Thread: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Susanne Ebrecht
Date:
Hi,

last weekend we had a postgresql booth at Fosdem
(http://www.fosdem.org). It was the first time, that there was a
postgresql booth and is was a great success.
There were so much visitors on Saturday, that we thought we wouldn't
have enough flyers for sunday. We gave away round about 1000 flyers
(english, french and german).
Just for an overview: the FreeBSD Community gave away 1700 CDs (1500 on
saturday).
We were glad to meet persons of other european communities and one
developer of pgcluster.
We thanks the french community for the french flyers.
Normally for donation, we sell some merchandising stuff like t-shirts
and mugs. In 2006, totally we sold 40 mugs at 12 german events. 25 mugs
were left after 2006. At fosdem we sold them all.
Of course we met a lot of very interessting persons (other communities,
developers, ...) at brussels.
Most questions of the visitors were very technically or the visitors
just talled us, how happy they are using postgresql.
Only 5 times a visitor ask the question: what is the different to mysql.
There was one slapstick Andreas blogged:
http://ads.wars-nicht.de/blog/archives/120-The-real-difference-between-MySQL-and-PostgreSQL.html

Regards

Susanne


Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Guillaume Lelarge
Date:
Susanne Ebrecht a ecrit le 26/02/2007 10:06:
> last weekend we had a postgresql booth at Fosdem
> (http://www.fosdem.org). It was the first time, that there was a
> postgresql booth and is was a great success.
> There were so much visitors on Saturday, that we thought we wouldn't
> have enough flyers for sunday. We gave away round about 1000 flyers
> (english, french and german).
> Just for an overview: the FreeBSD Community gave away 1700 CDs (1500 on
> saturday).
> We were glad to meet persons of other european communities and one
> developer of pgcluster.
> We thanks the french community for the french flyers.

You're welcome. There was so much interesting conferences to attend that
I didn't find the time to actually talk more with you on the booth. As I
told you yesterday, perhaps next year we can share the same booth ?
perhaps also with the italian user group ? and/or others ?

I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
Perhaps we can do the same next year ?

> Normally for donation, we sell some merchandising stuff like t-shirts
> and mugs. In 2006, totally we sold 40 mugs at 12 german events. 25 mugs
> were left after 2006. At fosdem we sold them all.
> Of course we met a lot of very interessting persons (other communities,
> developers, ...) at brussels.
> Most questions of the visitors were very technically or the visitors
> just talled us, how happy they are using postgresql.
> Only 5 times a visitor ask the question: what is the different to mysql.
> There was one slapstick Andreas blogged:
> http://ads.wars-nicht.de/blog/archives/120-The-real-difference-between-MySQL-and-PostgreSQL.html
>

:)

I'll post the picture I took yesterday.

Thanks to the german community for handling the booth. (Oh and I'm
wearing the german PostgreSQL tshirt, thanks again).


--
Guillaume.

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
Date:
On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:14:07 +0100
Guillaume Lelarge <guillaume@lelarge.info> wrote:

> You're welcome. There was so much interesting conferences to attend that
> I didn't find the time to actually talk more with you on the booth.

;-)
The whole event was very interesting.


>  As I told you yesterday, perhaps next year we can share the same booth ?
> perhaps also with the italian user group ? and/or others ?

This sounds like a really good idea, but then we need a greater booth,
yours only had place for 3 people. We should talk early about this idea
and send a request to the FOSDEM team.


> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
> Perhaps we can do the same next year ?

I'm interested, of course. But you need some more people to support the
devroom and the booth. That will be a bit tricky ;-) Oh, and like
Susanne told us: more merchandising material. Around 20 people asked
for the "Slony" toy:

http://ads.wars-nicht.de/pictures/v/events/fosdem_2007/dsc_1589_640x480.jpg.html


Kind regards

--
                Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
 (Ferenc Mantfeld)

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Josh Berkus
Date:
Guillaume,

> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
> Perhaps we can do the same next year ?

