Rockingham Park and the Northern Computer Shows: Sept. 28th

[Jon maddog Hall]

Hello,

As you know, twice a year we go to Hosstraders to camp out, drink beverages,
and otherwise create havoc.  Well, the next Hosstraders is not until October
1st and second, so I thought we might get some practice in convincing people
that Linux is great if we went to the Northern Computer Show at Rockingham.

For those of you who are not familiar with it, Northern Computer Shows

http://www.ncshows.com/

is a place where people (both retailers and "common folk") can put up tables to
sell "stuff".  There can be new "stuff", old "stuff", but mostly good, working,
useful "stuff" (and therefore often a step above "Hosstraders").  It is
indoors, air conditioned, free of bugs (the organic kind) and people go there
to buy and sell, not just swap war stories.

The last time I seriously went to one was about two or three years ago.  I
purchased two tables, set up some Linux tables and tried to convince people
that Linux was great.  As always, perhaps a bit before my time.

I am going to try again at their Rockingham Show in Salem, NH.  I have a few
old, but working systems to sell..but mostly I am going to extoll the virtues
of our favorite operating system.

The last time I went I made up copies of the hardware compatability list and
gave them out to all the vendors who were selling systems and parts.  That
way when people approached them and said "is there a driver for Linux", these
people could say yes or no.  Some people would not take the compatability list
because they said they would never sell a Linux system.  Let's see if times
have changed.

I do not want to make up a lot of CDs for this crowd.  There will be other
vendors there selling CDs and I don't want to compete with them....but I will
bring along a couple of the latest Knoppix and Morphix CDs for demos and
testing of systems.

I am willing to donate some of my table space for those of you who want to
sell some hardware, but here are the rules:

	o has to be running a modern version of Linux (2.4 or 2.6 kernel).
	o can be lacking keyboard, mouse, monitor, but otherwise should
	  be "complete" (CD-ROM of some speed, etc.)
	o have enough memory so it is not a "dog" running (CPU speed is
	  "what they get")....so don't strip out all the memory before you
	  bring it
	o have enough disk to have a reasonable distribution

in other words, something that the person can go home and plug it in and
have it work, be able to update it if they want, etc.

500 year-old Sparcstations, etc. keep for hosstraders.

So, discussion anyone?  Should we make up some "New User Night" CDs?  Some
demos?  Some signs?  Use the projector to put on a talk?

I will be going up to the show in Concord today to talk to the management
about what can be done.

md
-- 
Jon "maddog" Hall
Executive Director           Linux International(R)
email: maddog at li.org         80 Amherst St. 
Voice: +1.603.672.4557       Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
WWW: http://www.li.org

Board Member: Uniforum Association, USENIX Association

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