[Ambassadors] Preliminary GITEX 2007 Report

[Hisham Abdel-Magid]

Thats great news John !!
i am happy to know that Fedora presence in GITEX was well represented by
your goodself and other Fedorians ...
i wish all the best for Fedora in comming events as well ^_^

regards

Hisham Abdel-Magid



On 9/13/07, John Babich <jmbabich at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Fedora Ambassadors:
>
> Here is a preliminary report on Fedora's first presence at GITEX,
> which just finished in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
>
> Note: The Fedora Project wiki page for GITEX is now at
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraEvents/PastEvents/2007
>
> I was able to volunteer all day on Saturday, 8 September, the opening
> day of the show, Sunday, 9 September, and most of Monday,10 September.
>
> Lloyd Almeida, a fellow Fedora ambassador working as an animation
> artist in Dubai,did a terrific job of representing the Fedora Project.
> A special thanks to Lloyd.
>
> Keep in mind that GITEX is one of the world's largest ICT trade shows,
> with an emphasis on commercial offerings. Free and Open Source
> software (FOSS) is still very much in the minority at the show.
>
> Highlights:
>
> - Red Hat, our corporate sponsor, did a great job with the booth and
> generating interest in linux and open source.
>
> For instance, there were only five daily GITEX IT Solutions newspapers
> published. On Monday, OpenNet MEA, a Red Hat partner, was the cover
> story, featuring its new agreement with Red Hat, complete with a photo
> of a gentlemen with a red hat at the RH booth. Since Red Hat was the
> only major open source linux company present among thousands of
> companies, this was an amazing piece of publicity for FOSS.
>
> - The Red Hat partners in the booth, OpenNet MEA, Magirus, IT
> University, and AMD, were a great bunch of people. They helped
> distribute Fedora 7 DVDs and Live CDs to their potential customers and
> anyone interested. They also directed people to us who had questions
> about linux in general and Fedora in particular.
>
> - One Laptop Per Child was well-publicized. There was a dedicated demo
> pod for the OLPC XO laptop. People were actually taking pictures of
> the laptop like it was the crown jewels. There was tremendous interest
> in promoting the OLPC laptop in the EMEA region. Many people wanted to
> buy one on the spot. I was privileged to demonstrate it and answer
> questions for people as an unofficial spokesperson.
>
> - The synergy among Red Hat, OLPC, AMD and the Fedora Project was
> fantastic. Because Fedora linux is the base software for the OLPC XO
> laptop, as well as RHEL5, with AMD providing the OLPC CPU, I was able
> to tie together all the organizations and explain how open source
> provides a virtuous circle of collaboration which is all too rare in
> the corporate world. AMD had just announced it was open sourcing ATI
> video drivers, so I could explain the advantages of open source, open
> standards, and unencumbered binary drivers. AMD also announced the new
> quad-core Barcelona CPU during the show.
>
> - There was great interest in localization (l10n),
> internationalization (i18n), and translation. We showed, for example,
> how GNOME supported three dialects of Arabic (Lebanese, Eqyptian and
> Saudi). I also promoted Transifex, and the Fedora Documentation and
> Translation Projects.
>
> - I gave two booth talks on the Fedora Project to an audience of IT
> professionals just becoming acquainted with FOSS.
>
> - One attendee literally praised God when I gave him a Fedora DVD,
> saying that he was unsuccessful in downloading it for the past few
> weeks. We forget that there are large sections of the world which
> don't have reliable, high-speed internet connections.
>
> Finally, thanks to everyone in the Fedora Project who helped out.
>
> Finally, I posted some photos at www.photobucket.com. See the
> slideshow (flash plugin required) at
>
> http://s190.photobucket.com/albums/z242/jmbuser/?action=view&current=0a4fe44c.pbw
>
> Best Regards,
>
> John Babich
> Fedora Ambassador
>
> --
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> Fedora-ambassadors-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-ambassadors-list
>
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