How did SCALE go? Can someone write up a synopsis? Are there any pictures?
Jon
On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 13:03 -0800, Jon Phillips wrote:
How did SCALE go? Can someone write up a synopsis? Are there any pictures?
No, no pictures. John and Jon wouldn't let me out of the booth enough to take any ;)
I think that it went very well. We got awesome booth placement right between Google and LTSP, both high draw projects. Plus the LTSP guy even had Inkscape on his systems. Google of course had overflow, which allowed us to chat them up.
They had almost 1000 people check in at the conference. I printed 250 copies of each of the fliers I posted here earlier, and judging by how many we had left I'd say 150-200 people came through the booth. I had originally planned on turning each into a little tutorial, but there really wasn't room in the booth.
We had two computer set up running Ubuntu and Inkscape. They were both 500 Mhz machines, which I think was a plus because whenever people asked about performance we could just point to them. Wacom let us borrow two Intuos Tablets (which was awesome of them) so that became a draw to the booth, though I think some people thought that you couldn't use Inkscape without a tablet. John Tabor brought a projector, so we used that as one of the monitors so that we had something more visible for large groups of people, and also people walking by. I think that was a huge plus.
I was surprised by how many people hadn't heard of Inkscape. There was also a large contingent of people who had heard of it, but weren't familiar with what it is. At the same time, we also had people coming through the booth who were very familiar with Inkscape and wanted to thank us all for the project existing, though they had a few gripes (like printing). Chris DiBona even came to the booth to check on the Google Summer of Code projects -- he seemed happy with the progress.
Probably the funniest story was from the gal across the hall from us at Bitrock. It is a small startup doing installers. She came over to talk to us as she had been assigned to do the fliers for their booth, and given Photoshop to do them in. The fliers were okay, but when I knew that they were done in Photoshop, I found them very impressive. Also, the copy of Photoshop she was given was a Spanish version, and she didn't speak Spanish. So, she was thrilled about Inkscape, and the fact that we have an English translation :)
I think the most inspiring stories are the educational ones. There seems to be several groups of people refurbishing older computers and giving them out to families who can't afford them. They're usually given without software licenses, or if they get any, it's only for Windows. So they're looking for applications that are useful for these machines. I think that they were all impressed by the abilities of Inkscape, and excited to integrate them into their projects.
Overall, a good conference. I think Inkscape was represented well by John Tabor, Jon Cruz, Josh Andler and myself. We also had a good time hanging out together.
--Ted
Excellent write-up Ted! Thanks, sounds like you guys had a hell of a good time. :-)
Bryce
On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 11:18:25PM -0800, Ted Gould wrote:
On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 13:03 -0800, Jon Phillips wrote:
How did SCALE go? Can someone write up a synopsis? Are there any pictures?
No, no pictures. John and Jon wouldn't let me out of the booth enough to take any ;)
I think that it went very well. We got awesome booth placement right between Google and LTSP, both high draw projects. Plus the LTSP guy even had Inkscape on his systems. Google of course had overflow, which allowed us to chat them up.
On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 23:18 -0800, Ted Gould wrote:
On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 13:03 -0800, Jon Phillips wrote:
How did SCALE go? Can someone write up a synopsis? Are there any pictures?
No, no pictures. John and Jon wouldn't let me out of the booth enough to take any ;)
Whoa!
I think that it went very well. We got awesome booth placement right between Google and LTSP, both high draw projects. Plus the LTSP guy even had Inkscape on his systems. Google of course had overflow, which allowed us to chat them up.
Awesome!...It would be cool to get a link up to the photos off of flickr or something for the main Inkscape page.
They had almost 1000 people check in at the conference. I printed 250 copies of each of the fliers I posted here earlier, and judging by how many we had left I'd say 150-200 people came through the booth. I had originally planned on turning each into a little tutorial, but there really wasn't room in the booth.
Yes, we need to get some generic Inkscape cards printed up that we can get mass produced for cheap through vistaprint.com. Ted, you have nice Inkscape cards :) Maybe you can hook us up with your design :)
We had two computer set up running Ubuntu and Inkscape. They were both 500 Mhz machines, which I think was a plus because whenever people asked about performance we could just point to them. Wacom let us borrow two Intuos Tablets (which was awesome of them) so that became a draw to the booth, though I think some people thought that you couldn't use Inkscape without a tablet. John Tabor brought a projector, so we used that as one of the monitors so that we had something more visible for large groups of people, and also people walking by. I think that was a huge plus.
Awesome!
