Thread: Live CDs for upcoming shows
Hello, O.k. folks, it is that time of year again. Normally we press anywhere from 500-1000 live cds for the upcoming years events. However, I am starting to wonder if it is worth it. Yes they are grabbers for people, but how many people actually use it? I can honestly say the last CD I grabbed and used what a Solaris DVD just because they finally released a DVD versus 7 ISO image downloads. Do we want to spend the money? And frankly, do we want to be part of that environmental impact? Does it matter? Another option would be to get preloaded pen drives. They are more expensive but certainly more interesting, usable and durable. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote: > Another option would be to get preloaded pen drives. They are more > expensive but certainly more interesting, usable and durable. I vote for USB drives. -- Selena Deckelmann United States PostgreSQL Association - http://www.postgresql.us PDXPUG - http://pugs.postgresql.org/pdx Me - http://www.chesnok.com/daily
Josh, > Another option would be to get preloaded pen drives. They are more > expensive but certainly more interesting, usable and durable. Aren't these around $10 each, though? -- --Josh Josh Berkus PostgreSQL @ Sun San Francisco
On Tuesday 3 June 2008 17:38, Selena Deckelmann wrote: > On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote: > > > Another option would be to get preloaded pen drives. They are more > > expensive but certainly more interesting, usable and durable. > > I vote for USB drives. As in a live ISO on the pen drive? robert
On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 14:57 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: > Josh, > > > Another option would be to get preloaded pen drives. They are more > > expensive but certainly more interesting, usable and durable. > > Aren't these around $10 each, though? No, I am finding them for less than that, all the way down to 5.00 bucks a piece. Yes it is much more than a CD, but a CD is a throw away item. A pen drive has actual long term use. But let's take the high number, 10.00. Assuming we order 250, that is ~ 2500.00 (shipping etc..). The item is then reusable for years... with a little blue elephant and URL. It also becomes a talking piece, "What's that on your pen drive?". Versus a CD which will likely be loaded once (if we are lucky) and then thrown away. On the cursory review of companies that do this I am seeing prices for a 128MB model for anywhere from 6.50 to 4.60. The real question will be what does it cost to pre-load it. Let me see if I can get some better numbers for that. However even if it cost 2.00 to pre-load it (which I highly doubt) we are still talking about a resuable item. And of course, it can be used to drive donations :) Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote: > But let's take the high number, 10.00. > > Assuming we order 250, that is ~ 2500.00 (shipping etc..). The item is > then reusable for years... with a little blue elephant and URL. It also > becomes a talking piece, "What's that on your pen drive?". Versus a CD > which will likely be loaded once (if we are lucky) and then thrown away. > > On the cursory review of companies that do this I am seeing prices for a > 128MB model for anywhere from 6.50 to 4.60. The real question will be > what does it cost to pre-load it. Let me see if I can get some better > numbers for that. However even if it cost 2.00 to pre-load it (which I > highly doubt) we are still talking about a resuable item. > > And of course, it can be used to drive donations :) I just requested a quote from these guys: http://www.cfgear.com/about.html I like the drive donations idea. No problems with sizes or gender :) -selena -- Selena Deckelmann United States PostgreSQL Association - http://www.postgresql.us PDXPUG - http://pugs.postgresql.org/pdx Me - http://www.chesnok.com/daily
On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 02:38:46PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > Hello, > > O.k. folks, it is that time of year again. Normally we press > anywhere from 500-1000 live cds for the upcoming years events. > However, I am starting to wonder if it is worth it. -1 If we're going to hand out images, it'd be a *lot* better if they're suitable for the ubiquitous USB keys everybody seems to have these days. That way, we're not lugging tons of the things around in the hope that 5% of the people who pick one up ever boot it, and the people who get the images are guaranteed to care because they're willing to wait a few minutes while the image transfers to their key. Cheers, David. -- David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 16:00 -0700, David Fetter wrote: > On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 02:38:46PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > Hello, > If we're going to hand out images, it'd be a *lot* better if they're > suitable for the ubiquitous USB keys everybody seems to have these > days. That way, we're not lugging tons of the things around in the > hope that 5% of the people who pick one up ever boot it, and the > people who get the images are guaranteed to care because they're > willing to wait a few minutes while the image transfers to their key. That is certainly another option... please plug in here... copy... Oh you don't have a key, well for a 25.00 donation I will give you a key, and a shirt and a tote bag... Joshua D. Drake
