Sandro Mathys

The OpenExpo finished yesterday but I didn’t have time yet to blog a report. So here’s the report of the first day at the event. I’ll try to post an article about the second (and last) day of that event later today. That was no promise.

Our team of Fedora ambassadors arrived early (in IT terms)  in the morning: around 07:30! The fair was not going to open until 09:00 but the booth had to be set up until 08:30 to give the OpenExpo guys a chance to review it before the fair’s opened. So we hung up some posters and banners and placed a laptop and a OLPC on the desk. After we’ve done that, we went to the InstallZone (IZ) and placed a poster and a big banner there. Since the IZ was just on the way between the building’s entry and the OpenExpo’s entry, those ads were placed perfectly there.  We got the ads there well before the IZ started at 10:00. We even had enough spare time to help building up the IZ (replacing tables, lay out some ethernet cables and stuff).

I was in the IZ from 08:45 till 18:00 with only short breaks in between (e.g. while waiting for a installation to complete) . So I can’t really tell much about wha’s been happening at the booth. But as far as I’ve seen, there’s been a lot of people in the morning and still quite some folks later on. The IZ was really full in the morning as well but more relaxed later. Some guys were working there until 20:00, though.

During the day, several people of Red Hat arrived and supported our efforts very well. Frederik Bijlsma, Jan Wildeboer and Alan Cox were very welcome guests during both days.

At 18:00 the SocialEvent (SE) started, planed to run until 22:00. There’s been some free food there (not as much and as fine as at the last OpenExpo, tho) and much free beer and stuff. Google sponsored food and beer – but the budget was used up quite soon, threatening us to get no more beer for free. Fortunately, Red Hat’s Jan Wildeboer was there and just sponsored some more budget. Unfortunately, we drank too much and therefore, the budget didn’t last long enough again…

…but that we now had to pay for our beer was no reason to stop the party. 22:00 was no reason as well. The bar was then closed around 23:30 and I figure that’s been a good thing or I would have slept even less before the next day at the fair. Well, I’ll say more about that in the next report about the second day.

Oh, and I took some pictures – I hope I’ll have the time to upload them.