- SFD-announce - lists.mailman3.com

Tell us about your SFD 2007 event!

by Robert Schumann

Hi team leaders and other SFD enthusiasts, I hope you all had a good Software Freedom Day, and managed to spread the message. After months of navigating towards 15 September via my computer screen and a few telephone calls, it felt really good to be out on the street, talking to people and telling them about how software freedom affects them. And we had a lovely sunny day in Cambridge too! We'd like to hear about how your SFD 2007 event went, in particular with respect to * (approximately) how many members of the public were reached through your event * how many team members were involved in running your event - both beforehand and on the day * how many hours your event lasted * how many Ubuntu CDs you handed out Head over to http://cgi.softwarefreedomday.org/event_report.html and fill in a few little pieces of information. You'll need to fill in the same email address that you originally used to register your SFD team. Thanks for taking the time to help us out with this - and don't forget that, aside from the information we're looking for here, you're also welcome to write a bit more about your event and post some photos on your team's wiki page. By visiting our reporting page, you will also get the chance to let us have any feedback regarding how you think SFD has gone, and what could be done to make it even bigger and better next year. Don't forget that there are also some "One Laptop Per Child" laptops available to win in our competition [1] - so don't forget to gather any news reports about your event and put together a good set of photos for us to look at! More details about the competition will be in a later email. Thanks to all the teams for making SFD 2007 the biggest yet! Robert Software Freedom International [1] Note that information submitted for our reporting purposes will not used in judging the competition.

Sept. 16, 2007

Software Freedom Day: time to rock!

by Robert Schumann

Dear SFD teams, Software Freedom Day 2007 is almost upon us, and there's just enough time for us to get in a last "Thank you!" and "Good luck!". From all of us here at SFI central, we hope you have a great day and reach out with the message of software freedom to as many people as you can. In order to achieve a measure of the global impact of Software Freedom Day, we'd very much appreciate if you could try to keep track of the following data for your event: * (approximately) how many members of the public were reached through your event * how many team members were involved in running your event - both beforehand and on the day * how many hours your event lasted * how many Ubuntu and Open CDs you handed out We'll publish details of how to submit this information within the next few days. Thanks to the efforts and participation of all our teams, we've had an unprecedented response to Software Freedom Day this year: * new sponsors Google, MindTouch, Zenoss and the Free Software Foundation have joined our long-standing supporters, Canonical/Ubuntu and the Danish Unix User Group * we currently have 320 teams registered, up from just under 200 last year * we've had a full-page advert in the Linux Magazine * with help from ZacWare we were able to operate an online shop for CDs and SFD T-shirts this year * the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has come on board by offering "$100 laptops" as prizes for our competition * IOSN, a UN-affiliated project, has supported our activities in Asia * we've been listed on digg.com [1] and slashdot.org [2] * ...and as a result of all this, we're now receiving over 3000 hits on our website every day And one last reminder, to turn all of these positives into a great SFD: please take a look at the Code of Conduct [3], and make your team members aware of this code - this helps us to set the ground rules and present a positive image of Software Freedom to the public. Also keep in mind some of the Dos and Don'ts listed in our Start Guide: # DO present the capabilities and practical benefits of FOSS. # DO NOT pretend that FOSS is perfect for everyone or everything. # DO have the ability to present FOSS ideology clearly and concisely to interested people. # DO NOT beat uninterested people over the head with ideology; this will confuse and intimidate them. Instead... # DO let the quality of the software speak for itself and its ideology. # DO have demo machines present if possible. # DO your best to connect people with a local FOSS community. # DO provide contact information for your SFD team so people can subsequently contact you for more information. # DO get contact information from interested and willing people, so you can proactively follow-up with them later. # DO proactively follow-up with people who attend your SFD event. # DO find and cooperate with other SFD teams in your area. # DO start other SFD teams in your area - this is cooperation, not competition! # DO NOT -- seriously -- DO NOT bash Microsoft or SCO or any other false Great Satan. Software Freedom Day is not about any individual companies or people; Software Freedom Day is a positive community celebration of Software Freedom. Lastly, we'd just like to let those teams that registered in time to receive team supplies know about the status of their supplies. Many of you have already received (in separate shipments) your Ubuntu and Open CDs, SFD T-shirts, and a small pack of stickers and balloons. We have been made aware of some problems outside our control with shirt and CD shipments (notably customs duties: the nine CD shipments for which payment was requested from us totalled almost US$1000 in taxes!), as well as a few addresses that were incorrect and thus could not be delivered. The vast majority of shipments have however reached their destinations in time. If your team is one of those that has not received your supplies, we hope that you will still have a great Software Freedom Day! Good luck, and thanks for making SFD2007 our biggest and best event yet. Robert. Board member, Software Freedom International [1] http://digg.com/linux_unix/15_September_is_Software_Freedom_Day [2] http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=286933 [3] http://softwarefreedomday.org/CodeOfConduct

