(Assigned to Ivana because she had the FOSDEM 2019 one, but that shouldn't mean that this is her job)

I've already sent the CfP in the community and devel mailing lists, no response so far. We should probably bump it closer to the deadlines.

Lydia and I plan to send a talk for our Goals initiative.
Update: The Goals' talk unfortunately did not make it into the Community room program.

I did submit a talk for the main track, and will submit that to the privacy dev room too now that their CfP is open, I didn't report that on the mailing list though, sorry.

@skadinna Should you be the assignee of this task? Are you handling anything for FOSDEM?

In T11835#207572, @lydia wrote:

@skadinna Should you be the assignee of this task? Are you handling anything for FOSDEM?

No, Adriaan just added me by default because I was assigned for the previous event. The way things are looking now, I won't even be able to attend FOSDEM :( So it's probably best to reassign the task.

If nothing unexpected happens, I should attend Fosdem with a friend. So I can probably help a bit ;)

Thinking of the Apps goal, are there any other apps we could demo that would draw a crowd? I am not sure this would be popular, but I have been quite impressed by the travelling assistant features Kontact has acquired recently, although I doubt that would make for a very enthralling demo. I am sure there are other applications (Kdenlive?) that would make for visually appealing demos.

Kirogi, that @hein demonstrated in Akademy 2019, might be a crowd pleaser. Perhaps hard to do a live demo, but maybe a video of it in action?

My submission to the main program got accepted, but downgraded to a lightning talk. No result yet from the privacy dev room.

I will be at Fosdem Saturday. I can help with the booth for a few hours. I also have ~40 KDE stickers.

Questions:

• Do we have a telegram/irc/matrix chat for this event?

• For the merch, did we already purchase the stickers, beer coasters, ...?

I'm also there saturday-monday and can help out

@ognarb No and no, respectively.

I have a roll-up and a bunch of stickers, that's all.

I created #fosdem2020:kde.org. For the merchs, if I order some stickers and beer coasters in the internet, does KDE e.V. reimburses?

I can get PinePhone, and also I will be able to pickup Librem 5 from the FOSDEM, so we can run PlaMo on it as well.

In T11835#216886, @ognarb wrote:

For the merchs, if I order some stickers and beer coasters in the internet, does KDE e.V. reimburses?

Likely yes. Can you put a request into reimbursements.kde.org?

I'm sorry, I won't be at Fosdem this year.

I'm planning to arrive on 31st Jan and leave on 3rd Feb. I have a talk scheduled on 2nd morning and apart from that, I will be totally available to help out with the booth.

@ognarb did you manage to order merch? I've been totally useless here.

I have a 1mx1m KDE logo on canvas, suction cups to hang it with, and a rollup banner that we can use. I could try to get a blue tablecloth at the market tomorrow (last year we used Leinir's cloth, but that's not here now). @ognarb can you check those off on the list?

@adridg Stickers was ordered and should arrive tomorrow or Thursday hopefully. With this, we should have enough stickers for the event.

I will be printing the name badges tomorrow morning based on the list on the wiki page. Anyone not on it should let me know if they want one

In T11835#219091, @adridg wrote:

I have a 1mx1m KDE logo on canvas, suction cups to hang it with, and a rollup banner that we can use. I could try to get a blue tablecloth at the market tomorrow (last year we used Leinir's cloth, but that's not here now). @ognarb can you check those off on the list?

Didn't @jriddell have the tablecloth we ordered for Edinburgh?

Shall I ask @toscalix to bring you the embedded Plasma Mobile thing for the table demos?

The Krita showcase is a "maybe", since Boud isn't coming and Wolthera is a "maybe". The xrdesktop folks were asking if they could use a corner (well, enough space for their demo)

In T11835#219099, @paulb wrote:

Didn't @jriddell have the tablecloth we ordered for Edinburgh?

Yes I do

In T11835#219107, @jriddell wrote:

In T11835#219099, @paulb wrote:

Didn't @jriddell have the tablecloth we ordered for Edinburgh?

Yes I do

Are you going to FOSDEM? Is it possible to take the clotth there?

In T11835#219104, @adridg wrote:

The Krita showcase is a "maybe", since Boud isn't coming and Wolthera is a "maybe". The xrdesktop folks were asking if they could use a corner (well, enough space for their demo)

Sorry, I am a no, I am currently too busy with real life stuff.

What does the Target "Get X number of people to sign up for KDE IDs" relate too?

Are you going to FOSDEM? Is it possible to take the clotth there?

Yeah I'll bring it along

In T11835#219201, @duffus wrote:

What does the Target "Get X number of people to sign up for KDE IDs" relate too?

It was just an example of a way of measuring the success of the activity. Alternatively, you could get a clicker and count how many people visit the booth (but knowing FOSDEM, that sounds like a nightmare); or use any other way to objectively measure the performance of the booth.