I was surprised by how many people hadn't heard of Inkscape. There was also a large contingent of people who had heard of it, but weren't familiar with what it is. At the same time, we also had people coming through the booth who were very familiar with Inkscape and wanted to thank us all for the project existing, though they had a few gripes (like printing). Chris DiBona even came to the booth to check on the Google Summer of Code projects -- he seemed happy with the progress.
Excellent! Word has it they are doing the Summer of Code again, so hopefully we will get even more spots in their queue.
Probably the funniest story was from the gal across the hall from us at Bitrock. It is a small startup doing installers. She came over to talk to us as she had been assigned to do the fliers for their booth, and given Photoshop to do them in. The fliers were okay, but when I knew that they were done in Photoshop, I found them very impressive. Also, the copy of Photoshop she was given was a Spanish version, and she didn't speak Spanish. So, she was thrilled about Inkscape, and the fact that we have an English translation :)
hahahahah
I think the most inspiring stories are the educational ones. There seems to be several groups of people refurbishing older computers and giving them out to families who can't afford them. They're usually given without software licenses, or if they get any, it's only for Windows. So they're looking for applications that are useful for these machines. I think that they were all impressed by the abilities of Inkscape, and excited to integrate them into their projects.
Overall, a good conference. I think Inkscape was represented well by John Tabor, Jon Cruz, Josh Andler and myself. We also had a good time hanging out together.
--Ted
Awesome guys! That is so great you all got together for this! I'm so jealous. Seems like SCALE will be a major place for Inkscapers together in the coming years. Maybe we should just plan on hitting that one every year :)
Jon
On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 18:02 -0800, Jon Phillips wrote:
Yes, we need to get some generic Inkscape cards printed up that we can get mass produced for cheap through vistaprint.com. Ted, you have nice Inkscape cards :) Maybe you can hook us up with your design :)
I can do that, I'll throw them in the inkscape_marketing module. BTW, other people are allowed to put stuff in there :)
Awesome guys! That is so great you all got together for this! I'm so jealous. Seems like SCALE will be a major place for Inkscapers together in the coming years. Maybe we should just plan on hitting that one every year :)
Well, I'll probably be there as it is local. I always enjoy people coming down.
Also, I think that this year I'm going to make a serious effort to attend SVG Open. It is in Victoria British Columbia, which should be an awesome place to visit. I'm not sure what everyone else is thinking, but it would be nice to see as many people there as possible.
--Ted
On 2/15/06, Ted Gould <ted@...11...> wrote:
On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 18:02 -0800, Jon Phillips wrote:
Yes, we need to get some generic Inkscape cards printed up that we can get mass produced for cheap through vistaprint.com. Ted, you have nice Inkscape cards :) Maybe you can hook us up with your design :)
I can do that, I'll throw them in the inkscape_marketing module. BTW, other people are allowed to put stuff in there :)
Awesome guys! That is so great you all got together for this! I'm so jealous. Seems like SCALE will be a major place for Inkscapers together in the coming years. Maybe we should just plan on hitting that one every year :)
Well, I'll probably be there as it is local. I always enjoy people coming down.
Also, I think that this year I'm going to make a serious effort to attend SVG Open. It is in Victoria British Columbia, which should be an awesome place to visit. I'm not sure what everyone else is thinking, but it would be nice to see as many people there as possible.
--Ted
Didn't realize this was in my backyard. It would be great to actually meet some Inkscapers in person.
If you want more information about Victoria, feel free to contact me personally.
Corey
On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 12:15:48AM -0800, Corey Burger wrote:
On 2/15/06, Ted Gould <ted@...11...> wrote:
Also, I think that this year I'm going to make a serious effort to attend SVG Open. It is in Victoria British Columbia, which should be an awesome place to visit. I'm not sure what everyone else is thinking, but it would be nice to see as many people there as possible.
Didn't realize this was in my backyard. It would be great to actually meet some Inkscapers in person.
If you want more information about Victoria, feel free to contact me personally.
Cool, this isn't too far for me, I think I can make it. Might be able to pull Kees along too. :-)
Bryce
On Fri, 2006-02-17 at 00:48 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 12:15:48AM -0800, Corey Burger wrote:
On 2/15/06, Ted Gould <ted@...11...> wrote:
Also, I think that this year I'm going to make a serious effort to attend SVG Open. It is in Victoria British Columbia, which should be an awesome place to visit. I'm not sure what everyone else is thinking, but it would be nice to see as many people there as possible.
Didn't realize this was in my backyard. It would be great to actually meet some Inkscapers in person.
