstrated the various Desktop environments (Cinnamon the most popular)
Discussed upcoming release and features
Demonstrated F26A releases
Demonstrated the abilities of Gnome and the tweak tool
Demonstrated the software GUI loader within Gnome vice using terminal
Produced and handed out Live USB media for those who were truly
interested in Fedora
The event in our opinion is more structured to the Desktop users,
novice, and to moderately technically savvy users and enthusiasts . Even
though we did have some individuals that were corporate level system
administrators, they were more interested in items and software for
their personal use rather than the enterprise level engineering or
administration. We also had a wide range of expertise on hand with our
ambassadors that covered areas of system administration (Ben, Ross, and
Dan), security and network security (Andrew), and cryptology (Nick).
There were no questions that we could not answer with respect to Fedora!
As always we had a survey available for those who wish to leave us
comments or suggestions that will be available separately for review.
--
V/R
Andrew Ward
award3535(a)fedoraproject.org
award3535(a)tds.net
award3535(a)gmail.com