Sept. 14, 2007

SFD team supplies: shipping update

by Robert Schumann

Hi Software Freedom Days teams, This email is to let you all know that all supplies have now been dispatched to teams that registered before the deadline and within the first 200 teams. This year we've been ambitious and multinational in our distribution: * T-shirts to Asian teams have been dispatched from Quezon City, Philippines (last week) * T-shirts to Australia and New Zealand have been dispatched from Sydney, Australia (yesterday) * T-shirts to teams in the Americas were sent courtesy of the Free Software Foundation in Boston, USA (two weeks ago) * T-shirts to African and European teams were dispatched from Abingdon, UK (last week) All these shipments have been via normal postage, and apparently some teams have already received their packages. We hope you like the T-shirts! Balloons and stickers are being sent from Sydney, Australia, today. In addition, CDs have been shipped via courier from the Netherlands this week. Mine were dispatched yesterday and arrived today! This weekend we will be sending out emails to all teams that registered in time to qualify for supplies, to let you know how many T-shirts and CDs you'll be receiving. I'd like to thank all teams for their patience with the various problems we've been having over the last few weeks with our shipments, website and mailing lists. And many thanks also go to John Sullivan and the rest of the team at the Free Software Foundation, who have partnered with us to ease some of our distribution problems by shipping supplies to all teams in North, South and Central America. Their contribution has been invaluable to making SFD a success this year. Happy SFDing, Robert.

Aug. 29, 2007

Apologies and update for teams

by Robert Schumann

Hi all, Firstly thank you to you all for your patience and understanding while we had some technical issues. For those that didn't know, the Software Freedom Day website was down for almost 4 days, and it has taken till now for various reasons to get the mailing lists back up. Details below on what happened: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2007-August/001506.html https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2007-August/001510.html I am glad to say that though the initial work of Canonical sysadmins, and then through the tireless work of several of the Software Freedom International board members, we now have the website, mailing lists and registration back up and running! All other Software Freedom Day preparations were unaffected by the server issues. All teams that registered prior to the 30th July have already had much of their free team schwag posted, and will be receiving 3 seperate packages: 1) SFD tshirts (already shipped to most teams) 2) SFD stickers and balloons (being shipped in the next 2 days) 3) Ubuntu and The Open CD packs (already shipped) Please note that due to some issues in production, we are only able to ship 5 of The Open CDs to each team this year (not including additional CDs purchased), however we will ensure more are available next year. Please feel free to replicate the CDs being sent and to distribute any other FOSS that is locally relevant and beneficial to your events. We are pleased to say there are already 283 registered teams celebrating Software Freedom Day this year, and we expect plenty more to register in the coming weeks to be included as official events. Hopefully we'll hit at the very least the 300 mark, so please let any teams you know that haven't registered to get their socks on! Please ensure your event pages are up to date because over the coming weeks people will be looking for your events and wanting to see at the very least what you'll be doing, when and where so they can visit your events! Good luck with your SFD planning, and thank you all for helping take software freedom to the world! Through all our efforts we can really help ensure a more open, sustainable and trustworthy digital future! Cheers, Robert (on behalf of Pia and the rest of Software Freedom International) -- Software Freedom Day 2007 http://softwarefreedomday.org/