If you can remind me of this idea in June (budgeting time), I can probably get
help from Sun to do it.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
> Susanne Ebrecht a ecrit le 26/02/2007 10:06:
> > last weekend we had a postgresql booth at Fosdem
> > (http://www.fosdem.org). It was the first time, that there was a
> > postgresql booth and is was a great success.
> > There were so much visitors on Saturday, that we thought we wouldn't
> > have enough flyers for sunday. We gave away round about 1000 flyers
> > (english, french and german).
> > Just for an overview: the FreeBSD Community gave away 1700 CDs (1500 on
> > saturday).
> > We were glad to meet persons of other european communities and one
> > developer of pgcluster.
> > We thanks the french community for the french flyers.
>
> You're welcome. There was so much interesting conferences to attend that
> I didn't find the time to actually talk more with you on the booth. As I
> told you yesterday, perhaps next year we can share the same booth ?
> perhaps also with the italian user group ? and/or others ?
>
> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
> Perhaps we can do the same next year ?

PostgreSQL had a developer's room at FOSDEM in 2003.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

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

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Susanne Ebrecht
Date:
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:14:07 +0100
> Guillaume Lelarge <guillaume@lelarge.info> wrote:
>
>> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
>> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
>> Perhaps we can do the same next year ?
>>
>
> I'm interested, of course. But you need some more people to support the
> devroom and the booth. That will be a bit tricky ;-)
When the Fosdem organisation team asked us having a booth, Peter and me
thought about a devroom. We decided against a room because we did not
know, who else is interested in this. Because it was the first time,
postgresql has had a booth, we wanted to check, if Fosdem is a good
event for postgres.
I also think having a devroom in 2008 is a good idea.

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Guillaume Lelarge
Date:
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum a écrit :
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:14:07 +0100
> Guillaume Lelarge <guillaume@lelarge.info> wrote:
> [...]
>>  As I told you yesterday, perhaps next year we can share the same booth ?
>> perhaps also with the italian user group ? and/or others ?
>
> This sounds like a really good idea, but then we need a greater booth,
> yours only had place for 3 people. We should talk early about this idea
> and send a request to the FOSDEM team.
>

A european booth at a european meeting... it seems a good idea to me :)

But it doesn't mean we all have to be on the booth at the same time.
This gives some time to eat lunch and some time to see some conferences.

>> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
>> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
>> Perhaps we can do the same next year ?
>
> I'm interested, of course. But you need some more people to support the
> devroom and the booth. That will be a bit tricky ;-)

That's why we need other communities : to have people in the booth and
in the devroom.

> Oh, and like
> Susanne told us: more merchandising material. Around 20 people asked
> for the "Slony" toy:
>
> http://ads.wars-nicht.de/pictures/v/events/fosdem_2007/dsc_1589_640x480.jpg.html
>

She's right. And I asked for one :)


--
Guillaume.
<!-- http://abs.traduc.org/
      http://lfs.traduc.org/
      http://docs.postgresqlfr.org/ -->

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Guillaume Lelarge
Date:
Josh Berkus a écrit :
>> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
>> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
>> Perhaps we can do the same next year ?
>
> If you can remind me of this idea in June (budgeting time), I can probably get
> help from Sun to do it.
>

I'll try to keep that in mind. Thanks :)


--
Guillaume.
<!-- http://abs.traduc.org/
      http://lfs.traduc.org/
      http://docs.postgresqlfr.org/ -->

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Guillaume Lelarge
Date:
Bruce Momjian a écrit :
> Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
>>[...]
>> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
>> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
>> Perhaps we can do the same next year ?
>
> PostgreSQL had a developer's room at FOSDEM in 2003.
>

I didn't know that. I've been googling a bit tonight and didn't find
much on this. For example, the schedule is no more available on your
website (http://candle.pha.pa.us/fosdem/).

Can you tell us more on the devroom ? how many people, how many
conferences, main topics, etc. It seems to me you were quite happy with
it (http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-02/msg00425.php),
isn't it ?

Do you think it can be worth it to work on such an event ?

Regards.


--
Guillaume.
<!-- http://abs.traduc.org/
      http://lfs.traduc.org/
      http://docs.postgresqlfr.org/ -->

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Bruce Momjian
Date:
Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
> Bruce Momjian a ?crit :
> > Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
> >>[...]
> >> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
> >> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
> >> Perhaps we can do the same next year ?
> >
> > PostgreSQL had a developer's room at FOSDEM in 2003.
> >
>
> I didn't know that. I've been googling a bit tonight and didn't find
> much on this. For example, the schedule is no more available on your
> website (http://candle.pha.pa.us/fosdem/).
>
> Can you tell us more on the devroom ? how many people, how many
> conferences, main topics, etc. It seems to me you were quite happy with
> it (http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-02/msg00425.php),
> isn't it ?
>
> Do you think it can be worth it to work on such an event ?

