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SFD Start Guide

This start guide is designed to introduce you to SFD and give you some tips and pointers for organizing your own SFD team event. If you have any questions please join and use the team mailing list or contact us though our contact form. You can also chat with us via Element on Matrix chat #SoftwareFreedomDay:matrix.org if you want to bounce ideas around or get more advice. Also check our SocialNetworks page to start networking with the SFD community around the world.

Forming a Local SFD Team can be a fun, effective community building experience for your local user group and community. Software Freedom Day is an outreach day where you can inspire newcomers with the values and quality of Free Software and communicate the broader issues of Software Freedom through a variety of activities of your choice. Is there something locally relevant to your country or region that you need to express? Is there some great local success story you want to tell?

Software Freedom Day is your chance to stand united with the entire Free Software world with what you care about: Freedom.

How can I celebrate Software Freedom Day?

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There are three primary ways to celebrate SFD:

  1. Join a local SFD Team and help make their SFD event a success.
  2. Make your own SFD team!
  3. Encourage local schools to make their SFD events!

SFD will be most effective if we keep some target groups in mind:

Steps to build your team

  1. Read the CodeOfConduct page and see if you can agree!

  2. Sign up for the SFD-announce mailing list. This is a low bandwidth announce mailing list only. Team discussions happen on the sfd-discuss list which you are also encouraged to join.

  3. Create a team page on this wiki below your Continent/Country to prepare - you will need to sign up or login to be able to edit pages. Please make sure you read the instructions for creating a new team page.

  4. Make a shortcut of your team page if you want.

  5. Register your team. If you register before the deadline (see the Registration page) then your team will receive some goodies to help you make your event awesome!

  6. Check out the competition pages (2011 results) from previous years to find ideas and for ways your team could win great prizes! Make sure you also keep up to date with the mailing list for announcements and to share information with other teams.

  7. Report on your event. We'll have an easy report webform for you to fill in after the event!

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The average SFD event usually requires only one or a few organisers to share the workload and ensure the event is in hand. You can often recruit helpers from:

We have found that the event can bring the local groups together as well as grow the community as a whole. The number of helpers required depends on the sort of activity you choose, but generally, the more the better. That way people have a good time and it also becomes a social event. If your volunteers enjoy themselves, they will pass on a good vibe and offer to volunteer next year too :-)

Remember, we are all volunteers so it is a matter of what we can, when we can. Always remember to thank your volunteers and make sure they have a good time.

What should we do?

Be creative! You can organise any kind of SFD event you want. Your organising team can find a location / time to have a few meetings to brainstorm / discuss about the event:

But just to get you started, here are a few ideas some people have had:

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You may also set a theme for your event / activity, we have a wiki page for team leaders to share your ideas here.

Budgeting

Depending on the sort of activity and scale of your event, you may need to set a budget for the event. It's good to prepare a budget plan and find ways to finance it, there are usually a few ways:

If you plan to raise fund, it's good to prepare a proposal clearly specify the event details suggested as below and then approach different Free Software companies / organisations.

Promoting the event in advance

It is very important to communicate the event to your target audiences, there are a lot of ways just to name a few here:

Preparing for the day

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Below is a basic checklist that should cover most events that you would plan on running:

On-site management

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According to experiences, there are a few things you may want to pay attention during the events.

After the event

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Useful Documents, Templates, Files and Examples

Best SFD Organizing Award Event reports

Every year winners of best event awards would be selected by the DFF board, please find below the competition page of each year and feel free to download their reports for reference.

Credits

All the photos in this page were taken by SFD teams from different countries and are under Creative Commons licenses! A big thank you to all of them / you! Remember to tag yours to softwarefreedomday. :)


CategoryEvent

SFD: StartGuide (last edited 2023-08-09 16:13:55 by JurgenGaeremyn)