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@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@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