Sandro Mathys

Last preparations are done and we’re ready. As you might have seen on the FedoraEvents page, the OpenExpo 2008 in Bern, Switzerland is taking place tomorrow and the day after. It’s Switzerland’s biggest open source software oriented event, featuring a large conference program with speakers like Alan Cox, some IBM-guys, some guys from different public administrations, and many many more. After the first day, there’ll be a sponsored social event, too. And yes, Microsoft will be there too, with a booth and even joining the panel discussion.

Fedora will have one of the many sponsored “booths” (i.e. a small table, some chairs and space for a poster or two) there. Additionally, we’re one of the major distributions offered in the InstallZone (IZ). The IZ is a great thing. One can go there with his Laptop (or PC, if willing to transport it there) and have a distro installed in either dual- or single-boot mode. If that person already has a distro installed but has certain problems with it, he or she can come to the IZ for support.

The IZ is run by Puzzle ITC, a Swiss company specialized on open source software. They are providing the Ubuntu support, we’re providing help with Fedora installations. There’s also some other people who’ll give support to the visitors. Most of them will support Ubuntu (and flavors) and/or Debian but I think openSUSE, SLES, RHEL and CentOS are represented as well. Thanks to the individuals (including some guys from LUG Bern, LugBE) to help us out there!

Fedora Ambassadors on the booth (and as needed in the IZ) will be FabianAffolter (who organized the booth), JoergSimon (who’ll join us from Germany and bring along an OLPC as well as a laptop running KDE 4 (rawhide) on it), TimeaRusz (who’sgiving her best to support us at all Swiss events, as far as the University lets her) and me, SandroMathys (you already guessed, that I’m the guy behind the Fedora support in the IZ).
GeroldKassube and AndreasRau would love to be with us but can’t afford to leave their work behind. They might join us at the sovial event, though. Additionally, Frederik Bijlsma will join us on Wednesday. He’s a Red Hat Solution Architect from Germany and will bring along F8 DVDs for us. We only have F8 LiveCDs so far.

As I mentioned, we’re quite ready. We have posters, CDs, badges, name plates, flyers, t-shirts, stickers, laptops running Fedora in different flavors (x86/x64_86, KDE3, KDE4, Gnome, F8, rawhide, maybe more), tickets (get one for free if you plan to come and visit us), and probably everything else we need. The good thing about the OpenExpo in Bern is, that Fabian lives like 5 minutes away (walking distance) and I’m not living too far away as well (some minutes by Tram). And as usual, the community is very helpful too. If you’re missing something they can provide, they will. That’s the great thing about all those open source communities. Even though e.g. Fedora and Ubuntu are big rivals, the people supporting either are always very friendly and helpful towards the people supporting the other.

Well, I hope I’ll have the time to write a report after each of the events days. cu @ Bern! :)

Don’t miss Fabian’s Day Zero report (in German): Der Tag vor der OpenExpo oder OpenExpo 2008 – 00