If you want more information about Victoria, feel free to contact me personally.
Cool, this isn't too far for me, I think I can make it. Might be able to pull Kees along too. :-)
Bryce
Totally...gotta present at it...have had to delay svgopen for the past 2 years...
Victoria and Vancouver are amazing.
Jon
Jon Phillips wrote:
On Fri, 2006-02-17 at 00:48 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 12:15:48AM -0800, Corey Burger wrote:
On 2/15/06, Ted Gould <ted@...11...> wrote:
Also, I think that this year I'm going to make a serious effort to attend SVG Open. It is in Victoria British Columbia, which should be an awesome place to visit. I'm not sure what everyone else is thinking, but it would be nice to see as many people there as possible.
Didn't realize this was in my backyard. It would be great to actually meet some Inkscapers in person.
If you want more information about Victoria, feel free to contact me personally.
Cool, this isn't too far for me, I think I can make it. Might be able to pull Kees along too. :-)
Bryce
Totally...gotta present at it...have had to delay svgopen for the past 2 years...
Victoria and Vancouver are amazing.
I'm also hoping/planning to attend and combine it with a NW vacation. This seems like a real international group and could be a great time to show off translations.
John
Ted Gould wrote:
On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 13:03 -0800, Jon Phillips wrote:
How did SCALE go? Can someone write up a synopsis? Are there any pictures?
No, no pictures. John and Jon wouldn't let me out of the booth enough to take any ;)
Ha! You couldn't get Ted away with a crowbar :) Kudos to Ted for his great effort putting together flyers, etc (and his excellent LA dining suggestions). Kudos to Jon Cruz for some great onscreen artwork, oh and a cool little XSLT demo. Kudos to Josh Adler for making a big effort to get there and his help explaining to many visitors the comparisons between Illustrator and Inkscape.
I too was surprised how many Linux users didn't know about Inkscape - many asked questions on how it compared to GIMP (not realizing Inkscape was vector based). Besides the usual comparisons to Illustrator, quite a few visitors I spoke with made the comparison to Corel Draw.
A good follow up we discussed will be to create a flyer showing how Inkscape, GIMP, and Scribus relate to each other and can be used together.
It was lots of fun and I encourage others to do a Inkscape demo when an expo is near you.
I think that it went very well. We got awesome booth placement right between Google and LTSP, both high draw projects. Plus the LTSP guy even had Inkscape on his systems. Google of course had overflow, which allowed us to chat them up.
They had almost 1000 people check in at the conference. I printed 250 copies of each of the fliers I posted here earlier, and judging by how many we had left I'd say 150-200 people came through the booth. I had originally planned on turning each into a little tutorial, but there really wasn't room in the booth.
We had two computer set up running Ubuntu and Inkscape. They were both 500 Mhz machines, which I think was a plus because whenever people asked about performance we could just point to them. Wacom let us borrow two Intuos Tablets (which was awesome of them) so that became a draw to the booth, though I think some people thought that you couldn't use Inkscape without a tablet. John Tabor brought a projector, so we used that as one of the monitors so that we had something more visible for large groups of people, and also people walking by. I think that was a huge plus.
I was surprised by how many people hadn't heard of Inkscape. There was also a large contingent of people who had heard of it, but weren't familiar with what it is. At the same time, we also had people coming through the booth who were very familiar with Inkscape and wanted to thank us all for the project existing, though they had a few gripes (like printing). Chris DiBona even came to the booth to check on the Google Summer of Code projects -- he seemed happy with the progress.
Probably the funniest story was from the gal across the hall from us at Bitrock. It is a small startup doing installers. She came over to talk to us as she had been assigned to do the fliers for their booth, and given Photoshop to do them in. The fliers were okay, but when I knew that they were done in Photoshop, I found them very impressive. Also, the copy of Photoshop she was given was a Spanish version, and she didn't speak Spanish. So, she was thrilled about Inkscape, and the fact that we have an English translation :)
I think the most inspiring stories are the educational ones. There seems to be several groups of people refurbishing older computers and giving them out to families who can't afford them. They're usually given without software licenses, or if they get any, it's only for Windows. So they're looking for applications that are useful for these machines. I think that they were all impressed by the abilities of Inkscape, and excited to integrate them into their projects.
Overall, a good conference. I think Inkscape was represented well by John Tabor, Jon Cruz, Josh Andler and myself. We also had a good time hanging out together.
--Ted
participants (5)
-
Bryce Harrington -
Corey Burger -
John Taber -
Jon Phillips -
Ted Gould