Hi all,
as most of you are probably aware, there will be another GNU/LinuxTag
this year, this time in Karlsruhe on June 6th - 9th (more information
available at http://www.linuxtag.org/).
The GNU/LinuxTag is an event organized by people of the Free Software
community that has grown pretty big over the years and has turned out
to be one of the major events for Free Software in Europe, so like
last year, the FSF Europe will be present.
As with the Systems 2001 and FOSDEM 2002, where he did an outstanding
job, Volker Dormeyer has volunteered to do the task of booth planning,
coordination and running. So if you want to get involved, he is the
person to talk to, you can reach him at V.Dormeyer(a)t-online.de.
There is one new thing that we have been thinking about, though. Last
year at the systems, the idea arose to have a big FSF Europe booth
that all associated organizations have a corner at.
This way we would be able to have a much bigger and professional booth
together than we would have if we tried to do it separately - the idea
is that we ought to have a booth equal to that of all the companies at
the exhibit.
It also gives us the chance to show unity and demonstrate presence all
over Europe to the visitors. If people from other countries want to
know how to get involved, they can talk to the people right there,
right now.
I think you all get the idea.
One prime requisite for such a concept would be to get enough space,
so I talked to Martin Schulze <joey(a)linuxtag.org> yesterday (if you
are into Debian, you may have heard that name already) at the CeBIT
and discussed this idea.
He will be managing the booth-space and -coordination at the
GNU/LinuxTag 2002 and was immediately thrilled by the idea. We would
be able to get a pretty big space with several "info points" for the
different associate organizations from him.
So it seems we could do it this year, given that we can organize 1-2
people from every associate organization to come to Karlsruhe for the
booth.
The GNU/LinuxTag is usually a lot of fun with many of the high- and
low-profile people of the Free Software community around, so I'm
hoping that 1-2 people from each of our associate organizations will
want to come and (re)present the idea of Free Software together.
But of course our associates would be the only ones who can ultimately
tell, therefore I'm asking you to forward this mail to the mailing
lists of our associate organizations.
Volker will take care of handing most of the coordination, so all you
would need to bring for the booth would be some information material,
maybe a poster or two and yourself. The rest will be taken care of.
We will have to tell the GNU/LinuxTag people how much space we need in
about 2-3 weeks, so Volker will need to know by then whether your
organization would like to participate and who of you is going to
come.
I would be very glad if we could make this idea come true and make a
big stand for Free Software at the GNU/LinuxTag 2002 together. Hope to
see you there.
Regards,
Georg
--
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)gnu.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfeurope.org)
Brave GNU World (http://brave-gnu-world.org)