On Jun 3, 2008, at 7:00 PM, David Fetter wrote: > On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 02:38:46PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote: >> Hello, >> >> O.k. folks, it is that time of year again. Normally we press >> anywhere from 500-1000 live cds for the upcoming years events. >> However, I am starting to wonder if it is worth it. > > -1 > > If we're going to hand out images, it'd be a *lot* better if they're > suitable for the ubiquitous USB keys everybody seems to have these > days. That way, we're not lugging tons of the things around in the > hope that 5% of the people who pick one up ever boot it, and the > people who get the images are guaranteed to care because they're > willing to wait a few minutes while the image transfers to their key. Also perhaps useful: don't have them on display. Give them away to interested people. You know, after you've been talking to them for X minutes and they seem like great candidates for such swag. -- Dan Langille -- http://www.langille.org/
On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 4:00 PM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 02:38:46PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote: >> Hello, >> >> O.k. folks, it is that time of year again. Normally we press >> anywhere from 500-1000 live cds for the upcoming years events. >> However, I am starting to wonder if it is worth it. > > -1 > > If we're going to hand out images, it'd be a *lot* better if they're > suitable for the ubiquitous USB keys everybody seems to have these > days. That way, we're not lugging tons of the things around in the > hope that 5% of the people who pick one up ever boot it, and the > people who get the images are guaranteed to care because they're > willing to wait a few minutes while the image transfers to their key. Can we get a few people with USB hubs to bring them to OSCON? :) Show of hands? -selena -- Selena Deckelmann United States PostgreSQL Association - http://www.postgresql.us PDXPUG - http://pugs.postgresql.org/pdx Me - http://www.chesnok.com/daily
Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 16:00 -0700, David Fetter wrote: >> On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 02:38:46PM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote: >>> Hello, > >> If we're going to hand out images, it'd be a *lot* better if they're >> suitable for the ubiquitous USB keys everybody seems to have these >> days. That way, we're not lugging tons of the things around in the >> hope that 5% of the people who pick one up ever boot it, and the >> people who get the images are guaranteed to care because they're >> willing to wait a few minutes while the image transfers to their key. > > That is certainly another option... please plug in here... copy... Oh > you don't have a key, well for a 25.00 donation I will give you a key, > and a shirt and a tote bag... > > Joshua D. Drake > We are talking about pen drives with a big blue elephant printed on them? One place in Australia I know does them would appear to have data duplication costs included in the price. Maybe blank drives or unprinted can be cheaper. I do think that donating for them would be better than giving them away. The re-usability would make that feasible. The question I would ask is how to set them up. Do we want a bootable system installed or would we have a few binaries that could be started on their already running system? Maybe copy the requested binaries and installer at donation time to match their system of choice. Without the OS installed would make the cheaper 128MB drives an option. -- Shane Ambler pgSQL (at) Sheeky (dot) Biz Get Sheeky @ http://Sheeky.Biz
Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > > On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 14:57 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote: > > Josh, > > > > > Another option would be to get preloaded pen drives. They are more > > > expensive but certainly more interesting, usable and durable. > > > > Aren't these around $10 each, though? > > No, I am finding them for less than that, all the way down to 5.00 > bucks a piece. Yes it is much more than a CD, but a CD is a throw > away item. A pen drive has actual long term use. > > But let's take the high number, 10.00. > > Assuming we order 250, that is ~ 2500.00 (shipping etc..). The item is > then reusable for years... with a little blue elephant and URL. It > also becomes a talking piece, "What's that on your pen drive?". > Versus a CD which will likely be loaded once (if we are lucky) and > then thrown away. > > On the cursory review of companies that do this I am seeing prices > for a 128MB model for anywhere from 6.50 to 4.60. The real question > will be what does it cost to pre-load it. Let me see if I can get > some better numbers for that. However even if it cost 2.00 to > pre-load it (which I highly doubt) we are still talking about a > resuable item. I like it :-) certainly a whole lot more attractive than the CDs. Are we talking about the kind where you stick a read-only image that works like a CD, but the drive is also available for use as a regular USB pendrive? So we can stick the pg stuff on there permanently, and the user can still use the pendrive as a regular one as well. Or are you talking regular pendrives just with a nice elephant on them? //Magnus
