Strange Symphonies Don’t worry, be happy

PCFair 2006 August Kuala Lumpur: Overview

I believe that just on the first day the we were able to achieve the goals and objectives of the group.

What were the goals?

• Advocating and promoting the benefits of FOSS
• Helping interested parties to use FOSS
• Finding pockets of FOSS users and bringing them together to strengthen the community

I would like to thank the following volunteers who helped (wo)man the booth:

• Ang Chin Han
• Sharuzzaman
• Ang Kian Meng
• Ahmad Arafat
• Rezuan
• Amin + 1
• Firdaus bin Aziz
• Hanafiah
• Sumardi
• Ditesh Kumar
• Amir
• Diana Asnani + 2
• Haszaliza Yacob
• Afrezal
• Rizal
• Farhan Faizal + 1

It is interesting to note that most of these volunteers have never ever met each other before, and are here for a common goal. Nonetheless it was still a success.

Thanks also goes to these people for either helping donate CDs, or coming to the booth for support:

• Colin Charles
• Kevin Foo
• Seymour
• Meling Mudin
• Lau Kai Jern

Nonetheless our thanks to these companies for helping donate to us some items:

• Mimos
• Bytecraft

Thanks should also go to

• Wai Sing Low
• Molly Cheah

A round of applause should go to the Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society in creating their TTCSS OSS WIN CD, a collection of FOSS applications for the Windows platform. This CD was really popular

But most importantly Pikom. If people could please write a letter of appreciation, I'll be happy to forward it on.

Almost forgot to include our beloved Tux.

If I forgot your name please do contact me, my brain is still a bit blur...

Now on to discussing the importance of this event.

PCFair Overview

This has been a most interesting and tiring experience for me. The event is from 11am to 9pm (alright we started packing up at around 8:30pm, but hey I was there around 10ish), and there are thousands and thousands of visitors. I believe statistics are around 20,000 visitors for the first day (btw there are three days, and the first day has the smallest number of visitors). Though the first day may have had the smallest number of people, I would have said that by the end of the first day, we were already a successful in achieving our goals and objectives.

Generally the classes of people I encountered are divided into:

1. Been using it for X years. Familiar and accustomed
2. Was using it previously, but stopped
3. Just installed GNU/Linux within the past year
4. Using FOSS applications on Windows (ie: Firefox, OpenOffice)
5. New and clueless, "What is with this empty booth? What are these guys trying to sell?"

It is safe to say that all of these people did not know about the existence of a community around FOSS. Including the first, and second classes, which sadens me abit. But our hard work has payed off, and these people were surprised that we do exist.

Besides the usual, where did I see FOSS being deployed?

• Chuches
• Volunteer Efforts

We were able to reach out to alot of pocket FOSS users out there, and hopefully they will come to the MyOSS Meetup this coming Thursday.

For the 2nd and 3rd group, alot of them came to us for technical support. (ie: problems with drivers, applications, etc.) It is interesting to note that the people in this group recognize the benefits of FOSS: Cost savings, safety from BSA Raiding parties, licensing issues, etc. But they are having problems with it. Interestingly enough one person even came to the booth after looking at the newspaper article in The New Straits Times asking for some FOSS applications on Windows (primarily OpenOffice).

It is great that alot of students (both from Secondary and Higher Education) come up to us asking for help or wanting to learn more, because these are the people that we should help foster. Similarly lecturers were also interested with our group in helping out their University/college.

The secondary students that approached us were interested in computers, so explaining to them the benefits of FOSS wasnt to difficult.

For the higher education students, we got people coming from: Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Law.

How to help?

Computer Science, pretty straightforward. Electrical + Mechanical Engineering, passed it on to Sharuzzaman + others. Law folks? Copyright issues, lowering Malaysia's piracy rate. If you have any hints please do forward them to me.

The final two groups was just alot of hardwork.

Oddly enough people even came to us asking if we know any freelancers, that they wanted to hire.

The most important thing is that the visitors to our booth were receptive and encouraging of our efforts to promote FOSS.

What did I learn?

• More marketing skills
• There isn't much time to showcase everything. Divide them up into the 5 groups, and deal appropriate. ie: Familar and comfortable, just discuss Community. New and not sure, discuss FOSS.
• We need more volunteers
• The FOSS users in Malaysia are really, really, really, really fragmented
• We need to sell FOSS merchandise, penguins, shirts, daemons, stickers, etc

On to the future my friends! Happy Hacking. Hope to see you all at the MyOSS Meetup!

Note: Microsofties never disturbed us throughout the event