This is so we have some sort of data we can use to see our progress (or "lack of") and compare from year to year. Also we may want to see if the degree of activity translates into... I don't know... more contributors, more downloads, more visits to the web, or something else.

This kind of thing should be carried out at every event Promo gets involved with, to be honest.

Another goal could be to get GOOD pictures and video interviews of attendees we can later use for promotional materials.

I'll tell the xrdesktop folks we can wrangle some space for a small demo, to be figured out once we're there. Since we don't have the big Krita demo, we can do something else fun with the monitor.

In T11835#219270, @adridg wrote:

I'll tell the xrdesktop folks we can wrangle some space for a small demo, to be figured out once we're there. Since we don't have the big Krita demo, we can do something else fun with the monitor.

+1

I thought things went pretty well this year, without a great deal of coordination overhead.

Things at the booth

• tablecloth
• banner (not used, since we had the roll-up)
• rollup
• 27" monitor on the table; this wasn't used for something specific, just ran a general slideshow
• PlaMo demonstrator devices
• Pinebook Pro, also some laptops
• stickers from various KDE sources
• .. stickets from many other projects

Missing in this list are: beer mats (which would have been popular) and T-shirts. We expressly didn't sell stuff and didn't take monetary donations at the stand this year. People asking for T-shirts were re-directed to freewear.org. I think that *if* we have someone coming by car then getting T-shirts from freewear under our agreement with them (sent first to that person's home, then brought by car) is the way to go. For FOSS-North I'm going to try to get a batch of shirts printed locally, but that's *relatively* easier because we have people on the ground right there.

People at the Booth

• Kenny made great name stickers, which we re-usable for multiple days.
• There were always people there, generally two in front of the booth, one or two behind
• Talking points were "do you know KDE", "KDE runs everywhere". Rather few people asked about Qt licensing, I thought.
• In the end the xrdesktop demo would not fit at all, because the booth location changed. No Krita demo left us with a bit of a gap, but see below about comments on the location.

This year instead of "the back entrance" for the desktops, we were right at the front entrance, so where all the people come in. This meant a constant stream of people, but also that it was the most crowded spot and the hardest to stand still in front of the booth. I didn't really like this location.

We did not have a booth roster, but that worked out just fine with people showing up and helping. The wiki table with people who said they would help, did work well (and drove Kenny's sticker printing).

I'd like to especially thank Dave for his "do you know what KDE does?" spiel out front, and Akhil for staffing the booth alongside his kdenlive talk. I think it's worthwhile making more slideshows we can run on the monitor, just for variety. Also, it's a plan QML slideshow right now, but with a kdenlive-talented person could be made much more fun.

Cross-promotion with openSUSE, Mandriva, FreeBSD, research projects, etc. worked pretty well, at least in terms of sending people to us (and from us). So let's keep doing that.

Effectiveness

Well, @paulb mentioned some metrics we could use. We didn't apply any of them ☹ . We didn't have anyone with a good camera either, so we've not got much in the way of promo pictures either. That said, FOSDEM is a weird kind of event: I see it as a "we need to be there anyway" kind of event, where the value is not in the booth, but having people there who talk to other people and coordinate KDE activities with the rest of the world. I planned two more KDE events for later this year, while there. We coordinated some development work with GNOME. FreeBSD x11/wayland is synced up with KDE needs now. kdenlive showed off its stuff. PlaMo got several more contributors (or people saying they would). That's not directly due to the booth, but because we have warm bodies and warm smiles there in Brussels.

Thanks for the report, Adriaan. I'm saving it for the the 2020 report.

Well, @paulb mentioned some metrics we could use. We didn't apply any of them ☹ . We didn't have anyone with a good camera either, so we've not got much in the way of promo pictures either. That said, FOSDEM is a weird kind of event: I see it as a "we need to be there anyway" kind of event, where the value is not in the booth, but having people there who talk to other people and coordinate KDE activities with the rest of the world. I planned two more KDE events for later this year, while there. We coordinated some development work with GNOME. FreeBSD x11/wayland is synced up with KDE needs now. kdenlive showed off its stuff. PlaMo got several more contributors (or people saying they would). That's not directly due to the booth, but because we have warm bodies and warm smiles there in Brussels.

If KDE got something out of it, like the coordination of events with other projects, that's fine then. It would be good to try and get some metrics or graphic material we can use in Promo in the future, though. Something to bear in mind for other events too.

+1 on Adriaan assessment, I see the biggest value for us in connecting and coordinating with other projects as well, and in that sense I think it's a very successful event (the recently announced Nextcloud Hub <-> KDE Itinerary integration is a direct result of that from last year's FOSDEM for example).

Random ideas that came up there:

• A big topic in the main and legal tracks was dealing with Open Core, CLAs and creative re-definitions of Open Source, a talk about KFQF would have nicely complemented that.
• A Linux Mobile Platforms track/devroom would have been nice, given the wide interest in that subject, and given there's multiple communities working on this. According to Bhushan this had been submitted and was rejected this year, might be worth re-trying next year.