Aug. 26, 2007

Apologies and update for teams

by Robert Schumann

Hi all, Firstly thank you to you all for your patience and understanding while we had some technical issues. For those that didn't know, the Software Freedom Day website was down for almost 4 days, and it has taken till now for various reasons to get the mailing lists back up. Details below on what happened: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2007-August/001506.html https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2007-August/001510.html I am glad to say that though the initial work of Canonical sysadmins, and then through the tireless work of several of the Software Freedom International board members, we now have the website, mailing lists and registration back up and running! All other Software Freedom Day preparations were unaffected by the server issues. All teams that registered prior to the 30th July have already had much of their free team schwag posted, and will be receiving 3 seperate packages: 1) SFD tshirts (already shipped to most teams) 2) SFD stickers and balloons (being shipped in the next 2 days) 3) Ubuntu and The Open CD packs (already shipped) Please note that due to some issues in production, we are only able to ship 5 of The Open CDs to each team this year (not including additional CDs purchased), however we will ensure more are available next year. Please feel free to replicate the CDs being sent and to distribute any other FOSS that is locally relevant and beneficial to your events. We are pleased to say there are already 283 registered teams celebrating Software Freedom Day this year, and we expect plenty more to register in the coming weeks to be included as official events. Hopefully we'll hit at the very least the 300 mark, so please let any teams you know that haven't registered to get their socks on! Please ensure your event pages are up to date because over the coming weeks people will be looking for your events and wanting to see at the very least what you'll be doing, when and where so they can visit your events! Good luck with your SFD planning, and thank you all for helping take software freedom to the world! Through all our efforts we can really help ensure a more open, sustainable and trustworthy digital future! Cheers, Robert (on behalf of Pia and the rest of Software Freedom International) -- Software Freedom Day 2007 http://softwarefreedomday.org/

Aug. 26, 2007

Apologies and update for teams

by Robert Schumann

Hi all, Firstly thank you to you all for your patience and understanding while we had some technical issues. For those that didn't know, the Software Freedom Day website was down for almost 4 days, and it has taken till now for various reasons to get the mailing lists back up. Details below on what happened: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2007-August/001506.html https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2007-August/001510.html I am glad to say that though the initial work of Canonical sysadmins, and then through the tireless work of several of the Software Freedom International board members, we now have the website, mailing lists and registration back up and running! All other Software Freedom Day preparations were unaffected by the server issues. All teams that registered prior to the 30th July have already had much of their free team schwag posted, and will be receiving 3 seperate packages: 1) SFD tshirts (already shipped to most teams) 2) SFD stickers and balloons (being shipped in the next 2 days) 3) Ubuntu and The Open CD packs (already shipped) Please note that due to some issues in production, we are only able to ship 5 of The Open CDs to each team this year (not including additional CDs purchased), however we will ensure more are available next year. Please feel free to replicate the CDs being sent and to distribute any other FOSS that is locally relevant and beneficial to your events. We are pleased to say there are already 283 registered teams celebrating Software Freedom Day this year, and we expect plenty more to register in the coming weeks to be included as official events. Hopefully we'll hit at the very least the 300 mark, so please let any teams you know that haven't registered to get their socks on! Please ensure your event pages are up to date because over the coming weeks people will be looking for your events and wanting to see at the very least what you'll be doing, when and where so they can visit your events! Good luck with your SFD planning, and thank you all for helping take software freedom to the world! Through all our efforts we can really help ensure a more open, sustainable and trustworthy digital future! Cheers, Robert (on behalf of Pia and the rest of Software Freedom International) -- Software Freedom Day 2007 http://softwarefreedomday.org/

Aug. 26, 2007

Last day to order SFD T-shirts and CDs!

