[Infopoint] Re: infopoint project

[David Goodwin]

Philip Oakley wrote:
> Hi David
> 
> I hope you do not mind me contacting you. I saw from the infopoint 
> project website that you have stalls at Wolverhampton and Birmingham 
> computer markets for showing free software.
> 
> I am interested in setting up an infopoint at Stoke (Trentham Gardens) 
> computer market and just wanted to ask your opinion and see if you had 
> any advice.

Hi,

Yes; Katherine and I did a few infopoint stalls a couple of years ago. 
Unfortunately we've been somewhat lazy lately and haven't done one for 
some time.

Our problem was that we felt that it was only us doing the stand, as 
other volunteer help dried up and it can be quite a long day standing 
around talking to people. Now we've got a 3 month old son, so there's 
not much chance in us doing anything.

> 
> I am not, currently, an active member member of a LUG but would post on 
> the Staffs LUG mail list to see if anyone else was interested/wanted to 
> help or maybe already thinking about it/doing it (infopoint website says 
> it is available). Do not want to step on anyones toes.
> 

I'd suggest you :

a) Post to the Infopoint mailing list - there are people signed up to 
it, and there are one or two people that still regularly do stalls - 
although they're not in 'our' part of the world as far as I know.

b) Sign up for your local LUGS and just send a message to say that 
you'll be doing an Infopoint stand on X, and ask if anyone's interested 
to help or would like to provide materials or could suggest suitable venues.

> I am not a techie unfortunately (I'm a nerd not a geek) but have access 
> to hardware (multiple laptops etc) and am quite happy installing 
> gNewSence to be strictly free but could also burn ubuntu copies etc. I 
> first installed linux a few years ago with a version of Mandrake, took 
> me weeks to get a 56k modem installed and email setup. My technical 
> know-how has not improved much since then but luckily linux distros have.


:-)
Just being able to demo it is a good start.
We always took hardware with us, but people rarely actually did anything 
with it. Perhaps just having a presentation / slideshow running on any 
hardware is good enough?

> I have no commercial 'axe to grind' as I currently do not work in open 
> source and would be more than happy to invest my time and a box of blank 
> CD's. I love linux and use ubuntu as my main home machine as do my wife 
> and my son (although they don't know it) and I am very interested in 
> open source business software both commercial and non commercial 
> (ledgersmb, sugarcrm etc).

SugarCRM isn't technically all that open. It "lures" you in with the 
promise of free, but once you try and use it for anything serious you'll 
find you hit a usage limit and have to cough up cash.

When we did the infopoint stalls, we sold CDs for 50p - 1 quid each. We 
felt it was important not to give them away for free - otherwise people 
would just collect them mindlessly and then bin them in a few hours time 
when they got home. If they pay for them, the hope was they were serious 
and would actually check them out.

There is/was the OpenCD which packaged up open software for Windows types.

> 
> Anyway, any advise greatly received. Many thanks.
> 

Join the infopoint mailing list :)
(I've cc'ed this to it)


thanks
David.


-- 
David Goodwin

[ david at codepoets dot co dot uk ]
[ http://www.codepoets.co.uk       ]