[Ambassadors] Software Freedom Day 2008 (Philippines)

[Engels Antonio]

Congratulations Magie and Herson! We originally expected 150 attendees,
but more than 500 came! I'm sure the next events will be even better. I
talked about the Fedora Project while Magie was running the whole event
and Herson was manning the Fedora booth. Several teachers from different
colleges expressed their interest in making the Fedora Project part of
their students' thesis requirements. Scheduling of presentations to their
college deans are now in progress. ;)

On Mon, September 22, 2008 10:16 pm, Heherson Pagcaliwagan wrote:
> I was waiting for Ma'am Magie to post the pics of our recently concluded
> SFD celebration but since she's still probably recuperating from the
> event, let me, in her stead, report what happened last Saturday at the
> National Computer Center here in Quezon City.
>
> Official registration was supposed to start 8:30 AM but when I passed by
> the venue around 7:30AM on my way to my office, students were already
> milling around the complex and a provincial bus was already parked beside
> the venue. Talk about being early! When I returned around 8:45AM, the
> place was already packed and Ma'am Magie was already going on circles :)
>
> I was designated as the booth man by virtue of seniority :D *(Truth be
> told, Ma'am Magie was busy organizing the whole event while Sir Engels
> was giving speeches)*. The Fedora booth consisted of a tarpaulin, flyers,
> two LiveUSB Station posters and my office laptop featuring Fedora 9. I
> originally planned to bring my Asus eee loaded with eeedora to the event
> but I was locked out of our office with no keys -- stupid me. A friend
> later took pity on me and sent for his two laptops *(both of which are
> Windows)* and together we burned away those USB sticks.
>
> Apart from burning LiveUSBs, I gave away flyers, cajoled SFD-goers to try
>  Fedora 9 using my laptop, gave impromptu talks about the merit of Fedora
>  and its difference with other Linux distributions (most of the time -
> Ubuntu), met students, teachers and other professionals and had a blast
> the whole time. Talking particularly with the kids made me feel like a
> rock star :)
>
> The major drawer of our booth was ceratinly the LiveUSB creation. It
> would have been FreeMedia but early on, we have decided to do away with
> the distribution of DVDs and LiveCDs because that would entail spending
> money we don't really have much of. What meager funds we have scrapped
> together were funneled into the whole event. Either way, we had
> registered around 50 individuals who still wanted to hear more about the
> Fedora Project and possibly contribute themselves. These included
> teachers who want their students contribute as ambassadors and/or
> developers, students who wanted to make a case study in the use of Fedora
> and professionals who are interested in holding seminars/trainings in
> deploying Fedora in their line of work.
>
> ~ Herson