by Robert Schumann

Hi all, Due to our shipping deadlines (to make sure T-shirts and other materials arrive with teams before 15 September) we are having to close the SFD shop tomorrow, Saturday 4 August. Teams that were among the first 200 registered before the 31 July deadline will receive 3 free t-shirts plus a variable number of The Open CD (but no more than 25, since our stocks are limited) - but please go ahead and order more shirts to support our mission to send supplies to as many teams as we can! The store website is http://sfd.zac-ware.com/ and we have extended the original 31 July deadline for ordering shirts until *tomorrow* for teams to get their last minute orders in. THIS DEADLINE WILL NOT BE EXTENDED! Tshirts are on there for AUD$30 but teams get them for AUD$15 each (AUD$15 = ~USD$12.50), and for the first time we also have The Open CD Packs (with 5 CDs) available for AUD$25 (AUD$12.50 for teams) so please ensure when you place any team orders that you tick the "Gift Voucher" box once you confirm your order which will apply the 50% discount before paying. The discount code is: sfdt3@ms Don't worry about the "Redeem" button, it'll apply once you click Continue. Also, _ensure_ you also tick the "Comments" section of your order and add the size(s) you'd like and which team you are ordering for so we can bundle the new goodies in with your free SFD Team Pack! We'll then label the additional goodies such that you can determine who ordered more and which are the free schwag. Payment options include Paypal (includes Visa, Mastercard and other credit options), Cheque and Bank transfers, although we don't recommend the bank transfers expect for large orders due to the SWIFT fees (unless you are in the US). Don't worry, you don't have to have a Paypal account to participate. If anyone has issues with the online store, please email info at softwarefreedomday.org Cheers, Robert. PS - One Aussie dollar (AUD$) is about USD0.85, or GBP0.42, or EUR0.62, if you want to figure out how much the T-shirts cost in a slightly more familiar currency. I certainly didn't know how much the Aussie dollar was worth before looking it up....

Aug. 3, 2007

Registrations for SFD goodies closed

by Robert Schumann

Hi all, We have had an unprecendented response from new SFD teams all around the world this year. Almost double the number of teams have registered in time to receive the free team goodies including shirts, stickers and CDs, and unfortunately we have already hit our capacity. We announced earlier that the first 200 registrations up until the 31st July would be getting the team goodies, and we have now hit that limit so unhappily no new registrations will be receiving the SFD goodies pack. Teams are absolutely still welcome to be counted as part of the official global celebrations, however as of now, no new teams will be receiving goods. Teams are able to purchase shirts from the SFD online store for only two more days at: http://sfd.zac-ware.com/ for $15 per shirt. All proceeds go towards supporting teams around the world. Thank you all for your enthusiasm and for taking Software Freedom to your communities and countries! It is a truly global event and one that will hopefully help all people discover Software Freedom. Robert.

July 31, 2007

Artwork with Spanish text

by Judy Wilson

Robert and Pia, This is what I've written to send to ... the announce list? I've put the Reply address as the announce list, right? ***** There is some artwork with Spanish text that has been placed on the Artwork page. Look at the bottom of the page. http://softwarefreedomday.org/Artwork/2007/Logo Judy Software Freedom Board

July 17, 2007

Two week left for ordering extras!

by Judy Wilson

Greetings to all the teams revving up for a great Software Freedom Day on September 15! Though it's nine weeks until SFD07, there are TWO WEEKS left for you all (registered teams) to order extra t-shirts and TOCDs to be added to your shipment. You will be receiving: 3 t-shirts for your team Ubuntu CDs (we are trying to send as many as you requested) The Open CD (again, we'll send what you ordered up to 25) You have TWO WEEKS to purchase extra t-shirts and TOCDs that we can include in your package. You can make the order until July 31 at http://sfd.zac-ware.com. We may continue to sell t-shirts after that time, but we cannot assure they will arrive in time. We will start shipping around the first week of August to insure you have what you need for your event. We hope you are as excited as we are about this opportunity to spread the word about open source/free software! Judy Software Freedom International

July 17, 2007