July 2006 - SFD-announce - lists.mailman3.com

[SFD-TC] Processing Supplies Requests, Selling T-Shirts, Contests
by Matt Oquist 26 Jul '06

26 Jul '06

Supplies Requests Many of you are probably wondering what's going on with your requests for supplies -- well, we're working on them right now. We've already taken a preliminary look at all of them, and we're currently doing a second pass. We will contact you once the allocations are final and we're ready to ship. Selling T-Shirts We're hoping to start selling t-shirts within the next few days, and we'll send out more information about that soon. Don't worry about asking *now* for your team to receive free shirts; we'll explain more about how this will work as we get ready to start sales. In summary, however, the t-shirt sales will be optional and all proceeds will go directly to supply other SFD teams. Details forthcoming! Contests In the meantime, make sure you've secured the venue for your event and that you're executing a publicity plan. Remember that we have some cool prizes to award to the team with the best SFD event publicity, the team with the best SFD documentary, and the team with the best overall event. NOW is the time to be planning and working to make great entries in the contests! We'll be publishing further details (rules, guidelines) about the contests in coming days, so stay tuned. Regards, Matt Oquist -- --------------------------------------------------------- SoftwareFreedomDay.org : Celebrating Free and Open Source Software in Your Community info AT softwarefreedomday.org http://softwarefreedomday.org/ SFD Sponsors: http://canonical.com http://www.dkuug.dk http://ibm.com

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[SFD-TC] Get on the 2006 Map!
by Matt Oquist 24 Jul '06

24 Jul '06

Thanks to some help and encouragement from Pia, we've just gotten our 2006 map up and running, and it's looking very fresh and in need of lots of SFD team dots! Go to http://softwarefreedomday.org/map/2006 to see the map and add your team. NOTE: You must add your team to the 2006 map even if you were on the 2005 map; it only takes a couple minutes to copy your 2005 entry to 2006 if that's all you need to do. There is a link to the 2005 map on the maps page. TO ADD YOUR TEAM: 1. Find your latitude and longitude (some tools for this are provided on the map page) 2. Log in to the SFD website 3. Go to http://softwarefreedomday.org/map/2006 4. Click "Edit" 5. Add your team at the end of the list at the bottom of the page, with the format LAT LONG NICK There are instructions on the map page, as well, and you can also see all the other examples. Let's see where all your teams are! Regards, Matt Oquist and the board of Software Freedom International -- --------------------------------------------------------- SoftwareFreedomDay.org : Celebrating Free and Open Source Software in Your Community info AT softwarefreedomday.org http://softwarefreedomday.org/ SFD Sponsors: http://canonical.com http://www.dkuug.dk http://ibm.com

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[SFD-TC] Re: New forum
by Matt Oquist 13 Jul '06

13 Jul '06

You have an excellent point, and we hope the new (hopefully stable) forums will provide an archive of team experiences. We've taken some of the most important bits of feedback from the past and built them into the StartGuide and the general guidelines, though. The most general guideline is to pick a particular audience and craft an event to reach that audience, through interaction, dialogue, *and* CD distribution -- that's the best beginning to a successful event. Cheers, Matt Alan Pope wrote: [Tue Jul 11 2006, 04:35:02AM EDT] > On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 02:32:38AM -0400, Matt Oquist wrote: > > But seriously, I don't think that the website changes are *that* big > > a deal, because SFD is still such a once-a-year thing that most people > > aren't going to remember last year's site, anyway. > > > > What people like myself who have never been involved in SFD, and would like > to get information about how things ran in previous years? We don't want to > do things that are ineffective or "wrong". If I could browse through old > forums / wiki pages / whatever then I could get a head-start. > > I'd much rather learn from other peoples mistakes than my own. > > Cheers, > Al. -- --------------------------------------------------------- SoftwareFreedomDay.org : Celebrating Free and Open Source Software in Your Community info AT softwarefreedomday.org http://softwarefreedomday.org/ SFD Sponsors: http://canonical.com http://www.dkuug.dk http://ibm.com

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[SFD-TC] Re: New forum
by Matt Oquist 11 Jul '06

