Again this year, Fosdem was really delightful, a bit crowdy as hell concerning a number of conference rooms.

But if there’s a constant, it is the awesomeness of the Fosdem staff and its armada of volunteers. Please all of you who made this event so great, receive in the name of openSUSE’s community our warmest thanks and congratulations.

I will not make a mistake if I predict a big success for the different talk’s videos, in the next following weeks.

openSUSE merchandising new collection

After a loooong wait, perceived as a century, openSUSE Booth was furbished with the next generation of merchandising stuff.

At least some part of the complete kit, which should be available in April.

The new design & branding ideas

This was the first public showing of the new posters & goodies design. The basis of the design appear first during HackWeek’10


this Geeko’s was put on pullover I’m still looking where I can grab one, so take care of yours if you own one

Posters

We got three kind of new posters, and one block-note. I would like to thanks booth’s helpers for spreading them on almost any Fosdem’s building free walls.

Discover it – Bulb A2

With elegant dark green and white symbol on big format, it won the heart’s public.
Several of them were offered.

Block-note meeting or communication papers A3

Useful on a booth to pick feedback, announce something in an fashionned way.
I hope we will have the A4 format too.

Stickers

Geeko’s stickers

Appreciated and adopted by fans, and the public. The size is perfect.

We still get a number of request to have some with transparent background, which would allow them as perfect decoration for any kind of devices.

Geeko’s keyboard patch stickers

We’ve got a very limited edition of Geeko’s keyboard patch stickers. For the first time, you will have pleasure to press the meta key.
They literally create a rush on the booth, we save some to patch our demonstration computer with them.

I predict a long and successful life to this article. I hope future booth box will contain thousand of them.

Table covers

Done in synthetic material, colored with a beautiful green and proudly displaying the openSUSE logo. They are light resistant flexible.

Excellent article.

As there’s 2 models, one with big Geeko on top and the other one having openSUSE written on bottom front, they can’t be use for the same mission.
What impact would have one with the big Geeko sitting on the front with just one openSUSE? We should have some others shoot to be sure to get the best model.

Flag (alpha testing)

We also got a kind of flag, in an alpha-state, we fixed it on top of an official SUSE roll-up.

I’m still not sure how to use this one. As a stand-up like the open-mind poster, the who’s behind the message is bottom placed which
is always a bit hidden if placed on a roll-up.
As a flag, the holes are missing to use it on different kind of support.

Flyer & brochure

The cheat sheet encounter a big success, using the other side to present key related tools (obs, openqa, susestudio) allow people on booth to introduce them or talk about it.

There’s a number of commands that need to be removed from it (obsolete or deprecated way of doing things)

Flyer, even with the printing default and small shift in the bulb, find their audience.

openSUSE DVD by Open Press

We received finally 1400 DVD of the Open Press’s edition containing Live KDE / Gnome 64 bits. We spread out 1000 of them, 200 were split between Advocates for future events in Austria, Spain and Greece.

openSUSE conference cube box & penguins

Those two articles were unfortunately a failure at Fosdem booth. They are over complicated to build, and need too much material (scissors, glue) and too much time (15 minutes pro piece)

They should have been used to advertise the conference, but are not practical, once assembled they took too much place. Same on printed material, A3 is too big for any bags.

Croatian team bring a lot of them to use them locally. If we want to keep those kind of article for booth the printed result should be perforated and you should able to build the object with only your ten fingers in less than a minute.

Missing parts

I can’t be satisfied with what we received, our booth look so poor compared to what we usually present to the public.

Don’t forget those article can be sold

• t-shirts : where are our fancy and inspiriting t-shirts?
• usb sticks
• Pens
• Pins
• hat
• plush : so beloved
• Old Toad bottles (*)

(*) About our Old Toad beer, I’ve explained to people that nothing is impossible if and only if the community will assume the responsibility about managing the stock, carrying the boxes, and drink or sell the minimal order in less than 6 months. We’ll see if a Old Toad Team appear soon.

Computers

Just a small remark, our two touchscreen computers (only one has accepted to come at Fosdem) start to show their age.

First part conclusion

I will conclude this article which was more oriented on the new marketing stuff. There’s still quite works to be 100% useful and successful. I will come back soon with another article with some thoughts about how openSUSE booth has worked and details we could improve in the future

Thanks for your reading, comments & feedback are open!