Thread: Fwd: Participation in GITEX (Middle East)

Rajesh Sharma wrote:
> pardon the self-follow-up, but here's some more information on GITEX 2006 in
> Dubai. ...
>
> I've been a constant visitor to Gitex from nearly 7 years, and companies
> from many countries participate and have booth displaying their product line
> up(Hardware/Software). This show ,attracts the entire of Middle East (Middle
> East & North Africa region) and I've never seen any Open Source booth in
> there. This year it's in Nov., I was thinking if we could have a booth of
> PostreSQL in the midst of MS, Oracle, Sun.
> If yes, how do we proceed?
> lately I had shown my interest in forming a User Group in Dubai, which I'm
> following up with couple of my friends.

What local PostgreSQL users usually do is approach the organizers seeing
if we can get a free booth, and if they are willing to pay to fly in one
of the community members to give a talk.  They might be willing to do
one or both of them.  If they don't want to do either, I think we are
stuck because these conferences are looking for paying booth people, and
we have no money.

Many conferences do have open source people because they feel it will
increase the visibility and attendance of their conference.

--
  Bruce Momjian   http://candle.pha.pa.us
  SRA OSS, Inc.   http://www.sraoss.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Wednesday 15 March 2006 02:00, Rajesh Sharma wrote:
> pardon the self-follow-up, but here's some more information on GITEX 2006
> in Dubai. ...
>
> I've been a constant visitor to Gitex from nearly 7 years, and companies
> from many countries participate and have booth displaying their product
> line up(Hardware/Software). This show ,attracts the entire of Middle East
> (Middle East & North Africa region) and I've never seen any Open Source
> booth in there. This year it's in Nov., I was thinking if we could have a
> booth of PostreSQL in the midst of MS, Oracle, Sun.
> If yes, how do we proceed?
> lately I had shown my interest in forming a User Group in Dubai, which I'm
> following up with couple of my friends.
>

See if you can contact the conference vendors and try to find out if they have
any booths for non-profit/non-corporate  open source projects that you could
staff for no cost. They probably don't, but I would ask in that way first. If
they ask what PostgreSQL is, explain it is an RDBMS and is supported by
companies like fujitsu, sun, red hat... and used by major companies like
BASF, Cisco, and NTT Data.  Flavor those lists to taste with companies in
your area that people will have heard about.

If you can get a booth for free, then do another call out here for booth
volunteers to staff it.  If you can't get a booth for free, you'll have to
see how much one would cost. The site claims about $400, but maybe you can
get a reduced rate. In any case you would have to come up with the funds to
pay for the booth. The project does have some limited funds available, so you
might be able to get some help, but I would not plan on it since there are
other conferences where we have a more solid presence and those would
probably get more backing first. In any case, if you can secure a booth,
again, do another call out for booth staffers from that region. You'll want
local people to staff since the cost for non-local people to travel there is
probably prohibitive, especially without a dedicated presentation to give.
(And honestly, I'm not sure how many people would be comfortable traveling to
that area given the geopolitics involved. If someone where willing to pay for
it, Dubai is one of the places I would be comfortable traveling in, but
others may not)

Now we do have some materials like flyers you can print out, and the live cd's
you could burn and hand out, though they are english so you may want to
translate them.  We might also have other materials like posters/banners that
we could send, though it might conflict with some other conferences around
that time of year, so no guarantees.  It might also be cheaper to make your
own than to have them sent; but that can all be worked out. Step 1 will be
for you to secure a booth.  HTH.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Rajesh,

> I've been a constant visitor to Gitex from nearly 7 years, and companies
> from many countries participate and have booth displaying their product line
> up(Hardware/Software). This show ,attracts the entire of Middle East (Middle
> East & North Africa region) and I've never seen any Open Source booth in
> there. This year it's in Nov., I was thinking if we could have a booth of
> PostreSQL in the midst of MS, Oracle, Sun.
> If yes, how do we proceed?

Please read the advice provided by other users.  If you can't get a
donated booth, I may be able to get you a "station" at a booth with one
of our supporting companies, such as Sun or Fujitsu.

--Josh

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Rajesh Sharma wrote:

> Thanks guys for the interest in having a booth at Gitex.
> Robert I'll definately approach the organizers as per your thought and
> moreover there are no geopolitics issues involved in Dubai :), its the main
> Business Capital/Hub for the entire Middle East.
>
> Josh I didn't understand the word "Station".

Hi Rajesh ... by Station, Josh means *effectively* sharing a booth with
them ... you wouldn't be able to set it up like you'd want in so far as
adding a whack of bannesr and such, but you'd be considered a participate
at the show, and would be there primarily to promote PostgreSQL ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664