11 Jul '06

This is a reply to an email from Rik Tindall, who is one of three volunteers who has recently been involved in dealing with the SPAM in our forums by installing fresh forums and starting over (maybe not the ideal solution, but definitely the most effective). I originally wrote this just to Rik, Russell, and Robert, but I've realized that this may be beneficial for everyone. ------------------------- > We have lost SFD's greatest asset, I reckon - its forum history - every > year so far. Is this because we keep re-skinning phpbb? What better > software/options can people please suggest? Same reason(s) we re-do www.sfd every year. It's only done in people's volunteer time, so instead of very careful migration we just throw together a new site and charge full-steam ahead. This is usually correlated with an improvement in the hosting that is available to us, so a new server is usually involved as well. Also, nobody (i.e., Henrik, Phil, or myself) has really bought into a particular tool for more than a year. :) 2004: Geeklog 2005: Mambo 2006: Moin At least the names keep getting shorter. > Same for www.sfd - it changes radically every year to what purpose? Can > we get a default framework together so that just a few jpegs with > logo-dates are all that needs updating each new year? A picture of > stability, continuity, and all-year service is supremely important to > the saleability of FOSS. Sounds great. Let's stick with Moin, then. :) But seriously, I don't think that the website changes are *that* big a deal, because SFD is still such a once-a-year thing that most people aren't going to remember last year's site, anyway. The loss of the forums is more important; hopefully the new forums, with more SPAM-prevention measures in place and more attentive moderation, will be around for years to come. I see the SFD community as our biggest asset; the list of team leaders from the previous year is an extremely valuable collection of contact info for people who care; they are people who might recruit other team leaders even if they don't have the time to lead their own team this year. SFD would really be nothing at all without the worldwide community of team leaders. So in conclusion, cheers, and I'll see you in the spiffy new forums. :) --matt -- --------------------------------------------------------- SoftwareFreedomDay.org : Celebrating Free and Open Source Software in Your Community info AT softwarefreedomday.org http://softwarefreedomday.org/ SFD Sponsors: http://canonical.com http://www.dkuug.dk http://ibm.com

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[SFD-TC] SFD CDs, T-shirts, and Balloons
by Matt Oquist 10 Jul '06

10 Jul '06

We never have managed to communicate this clearly (IMO), so I'm sending this extra note to try to make sure you all know that #################################### You must go to the website and register your teams if you plan to receive and use SFD CDs, t-shirts, and/or balloons for your SFD celebrations. #################################### Here's the registration page: http://softwarefreedomday.org/registration #################################### You must register again in 2006 even if you've registered for SFD in 2004 or 2005. The registration deadline is Wednesday, July 19th, so sign up soon! #################################### On a slighly unrelated note, we've had some SPAM problems in the forums and we're in the process of cleaning that entire situation up; you'll be hearing more about that soon. Regards, Matt Oquist -- --------------------------------------------------------- SoftwareFreedomDay.org : Celebrating Free and Open Source Software in Your Community info AT softwarefreedomday.org http://softwarefreedomday.org/ SFD Sponsors: http://canonical.com http://www.dkuug.dk http://ibm.com

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Re: [SFD-TC] SFD Teeshirts
by Pia Waugh 09 Jul '06

09 Jul '06

Hi Fouad, <quote who="Fouad Riaz Bajwa"> > We have a problem with procuring merchandize over the Internet and neither > have international credit cards, any suggestions? Money wires possible and > is there a discounted rate for developing world countries like ours? Of course. Anyone who has trouble procuring tshirts by the online mechanism, please contact us and we'll work it out with you manually. Also, for countries where the cost of the tshirts are too expensive, of course we will do our best to reduce the cost so it is affordable. We want to make sure everyone has a great Software Freedom Day and has as good an impact locally as possible. Cheers, Pia -- Linux Australia http://linux.org.au/ "The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." - William Gibson

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[SFD-TC] Software Freedom Day competition!
by Pia Waugh 09 Jul '06

