La Salle Debain

Once again I organized Debians' booth at the East Coast Linuxworld. This year it was at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston instead of the Javits Center in New York. According to IDG this was due to a scheduling conflict not as I imagined a Mafia shakedown. They're holding it in Boston next year too. Originally I wasn't going to take part but I desperately needed to get out of the house and I was able to arrange some family/business type activities to justify the trip.

Before The Show

I almost dropped the ball on getting CD donations but luckily Bradley Glonka and the team at Linux Central were able to send us two boxes of woody CDs. Joe and Garry from Innovation Software who were so helpful to us last year also came through with 200 sarge CDs. We also had the customary t-shirts and some posters to sell. The t-shirts were $10 or $15 depending on the size. The posters were $5 (later reduced to $3) and the CDs were a $1 each (or $5 for an entire woody set.) We actually don't mind giving the CDs out for free but I have learned from experience that the freeloaders will mindlessly shovel anything free into their bags without even knowing or caring what it is. Charging a nominal fee ensures we still have something left to offer after 11am on the first day.

The "selling" almost caused a last minute emergency. The week before the expo, I got a call from IDG wondering if I intended to send in a sales tax form. Apparently the Commonwealth of Massachusetts requires you to collect sales tax as long as you are selling things even if you are a non-profit which New York state never did. Well they don't call it Taxachusetts for nothing. So we decided we were not going to sell things but "offer them in exchange for a suggested donation." John Goerzen in his capacity as SPI president provided me with an official letter documenting Debians status to wave at the Man if he attempted to oppress us. Fortunately he didn't.

Day 0 - Monday 14th

I took the Amtrak train from Newark in the morning. It was cheaper to take one that made local stops so I didn't get to Boston until mid-afternoon. Not being a frequent train traveller I was surprised to find the seats had power outlets. So I was able to while away the hours doing some work with my laptop.

I made a tactical error and arrived at South Station so I had to take a taxi to the Hynes Center. (Back Bay Station would have been within walking distance.) Once again I got an interesting taxi driver, an older Greek gentleman who insisted on playing Peleponnesian Name That Tune with me. Which is not so bad in of itself except when I got one wrong (i.e. every time) he would take both hands off the wheel and start gesticulating wildly. I tried to deflect him by asking where he stood on the Julian versus Gregorian calendar controversy but he was not to be put off. Luckily I did arrive in one piece.

It is my pet theory that the health of the Linux industry can be guaged by the location of the .org pavilion (we were in booth #8.) When times are tough IDG puts us up in the front. But when the going is good, the .org pavilion is off in a corner so the bejewelled and perfumed corporate attendees passing by in their sedan chairs are not forced to have to look at us noisome community peasants. 2005 must be a banner year because we were actually seperated by a wall from the rest of the show.

At the booth I was joined by Troy Murray, a local Debian user who volunteered to help us. Once again Sun had kindly let us borrow a machine (a Sunblade 1500) so we went to their booth and picked it up. We were later joined by Ari Pollak who provided the flyers and posters. Matt Taggart was unable to attend but he had sent the t-shirts via the Hewlett-Packard booth so we went and picked them up from there.

Afterwards I went and found my hotel. The room smelled of cheese, there were no toiletries, and neither the remote control for the TV or the wifi worked but it was cheap and I managed to get my first 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep since my son was born in November so I didn't mind.

Day 1 - Tuesday 15

The hotel was only providing a ridiculously overpriced continental breakfast so I walked around a bit in the morning in search of something better/cheaper. The area roundabout also contains the Boston Public Library and the headquarters of the church of Christian Science. The Convention Center is part of a larger edifice called the Prudential Center which also contains a mall. I located a Dunkin Donuts and appropriately fortified I headed to the show. The food selection in the expo hall itself was rather anemic especially for a vegetarian (The staff didn't rewally seem to understand the concept. overheard: "It's like a chicken sandwich but without chicken") The crepe lady from the Javits center was sorely missed.

We were joined by David Nusinow and the four of us were kept busy The first day is usually the busiest and this year was no exception. By the end of the day we had collected $1213 and were out of most of our good CDs.

I walked around the show floor a bit and the mood seemed to be good. We are still not quite back to dot-com era levels of exuberence though. Better swag then last year but again not dot-com era level. The only unusual item was a Bitdefender condom. (Bitdefender protects your bits geddit?) I bought a Mozilla Firefox stuffed toy for my daughter.

Day2 - Wednesday 16

Today we were joined by Mako Hill who also brought some much-needed Ubuntu CDs to replenish our dwindling stocks. Later on Andres Salomon came by to help out too. Today we made $610 for the project.

As you might know, David Harris and Mako are the authors of the Debian 3.1 Bible to which I also contributed a few chapters. We met Debra our editor from Wiley who wanted to say hello and go over a few things. Quite a few visitors to our booth asked about the availability of Debian books but unfortunately even though it is ready, the publisher can't put it out there until sarge is atleast frozen. So fix those remaining bugs Debian people!

A longstanding tradition in the Debian booth is that we get a computer from Sun and then fail to get Debian installed on it. This time thanks to Ari (with much appreciated help from Roland Mainz of x.org) we actually managed to get it to work!

Marty from Etherboot organized a party for FOSS people after the show which was underwritten by Google (who apparently were recruiting there. Very clever.) The others went but I headed off to Brookline for a more boring engagement.

Day 3 - Thursday 17

Usually the last day is pretty dead but this year there was a fair amount of traffic. We made $426 which is actually pretty good considering we had very little left to sell by this point. The grand total for the entire three days was $2249 which if I recall is slightly better than last year.

The best part of the show is meeting users and hearing the cool things they are doing with Debian. Again this year, recogniton of the Debian name is increasing. There were still a quite a few people who needed an explanation but many more who had atleast heard of us either directly or through some Debian-based distro such as Ubuntu or Knoppix, Linspire, Mepis (I met Warren Woodford of Mepis) and Xandros. It looks like the derivatives are doing a pretty good job of giving us credit for our work. Debian and derivatives were also heavily featured elsewhere in the .org pavilion.

Of course the number one question was when sarge is going to be released. But people were strangely acceptant of my vague excuses. Either they truly believe sarge is just around the corner or they've given up all hope.

All in all the experience was very good and I hope next year will be
even better.