Fedora @ Linuxworld NYC

[Jack Aboutboul]

Ladies and Gentlemen and Children of All Ages,

	As some of you already know the plans for a Fedora presence at
LinuxWorld have been rolling for quite some time.  If you live in the NY
Metro or Tri-state area, please register to attend. (I will be enclosing
a code later on either today or by the weekend that allows you to
register for a free exhibits pass, so don't pay the $30 fee.) 
	The pieces have finally fallen into place and I would like to put, the
plans we have so far, out for everyone to see and comment on. A more
correct schedule will be finalized and posted up as we (the list and
others) come up with it. Here is all the info we have so far. Lets get
some feedback.
	We wanted a booth, we really did. Unfortunately IDG miscalculated the
requests they would receive for booths in the .org pavilion and
overbooked. So we couldn't get a booth. Don't be Phased. We still have
great plans. (We may be able to share a booth with NYLUG, just to use as
a distribution/info/gathering point.)
	Throughout the show, we will have volunteers roaming the floor, giving
out Fedora stuff. CD's, various goodies, t-shirts, pending the design,
as well as cards with info regarding the Fedora Birds of a Feather
Session, along with the best part of all, Krispy Kreme Donuts. The
purpose of this will be to track down those with interest in Fedora
while also drumming up interest in others. Also, among some old rhl
faithful, Fedora has sort of a bad reputation, based on FUD. We need to
fix this.
	Now after all this, on Thursday, after the main show officially closes,
many Birds of a Feather sessions will be taking place. It is at this
point that it all goes down. All the Fedora faithful will gather in a
room, to be determined by IDG, for a great BoF session. We plan on
having some form of refreshments as well as swag to be given out.
However, I digress.
	
The session will be structured as follows.
      *  Intro/Meet and greet.
      *  Dispelling the myths.
      *  User discussion about Fedora. General questions about the
        project, its goals, development process, how the community fits
        in, roadmap, etc.
      * Short Q & A about user related topics.
At this point we will start the second, juicier tastier half of the BoF,
Developer Discussion.
      *  Developer Intro.
      *  General Issue discussion, development model, contributions,
        basically anything goes. Bring those bugzilla bugs in hand.
      *  Special Discussions: Arch's. We all know that since Fedora is a
        community project, the number of architectures it works on has
        increased and development is on going. We will have a few exotic
        arch machines there to show off. One will be a pcc, one will be
        an x86-64 SMP machine (Thanks to Marc Miller from AMD for
        providing us with the machine and to michaelkjohnson for the oh,
        so sweet hookup.) Anyone who wants to bring something else down,
        or make arrangements for availability is welcome to do so.
      *  Devloper Q & A.

	After this, if interest is still high, I guess discussion can continue
at a local bar or somewhere else of the participants choosing.

	Now this is where YOU come in. We need feedback. Feedback on the
session structure and our plans in general. Would anyone like to see any
other topics added? any removed? 
	I cannot stress the fact that it is very important for the community
that as many people as possible attend. This is a key year, many people
are mad at RedHat for dropping rhl in the first place and
Novell/Ximian/SuSE are coming in thinking that they are going to take
over, we need to assert ourselves.
	We need volunteers as well. Volunteers to help go around and give stuff
out. Volunteers to burn CD's, volunteers to help us finish all the good
beer. If you're available please speak up. I will also be burning
special edition DVD's on site. So if you help us out, you will
definitely get one of those. Help out your community, its the only way
it will get better. Developers, show up! we need you.
	
Other than that, thanks for your time, and we hope to see you there.