2015-02-24 21:19 GMT+01:00 Josh Andler <scislac@...400...>:
Hey all,
So, for those that don't know, SCaLE is the Southern California Linux Expo, it's the largest annual open source conference of it's type in North America (we had over 3,000 registered attendees this year). Just for transparency, I am one of the conference organizers (the Arts Chair), so I wanted to put that out there.
Jon Cruz probably has a much better feel for how the booth activity was, but from the time I was there it seemed like the expo attendees were really interested in Inkscape as usual. The mix of people who know about Inkscape and those that have never heard of it was about the same as previous years from what I can tell (about 50/50), Jon could probably better comment on that since he spent far more time in the booth than I. Probably some of my best interactions were where people were users that couldn't figure out how to do things, and teaching them on the spot.
Just wanted to say thank you for representing us at this event :)
I did want to say that the banner that we got for the booth made a big difference in terms of an appearance of professionalism. There was also an 18"x24" sign for the hackfest (which SCaLE paid for) which contributed to the booth appearance. Jon could give you numbers on how many of the Moo mini cards went out, but I think stickers will be a must in the future (people love free stuff, and I want to see people's laptops decorated with our logo). Anyway the items we had were definitely a great first step imho, but there are other components which we might want to look into for future years. Table skirt or much larger banner/booth backdrop for example. Note: The banner we have is great for the front of the booth, we just need something for the back as well.
Regarding promotional items: I think it could be useful to create a good sticker design and T-shirt design (preferably something more interesting than just our logo) and commit them to the "branding" directory, or otherwise make it available e.g. on the website.
Rationale: There are now many companies that sell custom T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, stickers and similar promotional items printed using DTG technology. Usually it is substantially cheaper to order a one-off item at a local DTG printing company than ship it across Europe or even from the US. Therefore, this could make Inkscape promotional items more easily available. For instance, ordering items from a local company called cupsell.pl is approximately half as expensive for me as ordering from zazzle.com or similar US printers, and that's not even taking shipping charges into account.
Regards, Krzysztof