Joshua D. Drake wrote: > Hello, > > O.k. folks, it is that time of year again. Normally we press anywhere > from 500-1000 live cds for the upcoming years events. However, I am > starting to wonder if it is worth it. > I think it might be a good idea to have a little phone home option (something as simple as a quick wget on boot or something) to get an idea as to how many of these are actually ever loaded - it wouldn't be the best metric, but it would be something. That might be the first step in trying to figure out how useful they are to produce. IMHO, USB sticks are pretty much freely available nowadays, and if they are less than 1GB, people don't tend to keep 'em around anyways. Also, the give-away rate for USB sticks would be higher, since they have more intrinsic value than a CD. As for pricing. Our memory stick vendor charges for a $5.65 for a 128 MB stick (quantity of 250) with a single color screened image (for example, we could choose a blue stick and put a white elephant on it, or a white stick with a blue elephant). For 256MB its $5.75. To pre-load an image its 35 cents per stick. I really have to wonder how many people actually use these things. In either case, I think we should put some auto-play stuff on these to open a page on the web site that lets us track the usage through google analytics, or perhaps even allow people to optionally fill in a survey. > Yes they are grabbers for people, but how many people actually use it? > > I can honestly say the last CD I grabbed and used what a Solaris DVD > just because they finally released a DVD versus 7 ISO image downloads. > > Do we want to spend the money? And frankly, do we want to be part of > that environmental impact? Does it matter? > > Another option would be to get preloaded pen drives. They are more > expensive but certainly more interesting, usable and durable. > > Sincerely, > > Joshua D. Drake > > > > > -- Chander Ganesan The Open Technology Group One Copley Parkway, Suite 210 Morrisville, NC 27560 Phone: 877-258-8987/919-463-0999 http://www.otg-nc.com
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 7:46 AM, Chander Ganesan <chander@otg-nc.com> wrote: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: >> >> Hello, >> >> O.k. folks, it is that time of year again. Normally we press anywhere >> from 500-1000 live cds for the upcoming years events. However, I am >> starting to wonder if it is worth it. Separate q ..... Is there a need for Brochures again? We printed 1,000 (+ -) of the 'Business Case for PostgreSQL' last year (2, 11" x 17", duplexed, center folded & stitched). It's about our only contribution to 'the cause'..... aside from minor $. Thanks
On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 09:21:42AM +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: > > Assuming we order 250, that is ~ 2500.00 (shipping etc..). The > > item is then reusable for years... with a little blue elephant and > > URL. It also becomes a talking piece, "What's that on your pen > > drive?". Versus a CD which will likely be loaded once (if we are > > lucky) and then thrown away. > > > > On the cursory review of companies that do this I am seeing prices > > for a 128MB model for anywhere from 6.50 to 4.60. The real > > question will be what does it cost to pre-load it. Let me see if I > > can get some better numbers for that. However even if it cost 2.00 > > to pre-load it (which I highly doubt) we are still talking about a > > resuable item. > > I like it :-) certainly a whole lot more attractive than the CDs. > Are we talking about the kind where you stick a read-only image that > works like a CD, but the drive is also available for use as a > regular USB pendrive? So we can stick the pg stuff on there > permanently, and the user can still use the pendrive as a regular > one as well. Or are you talking regular pendrives just with a nice > elephant on them? I'm guessing that the garden-variety drives, set up as bootable images, would be handier. If it turns out that whatever version of Postgres we put on them has a major flaw, we don't want to immortalize it in ROMs with the Postgres logo on them. It's also just more polite to leave it up to the user what to do :) Cheers, David. -- David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
