LUGOD attended the Government Technology Conference
(GTC West 2003) at the Sacramento Convention Center in May 2003.
We staffed a booth, which was donated by the GTC organizers.
DAY 1
Wednesday, May 14th
Some give-aways: tkeKompany.com brochures, Sharp Zaurus PDA brochures,
CodeWeavers CrossOver Office and Plugin mail-in rebates,
O'Reilly "Open Source Bibliography" books, and O'Reilly catalogs and
discount coupons. Also seen is an OpenOffice.org t-shirt (for the raffle).
LUGOD's Demo box running Debian Linux with MicrosoftOffice 2000 installed
and running (seen here is MSWord) under CrossOver Office (trial version).
Our front table was packed with give-aways: LUGOD event flyers,
GNUWin II CDs (compilation of Open Source software for Windows),
Knoppix CDs (bootable Linux CD that runs directly off the CDROM; it doesn't
install onto the hard disk), Oracle9i for Linux evaluation discs,
O'Reilly catalogs and coupons, and O'Reilly "Open Source Bibliography"
books.
Doug Barbieri (left) and Rob Rogers (right). Doug's laptop was set-up
with wireless access to our demo machine (where we have a Debian package
mirror and a live copy of our website running under Apache/PHP). Doug
switched from his Linux install to Knoppix, on occasion.
The view from the end of the 900 aisle on the expo floor, where our booth was.
Directly across from us was Sharp, who were demonstrating large
printer/photocopiers.
Beyond that, at the very far end, was the e-mail access computers and
cafeteria. Our private WLAN worked all the way out there!
A close-up of our main give-aways: GNUWin II, Knoppix and OpenOffice.org
discs, and our 'What Is LUGOD' and 'Brief Overview of Linux and OpenSource'
handouts.
A close-up of the O'Reilly "Open Source Bibliography" book.
Our business-card-collection jar. (Also known as our donation jar at our
meetings.)
Doug Barbieri's plush penguin, which grabbed people's attention from a
distance.
3pm on Wednesday and Thursday, and 1pm on Friday was raffle time!
O'Reilly sent us two copies each of "Buidling Secure Servers with Linux,"
"Running Linux," "Learning Red Hat Linux," "Understanding the Linux Kernel"
and "Linux Kernel Hacks", as well as a t-shirt and mug.
After the show on Wednesday, there was an opening day reception (with very
loud music) at the Hiatt Regency hotel, across from the Convention Center.
Here are Rob Rogers and Nicole Carlson enjoying some food.
The band at the reception.
The reception was pretty busy, but not completely packed.
DAY 2
Thursday, May 15th
Mike Simons and Brian Lavender talking with a friend.
Doug Barbieri's laptop booted into Knoppix.
Paul Miller and Michael Wenk.
Our business cards arrived in time for Thursday. We also received a lot
more OpenOffice.org discs from Sun, thanks to Paul Miller!
DAY 3
Friday, May 16th
Mike Simons and Paul Miller helping another exhibitor replace the batteries
in her bubble-blowing 'Stitch' toy.
A fellow from HP's booth donated some squeezable Tux penguins for us to
give away!
As things slowed down, Frozen Bubble became popular on the demo machine.
Marc Hall (left) and Rob Rogers (right) talking with a Linux-using visitor.
Ricardo (front) and Brian Lavender (back).
On the opposite side of our booth was a company selling massage chairs,
which were popular with everyone, including the LUGOD booth staff!
