Thoughts on Organizing Installfests

After participating in Flisol in Buenos Aires along with the rest of the Argentina LoCo Team, it being my first event of this kind, I learned a lot and thought I’d share my experience with everyone else.

We actually didn’t have much time to prepare since we found out about the event pretty close to the actual day of the event (a bit over a week), and as soon as we did, I called up the person in charge of my area and offered our LoCos help.
I got a great response since they where planning on installing Ubuntu anyway, and practically got handed the event over for us to handle. This was very unexpected, but I was eager to get my hands dirty in that area so I accepted the challenge.

I got a very good response from my LoCo members, 10 or so of them came to the actual event, and some of them even went the day before to do all the dirty work (setup the network, move monitors and keyboards around, etc).

What we had for the event:
* 40-50 Ubuntu Feisty CDs
* A server with apt-cache so we didn’t re-download the same package hundreds of times
* 100+ “Powered by Ubuntu” stickers
* 20 “Powered by Xubuntu” stickers

What we didn’t and should of had:
* 200+ K/X/Ubuntu CDs (a lot of people took the CDs with them, and some even just went to get the CD and take it home)
* “Alternate” CDs. Many old PCs where brought in, and we didn’t have any alternate installations
* A system rescue CD (to fix one or two partitions that where broken while resizing, NTFS both of them, btw)
* Printed pieces of paper with the LoCo forum and mailing list address. We had to write it down dozens of times
* A brief (1 or 2 pages) explanation on how to get started
* A nice big banner with the “Ubuntu” logo
* A PC with all the widgets and whatnot installed (think Beryl) to show off

In spite of all this, the event was a success, and a lot of people who went to the event are now in the forums and in our mailing lists which means they stuck with Ubuntu.

We already took care of all those missing items, so we’re hoping for a much smoother and well prepared event next time.

Martin Albisetti

May 16, 2007

Ubuntu

5 responses to “Thoughts on Organizing Installfests”

Aanjhan a.k.a tuxmaniac

May 16, 2007 at 4:09 am

Nice one. I am gonna link your article in my blog for more people to view 🙂 Thanks a lot for the tips. Hope I have the permission to link 🙂

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Schalken

May 16, 2007 at 6:36 am

For a system rescue CD I recommend the GParted LiveCD. It’s saved me a couple of times, and it just works! Unless of course you want more than partitioning. 😉

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Azrael Nightwalker

May 16, 2007 at 9:25 am

Thanks for your advices – they’ll let others not to make the same mistakes 🙂

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Fabian Rodriguez

May 16, 2007 at 2:21 pm

Hola Martin,

Here are two resources that would greatly benefit of your input 🙂

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuAtInstallFests
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoRunningInstallfests

Regarding printed documentation, I have been using this flyer with great success:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuebecTeam/Marketing

I have a spanish version I can post if you want.

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Keith

May 19, 2007 at 5:00 pm

Another thing that is helpful is to make some custom live cds (http://reconstructor.aperantis.com/) with the packages, updates, and tweaks or settings most people would want. You could even make several different versions with more or less packages of some type, and then ask people which they would prefer.

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