09 Jul '06

Hi all, Software Freedom Day is proud to announce a fantastic competition to get those creative juices going! With Software Freedom Day only a few months away, on September 16th, we have some excellent prizes to help inspire you to create the best Software Freedom Day ever! Get along to http://softwarefreedomday.org to register your team and start planning your event. You can register for free schwag to give away on the day, and we will soon have additional SFD tshirts for sale as well. There is a Start Guide on the website that will help you with ideas and planning. The competition has two categories. One for individuals and one for teams. Individuals have a chance to win a specially signed tshirt and teams can win an awesome IBM System p5 server. The competition will be judged by the LUG Radio team (http://lugradio.org) and the Software Freedom International board. A signed tshirt is awarded to the best individual submissions for the following categories: * best event photo * best localised version of the offical SFD logo. Some inspiration and examples are at http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/Artwork/Logo * best global version of the offical SFD logo * best SFD blog coverage * highest ranking Government offical at SFD event (photo required) - Government official submissions determined to be at equal levels (e.g., two country presidents) will be put into a hat and a winner will be drawn. The prize goes to the community individual who organised the official, not the official personally. An IBM System p5 base level POWER5+ server will be awarded to the best team submissions for each of the following categories: * best SFD event publicity * best SFD documentary * best plan for FOSS deployment project on new server for community benefit * second best plan for FOSS deployment project on new server for community benefit * best SFD event The community benefit prizes are for finding great ways to benefit a community with the servers. We would expect you to implement your plan when you get the servers and send photos and a short write-up about it :) Think about ways you can help your community achieve Software Freedom! Please submit all entries to comp(a)sf-day.org The tshirts are specially signed by some rocking FOSS stars that continue to inspire us all to new heights. As much as we'd love to have every FOSS star we can think of sign the shirts, we have approached a few that cover some major projects and contributions to FOSS. See a full list of the tshirt signers at http://softwarefreedomday.org/sfi/TshirtSigners We welcome IBM as the sponsor of the major competition prizes, the POWER5 servers. It is wonderful to have IBM on board supporting Software Freedom Day 2006. They have generously offered System p5 servers as prizes for a number of categories of competitions. "IBM is proud to be a sponsor of Software Freedom Day and its efforts to raise awareness of Open Technologies to developers and users around the world.", says IBM Linux Community Program Manager, Robert MacFarlan. IBM has long been an advocate, sponsor and contributor to the Linux developer community and Open Technology development. Continuing this tradition of support, IBM has also contributed a number of POWER5 and IBM PPC970 servers to Universities world-wide for the purpose of Linux and Open Source project development by the community. These servers are hosted by the Universities and freely available with a simple registration for use. They include a number of POWER5 Servers and also an Apple Power Mac G5 for those interested in doing Altivec or other PPC970 optimizations. These are shared environments, so users have to abide by each site's acceptable use policies. These systems provide a great chance to become familiar with the technology that you have a chance of winning in this competition. Oregon State University Open Source Labs - SLES on POWER5 and Gentoo on Apple Power Mac G5. http://powerdev.osuosl.org SourceForge.net compile farm - SLES on POWER5 http://sourceforge.net/docs/compile_farm#cf_overview University of Augsburg - Debian on POWER5 http://tuxppc.rz.uni-augsburg.de/ Australian National University - SLES on POWER5 http://clug.anu.edu.au/ Linux on Power @ Peking University - SLES on POWER5 http://ppclinux.pku.edu.cn/ University de Campinas - RedHat, Debian, and Slackware partitions on POWER5 http://power.ic.unicamp.br (Available mid-July) -- Software Freedom Day http://softwarefreedomday.org

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[SFD-TC] SFD Teeshirts
by Arc Riley 09 Jul '06

09 Jul '06

Being one of the more expensive promotional items, and something volunteers are likely to keep afterwards, how about allowing teams to collect money for these teeshirts before the event and send it to SFD to cover the cost of producing additional shirts? I'm not suggesting /all/ teeshirts should be paid for, but if those of us in developed nations voluntarily covered the cost ourselves not only could they be guarenteed to receive a teeshirt but more free teeshirts would be available for volunteers in developing nations. We're paying $10 a piece for a meal at ithaca free software association meetings, over $300 total in some cases, I see no reason why our members shouldn't be paying for promotional items they'll end up owning. In fact, I'd say tack on more than cost of production/shipping, with the proceeds going for more promotional items for other cities. I'll also suggest that other groups consider printing their own colorful teeshirts branded for their local groups. If the SFD people could let us all know what color teeshirts they're planning this year we can choose contrasting or matching colors for locally-branded teeshirts. Overall, from last year, I'd say teeshirts and balloons made the biggest impact. The CDs were indeed nice but there were not nearly enough of them (we had a reserve of 750 Ubuntu CDs and used most of them as the SFD CDs ran out within an hour of our event). I'd say the tatoos could be done without. We still have a majority of them from last year, sitting unused. They were not colorful, so children didn't like them, and they could not be applied fast or easy enough to be useful for other purposes.

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