strange symphonies

Software Freedom Day 2005

September 11th, 2005 by aizatto

9:00am

My day began, just like any other day. Got up, took my shower, checked my email, and then packed up some stuff and left. I decided to take the LRT -> Monorail to Low Yat, as I expected parking to be massively expensive, plus I was too lazy to drive. As soon as I got on to the LDP on my way to the Kelana Jaya LRT, my car ran out of gas, so I had to pull off on to the side, and spend about 15 mins walking to a gas station, getting 2rm of gas in the bottle in my car, and bringing it back. Most definetly not a good day to begin, plus Ow also informed me that he would not be able to make it because of some circumstances happening. What a real let down. Software Freedom Day was prepared in one day, and now Ow had cancelled on me, and my car ran out of gas. Most definetly not the happiest of moments, so I thought I should just cancel the whole day, and do something else. But I decided to continue trudging on, and continued.

10:45am

Getting to the LRT station I had to get everything of mine out of my car. My laptop bag, my bag with router + cables, my plastic bag carrying poster materials, and tux ( the 26 inch penguin ). Not exactly a pretty sight. It wasn’t too hard except for the massive size of tux slowing me down.Tux caused quite a stare at both the LRT and Monorail with people pointing fingers, and giving me odd looks, but no questions on why I’m carrying such a big penguin doll.

11:45am

So once I arrived at Low Yat, I looked for Mtec computers, but Wai Seng and Khairil wasn’t present so I decided to sit down, as I had nothing else to do. Lots of people seem to enjoy the massively huge penguin, and there was this little kid hugging it. Its also makes for a very good girl magnet ( Lucky Chong Tsewai, but your already married ).

12:45pm

Thus Khairil came with his wife, and we went to set up the place. Set up the laptops, and not too long later, Kenmin came. Setup setup setup, and we’re good to go. For most of the time my laptop was used to demonstrate how the Live CD works, and also to show the available range of software, thats available with the cd. Simiarly Jason’s laptop was also used for demonstration purposes.

Khairil brought along two pamplets for the day. One promoting the use of FOSS, and another to go along with the LiveCDs, and another to go along with the LiveCDs and where they can find help. Also Khairil did a good job by going around Low Yat, and sticking the FOSS pamphlets near the BSA ones. This is an awesome idea that anyone should do when they visit Low Yat, we should make a pdf/svg file available for people to print off and stick where ever they wish.

Most of the people who bought the CDs had already heard about Linux, but required a bit of help. It also took a bit of work trying to explain them how a Live CD works, and some of them thought that you required an extra partition to run the Live CD.

I think the most interesting question asked was relating to the free cost of the software. The guy just looked astonished that we we’re giving it away for free, legally also. It’s true though, when we told them the price of the CD ( 1 rm) most Malaysian’s were attracted. This is okay for now, but I hope we teach them that it is free as in freedom, not as in teh tarik, in the future.

4:30pm

Time to call it quits. We we’re tired standing up the whole time, and also I noticed that we were getting bored, and started to talk more amongst ourselves rather than promote FOSS. I was suprised to actually see so many people come to help out, thanks alot, didn’t really know how many people to expect.

People ( from MyOSS ) who came:
Khairil
Kenmin
Jason
William ( thanks for the free drinks )
Michael
Han
Lowks
Fin + Friend
Aizat
Ow ( In the end, thanks for making it dude )

If I forgot your name please do remind me!

Many thanks to Wai Seng for hosting us! We are really grateful for having you host it for us.

Sadly enough, before we headed out, one of the people who purchased a Live CD from us works at IT Hypermarket, and they were trying to get wireless working on a laptop, but to no avail. We were called in to help set it up, but we we’re also unable to do that. It was quite a dissapointment, and a real embarassment really.

8:00pm

Dinner was at Devi’s Corner in Bangsar with Kenmin, Ow, Ditesh, Dinesh, Kenneth, Khairil, and Julian. Munch, munch. Sadly enough I had to leave early as my younger brother was sick, and I had to go home to purchase him dinner. Thanks for the dinner Ditesh, as I my smallest note was a 50.

11:00pm

Home sweet home, what a long day.

Conclusion

Software Freedom Day 2006 needs to be planned better, and definetly requires than a day notice. Sorry to Fin for arriving when we we’re already closed. The day was good, but to be honest, it could be better. Let’s aim for next year .

There was a lot of interest in the purchase of Tux. I think we need to find someone who can mass produce us penguins. Then we can make more money off stuff like that ( merchandise ). Also we need a penguin costume, I have been reading the Singapore Linux User Group mailing list on the sucess of the costume, so I think it would be nice to have one.

To those of you who haven’t heard, MyOSS has a booth for PC Fair December 2005, so from this experience, I have ideas in my head on how to make it better than Software Freedom Day.

On another note I’ve uploaded Linus’s pictures of the MyOSS September Meetup, and all I have to say, is that they are amazing. You can find them at: http://www.iosn.net/country/malaysia/organizations/myoss/myoss-photos/Sept05/view

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