Meeting Minutes September 16, 2013

Venue: PolyU, Lawn Cafe Time: 8pm to 10:20pm

Agenda

• Update event organizing status
• Go through the schedule of SFD event
• Review our tasks and stuff to bring to the venue
• Brainstorming ways of last minutes promotion to draw audiences
• Answer any question

• Get to know each other before the event

Participants

• Graham
• Fred
• Mathieu
• Cameron
• Amanda
• Oi-to

• GuoFeng

• HuZheng

• Pockey
• Sun-xi-lin

Excused

• Michael
• See-ming

Action Items

• everybody to bring our laptops and one power extension (電源拖板)
• Graham to prepare a computer with Linux for theatre 2 and 2 LCD screens of any size for exhibitions
• Graham to arrange Internet for exhibitors and workshops
• Graham to help print 300 double page schedule with flyers
• Pockey and Mathieu to bring one scissor each
• Pockey to bring ropes, marker and pens
• Pockey to prepare a A4 table for audiences to write down their contacts for future contacts in reception booth
• Pockey to arrange 30 bottles of water
• Pockey to check courier tracking number of promotional materials
• Pockey to send an updated schedule to Amanda, Oi-to, xi-lin, Cameron for promotion purpose
• Amanda to help to promote SFD event @ Discuz, HKEPC, HKLUG, HKOSS, Boardcast, etc.
• Mathieu to check wifi system at PolyU if he has time this week before the event
• Oi-to to promote the event inside HKUST
• Xi-lin to help to promote the event inside PolyU

• Xi-lin, Amanda, HuZheng, GuoFeng to prepare installfest (with or without VM)

• Cameron to prepare a workshop / small talk about what's free software / demo some free software
• Everybody to check if we have any student or professor contact in City U or Baptist U, HKU, Chinese U, Open U to do internal promotion of our event, if yes, please contact Pockey
• Fred to prepare some notes for Michael to introduce the event and speakers
• See-ming confirmed by email he will help us in photography on the day
• Everybody to arrive at 11am on 21 September 2013 in Block N, PolyU

What do we do at 11am

• setup venue
  • decorate the three rooms (place banners, posters, balloons)
  • test all the equipments (projectors, computers, microphones and so on)
  • set up 7 booths outside of theatre 2 with desks and chairs
  • arrange electricity
  • arrange internet
  • do photocopy of A3 schedule and place schedule on each room door
• place direction signs
  • A3 posters with signs to show the venues from each entrance
• deliver 300 flyers for last minutes promotion

Booth/workshop details

This only concerns the things we are running, i.e GNU/Linux install and the Blender booth.

GNU/Linux install

• Due to potential issue with the UEFI boot and the ease of running another OS into a VM, we will perform the install into VirtualBox

• We are concerned about the potential follow up requests want to select a distribution with which the people running the workshop are familiar with
• Maintenance period is something important too as we don't to run unsupported OS which could easily be corrupted. 1 year seemed a bit too short.
• We are also concerned about installing non-free software and spyware: that would defeat the point of promoting FOSS
• People running the workshop are using Mint, so we thought that was an acceptable choice allowing them to enjoy FOSS as well as multimedia support out of the box, slowly raising their awareness of the issues surrounding Free Software.

=> we still need to figure out which release is better to install considering the listing here: http://www.linuxmint.com/oldreleases.php .I'd go for Linux Maya as it is an LTS, and the latest version will only be supported until January 2014 *weird, but I'm not familiar with this release* In that case maybe installing Fedora 20 which will be support until October 2014 could make more sense as the software will be a lot more recent. So I am at least very puzzled. We'll make a dedicated thread on the topic.

Blender booth

• The purpose is to showcase something eye-catching, done with FOSS and used professionally. We will have at least 2 person familiar with the software at the event. Guidance while not a requirement can simply be pointing out visitors to the Blender website and showing them where to get the things they need
• Ton gave us some great video to play and tools to show the interface. I also added one video which I thoughtgave a good idea of what modeling and rendering is. Those are:

  • On the frontpage of blender.org you can find our 2013 reel, very cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XZGulDxz9o&hd=1

  • Our open movie projects are linked from here: http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/blender-open-projects/ (Every blog has downloads in HD)

  • Running demo of Blender files in a loop (300 MB): http://download.blender.org/demo/blender_demoloop_v1.1.zip (needs Blender installed, readme in the file)

  • Blender Minion time lapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnOO2BgZYh4

• I already have all the files downloaded if needed. Else please feel free to download them if you prefer.

=> We seem all set on that one. Hopefully Graham will get us one or two nice LCD screen for the demo (with the associated machines if possible). One slight note is maybe by only showing videos we're setting the bar a bit high?