I think it was great.  We had our own room and two days of
presentations.  I did my tutorials, and had other speakers.  I think we
had about 10 people for every talk.  I think our devroom was the most
active.  Many other devrooms were used just for laptop hacking, which
is kind of boring.

We weren't invited back in 2004 because they had a different focus.  I
think some folks were there for 2005 (Peter?) and 2006 (Josh?).  I do
think it is a good conference because it is low cost, very techical, and
conveniently located for Europeans.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>          http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                               http://www.enterprisedb.com

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

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Guillaume Lelarge
Date:
Bruce Momjian a écrit :
> Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
>> Bruce Momjian a ?crit :
>>> Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
>>>> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical talks.
>>>> Perhaps we can do the same next year ?
>>> PostgreSQL had a developer's room at FOSDEM in 2003.
>>>
>> I didn't know that. I've been googling a bit tonight and didn't find
>> much on this. For example, the schedule is no more available on your
>> website (http://candle.pha.pa.us/fosdem/).
>>
>> Can you tell us more on the devroom ? how many people, how many
>> conferences, main topics, etc. It seems to me you were quite happy with
>> it (http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-02/msg00425.php),
>> isn't it ?
>>
>> Do you think it can be worth it to work on such an event ?
>
> I think it was great.  We had our own room and two days of
> presentations.  I did my tutorials, and had other speakers.  I think we
> had about 10 people for every talk.  I think our devroom was the most
> active.  Many other devrooms were used just for laptop hacking, which
> is kind of boring.
>

This year, the Debian and the Jabber devroom were only for talks and it
was really great : lots of interesting talks, some about future work
(netconf for example), some about current status of the project (Jabber
101).

> We weren't invited back in 2004 because they had a different focus.  I
> think some folks were there for 2005 (Peter?) and 2006 (Josh?).  I do
> think it is a good conference because it is low cost, very techical, and
> conveniently located for Europeans.
>

I think we should try to get a booth and a devroom next year. Susanne,
do you think it could be possible ?


--
Guillaume.
<!-- http://abs.traduc.org/
      http://lfs.traduc.org/
      http://docs.postgresqlfr.org/ -->

Re: successful booth at Fosdem (Brussels)

From
Susanne Ebrecht
Date:
Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
> Bruce Momjian a écrit :
>> Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
>>> Bruce Momjian a ?crit :
>>>> Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
>>>>> [...]
>>>>> I also think FOSDEM 2008 can have a PostgreSQL developer room. The
>>>>> Debian one was really interesting, with some great technical
>>>>> talks. Perhaps we can do the same next year ?
>>>> PostgreSQL had a developer's room at FOSDEM in 2003.
>>>>
>>> I didn't know that. I've been googling a bit tonight and didn't find
>>> much on this. For example, the schedule is no more available on your
>>> website (http://candle.pha.pa.us/fosdem/).
>>>
>>> Can you tell us more on the devroom ? how many people, how many
>>> conferences, main topics, etc. It seems to me you were quite happy
>>> with it
>>> (http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2003-02/msg00425.php),
>>> isn't it ?
>>>
>>> Do you think it can be worth it to work on such an event ?
>>
>> I think it was great.  We had our own room and two days of
>> presentations.  I did my tutorials, and had other speakers.  I think we
>> had about 10 people for every talk.  I think our devroom was the most
>> active.  Many other devrooms were used just for laptop hacking, which
>> is kind of boring.
>>
>
> This year, the Debian and the Jabber devroom were only for talks and
> it was really great : lots of interesting talks, some about future
> work (netconf for example), some about current status of the project
> (Jabber 101).
>
>> We weren't invited back in 2004 because they had a different focus.  I
>> think some folks were there for 2005 (Peter?) and 2006 (Josh?).  I do
>> think it is a good conference because it is low cost, very techical, and
>> conveniently located for Europeans.
>>
>
> I think we should try to get a booth and a devroom next year. Susanne,
> do you think it could be possible ?
>
>
Why not? We have had a cute booth, and we did not annoy someone. We have
to ask for a devroom, but I can't see a reason, why we won't get one.

Susanne