Okay, T - 6 days and counting. And anything I need to do or pack needs to be done by Tues night since I need to be in St George & Vegas on my way.
1) Re booth manning - Ted, great of you to volunteer so much. I'll be free that last session on Sat and after lunch on Sun, though I hoped to get out of LA in daylight (it's hard enough for me in the light). Maybe both Jon's can also help out? And anyone else.
2) Re Equipment - I'll bring my easle and 2-3 whiteboards. I assume you don't want the panel booth display. I'll also bring the LCD projector and power strips and extension cord (hopefully this isn't one of those stupid union places where you can't plug in your own power strip). The hotel said there was free hi-speed in the rooms and $10/day wifi in the lobby - don't know what we can expect in the exhibit hall.
3) To limit Murphy's law impact, I think a few at least letter sized hardcopy screenshots or prints would still be good: maybe, 1)showing Inkboard 2)showing connectors 3)showing gradients/fancy stuff 4)show the wiki stuff 5)the martian guy 6)a print showing the xml code with a title explaining the "open data format". I'll try to do 5 and 6 and maybe something showing our company flyer done totally in Inkscape.
ps: I'm booked in the hotel Fri and Sat so we can store anything there.
Anything else ? John
Ted Gould wrote:
On Fri, 2006-02-03 at 09:56 -0700, John Taber wrote:
Ted Gould wrote:
We have the booth, with a table on one side, chairs on the other. On the backdrop they gave us we get something white, perhaps butcher paper. We then point the projector at that surface.
Actually a white poster board works better, the harder smooth surface reflects better (or could use one of the nice wood framed white boards I can bring, and you can write on it like a smartboard) - in fact sometimes it looks like a flat plasma display.
That sounds great! That way we have someplace to write "INKSCAPE" too :)
On the table we have two computer for people to use Inkscape, one of which is attached to the
projector so that people can see what that person is doing. Then, when we want to run demo's we're already set up, and we have "live art" on the background without having to get it printed.
Two questions - 1) is anyone willing to have their computer be pounded on by the public? 2) Having our display depend upon computers means machines always have to be there - since there's only a few of us, what about the times we aren't there ? or want to go to lunch, bathroom, etc.....
I think the only session that I'm 100% out on is the last session on Saturday, I have to leave early. I want to see the keynote on Sunday, but that is before the exhibition floor opens anyway. Any other presentations would be fine, but there is nothing I need to see. So, if it's you and me, we can go to the bathroom :) I've also got another friend who may come, not an Inkscape or Linux person, but just loves conferences. We'll see how that pans out.
I'm still trying to convince the Wacom rep for LA that he should loan us tablets for the computers. Then people would only be beating on those :) Otherwise, I think it would be wise to pick up some cheap USB keyboard/mouse combos. I don't personally have a desktop, I think that would be better. I'll ask around if I can find some to borrow for the weekend. I don't think we need anything that modern.
Having done a bunch of these, live art is cooler, hanging art is more initial work (getting posters printed) but a whole lot easier at the conference. I've usually done a combination with live only for a certain period. I never knew what sales guys meant when they complained that shows were exhausting until I did a few. That's why walking away to go have lunch, attend a session, etc makes it a lot more fun.
I think that it is feasible. If nothing else I can open some entries from OCAL, and turn on the node editor so it looks like I know what I'm doing ;) Or, we can just put up the about screen when people aren't using the computer.
--Ted