Sydney

Software Freedom Day Sydney 2007 is over! Thanks to everyone who helped and participated. You can read our report over here.

Sydney will be again participating in Software Freedom Day for 2007 with the assistance of the Sydney Linux User Group, Linux Australia and all the wonderful volunteers that put their time and energy in!

Locations

IMPORTANT NOTE: We will be celebrating Software Freedom Day on the day after, Sunday 16 September.

This is to allow us to take advantage of the computer fair at The Roundhouse, The University of New South Wales. You can view maps of the location here and here. General maps of the campus (including parking) are here, and we also have information on transport.

We have two tables (each just over 2m long) booked at the computer fair, which we shall use to demonstrate FOSS to shoppers.

We will also be using Room 203 in the Law Building (level 2), only a short walk away. This room is to be used for talks, demonstrations and tutorials. People who express interest in FOSS at the fair should be directed here so that they may learn more.

Basic plan

We will commence just after 8am, meeting at Room 203 in the Law Building (level 2).
Throughout the day, we will have people roaming around campus, distributing material and generating interest.
We need to begin setting up at the computer fair before 9am.
The fair runs from 10am to 3pm. Talks and demonstrations will run simultaneously in the Law room.
We have the Law room booked until 5pm.

If you are interested in doing something on Saturday 15 September, you might consider heading over to Newcastle to assist the LOGIN team. They are especially looking for people to give talks and presentations at their event at the University of Newcastle.

What we need

We are short on CDs and demonstration hardware/software! Please contact us if you can help!

People! We need helpers at the stand, people to talk to visitors, people to hand out fliers and CDs around the place, and so on. We would like to build relationships with other vendors at the fair so that they may become more FOSS-friendly, and we might even be able to help people get their newly-purchased hardware working with Linux. Please let us know in advance if you are coming, to assist our planning.
Demonstration hardware and software. We've only got two tables of display space, but it would be nice if we could try to demonstrate FOSS working in a variety of situations: e.g. desktops, laptops, older PCs, PPC Macs, embedded devices and even on Windows and Mac OS.
Stuff to hand out. We're arranging fliers, CDs and balloons, but if you can think of anything else, let us know. If you can arrange for the production/delivery of those items, even better. We are especially after copies of TheOpenCD, Fedora and [U|K|X]buntu.
Any other help/suggestions on how to make this SFD the best ever!

What to wear and what to say

Wear something neat, that stands out and identifies you as a supporter of software freedom. If you have an SFD t-shirt (for 2007 or previous years), wear that. Avoid potentially condescending or intimidating shirts that say things like "I won't fix your computer", "There's only 10 types of people in the world: those that understand binary and those that don't", and so on.

Remember that our target audience are people who are relatively new to FOSS. Considering that we will be at a computer fair at a major university, expect the crowd to be mostly made up of students and fairly tech-savvy people. They may have heard of Linux, Firefox, OpenOffice.org or other free software, but aren't necessarily users of or experts in them. For those who are already users of FOSS, we just need to encourage them to participate in the community. We also want to encourage vendors at other stands to support FOSS.

Remember that we are trying to promote software choice and have fun. There's no need to be militant or argumentative. Not everyone is ready to switch over to an entirely free OS immediately, but they might be willing to try a liveCD, dual-boot or virtualisation. Don't forget that some of the most popular examples of FOSS also run on Windows and Mac OS.

For more ideas on how you can be persuasive, read the About SFD page and Linux Australia's Introduction to Linux, Free Software and Open Source.

Contact and further information

If you are interested in helping out in any way, shape or form, contact Sridhar Dhanapalan at sridhar@slug.org.au.

Join the SLUG announce mailing list to receive notifications of SFD and other FOSS events in Sydney. To take part in the discussion of our plan, join the SLUG activities mailing list.

For information about previous SFD events in Sydney, check out our archive page. Sydney has participated in SFD since 2005.