Chander Ganesan wrote: > Joshua D. Drake wrote: >> Hello, >> >> O.k. folks, it is that time of year again. Normally we press anywhere >> from 500-1000 live cds for the upcoming years events. However, I am >> starting to wonder if it is worth it. >> > I think it might be a good idea to have a little phone home option > (something as simple as a quick wget on boot or something) to get an > idea as to how many of these are actually ever loaded - it wouldn't be > the best metric, but it would be something. That might be the first > step in trying to figure out how useful they are to produce. This enters into privacy issues. If this were to be done, it must be explicitly permitted by the user. That is, ask them, confirm, call home. Once. -- Dan Langille BSDCan - The Technical BSD Conference : http://www.bsdcan.org/ PGCon - The PostgreSQL Conference: http://www.pgcon.org/
Dan Langille wrote: > > This enters into privacy issues. If this were to be done, it must be > explicitly permitted by the user. That is, ask them, confirm, call > home. Once. > Or have the browser home page open up to a live CD page hosted by PG, have PgAdmin check for an update (ask the user) or report anonymous usage stats. Not much different, IMHO. In fact, its a better metric...since it'll tell us who booted the CD and actually did something with it. In any case, permissive or not, it's not a difficult task to accomplish that returns some meaningful results. -- Chander Ganesan Open Technology Group, Inc. One Copley Parkway, Suite 210 Morrisville, NC 27560 919-463-0999/877-258-8987 http://www.otg-nc.com
On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 08:51:00AM -0400, Chander Ganesan wrote: > Dan Langille wrote: >> >> This enters into privacy issues. If this were to be done, it must >> be explicitly permitted by the user. That is, ask them, confirm, >> call home. Once. >> > Or have the browser home page open up to a live CD page hosted by PG Not unless the users asks it to explicitly. > have PgAdmin check for an update (ask the user) Before, not afterwards. > or report anonymous usage stats. Under no circumstances. > Not much different, IMHO. Then your HO needs some radical readjustments. What part of privacy do you not understand? Cheers, David -- David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
David Fetter wrote: > On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 08:51:00AM -0400, Chander Ganesan wrote: > >> Dan Langille wrote: >> >>> This enters into privacy issues. If this were to be done, it must >>> be explicitly permitted by the user. That is, ask them, confirm, >>> call home. Once. >>> >>> >> Or have the browser home page open up to a live CD page hosted by PG >> > > Not unless the users asks it to explicitly. > > >> have PgAdmin check for an update (ask the user) >> > > Before, not afterwards. > > >> or report anonymous usage stats. >> > > Under no circumstances. > > >> Not much different, IMHO. >> > > Then your HO needs some radical readjustments. What part of privacy > do you not understand? > Hmm...perhaps I should have spent a bit more time wording that message. I agree with Dan (and apparently you), and reporting statistics (of any kind) would mean to ask first. What does the browser open up to right now on the live CD? Isn't it the PG home page or something along those lines? How do you differentiate that from a specific page. Same information.... Chander -- Chander Ganesan Open Technology Group, Inc. One Copley Parkway, Suite 210 Morrisville, NC 27560 919-463-0999/877-258-8987 http://www.otg-nc.com
On Wednesday 4 June 2008 09:24, Chander Ganesan wrote: > What does the browser open up to right now on the live CD? Isn't it the > PG home page or something along those lines? How do you differentiate > that from a specific page. Same information.... It currently opens on the CD's localhost which contains the introduction information. robert
> Can we get a few people with USB hubs to bring them to OSCON? :) I'll bring one. gabrielle
On Wed, 4 Jun 2008, Robert Bernier wrote: > It currently opens on the CD's localhost which contains the introduction information. And, as David has been rightly yelping, that's the only place an autoplay setup should ever go--to the local CD or USB key that has been inserted. If someone wants to add a prominent link to that intro information that is clearly stated to lead to the main PostgreSQL site, I don't think anybody would complain if following that link took you to a special page or used a parameter to access the page that showed someone got there via the distributed key. That's as intrusive as even a give-away should ever get if you don't want people get a bad taste of your project. -- * Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD
All, I've been thinking about this discussion some, and realize that it's the *wrong* discussion to have. We need to discuss more holistically: "What do we want at our booths?" Then from there we can get down to the individual items. Watch for new thread. -- --Josh Josh Berkus PostgreSQL @ Sun San Francisco