Microsoft Ice House: Plan for Friday

[Dave Sullivan]

On Thursday 01 February 2007 08:41, Maurice Murphy wrote:
> Borden Rhodes wrote:
> > I think Friday at 4:00 actually sounds like a great idea, and if all
> > goes well we can negotiate returning on Saturday which will be super
> > awesome.  Here's my report from my latest recon mission:
> >
> > When I stuck my head in at 2:00 today the place was pretty empty.  The
> > staff are nice and friendly and they serve free hot chocolate which
> > has an overwhelming taste of marshmallows.  Once every half hour they
> > encourage everyone out of the building so they can hold a draw for
> > free copies of Vista and Office.  After that everyone who wants to go
> > back in has to wait outside like idiots whilst the cheerful people at
> > the door hand out new raffle tickets.  It would be sweet if one of us
> > won the raffle and started making copies next door :P
> >
> > As Jane reported, all of the machines work just fine inside the
> > house.  Apparently the house is designed to not melt as long as the
> > outside temperature doesn't exceed 15 degrees.
> >
> > Vista has a lot of great eye candy that would look great in Beryl.
> > Some things, like movie wallpapers, don't make any practical sense but
> > look hot anyway.
> >
> > Most of the people in the house were oblivious to fundamentals of
> > technology or seemed to forget what a computer's designed for.  Some
> > comments I overheard:
> > "Can I install Vista on my Macintosh?"
> > "If I had Vista I'd just play with the 3D flip feature all day!"
> > "Can I play Windows 95 games on Vista?"
> > "Coooooooll"
> > ... so we may want to keep that in mind and arm ourselves for
> > questions like "why can't I set the background to a movie?"
> >
> > I await my marching orders.
> >
> > Borden Rhodes
>
> A small thought for your plans for Friday in the big TO:  how about a
> press release to the major and minor media in the Toronto area?  That
> should get some coverage.  You could also include a Linux penguin in the
> letterhead without need for fancy equipment, and the coverage would
> perhaps be even better!  Anyway, if someone has the gift of the gab, go
> for it!  I'm afraid I don't qualify in that department.
>
> Maurice from Nepean

Thanks for your suggestions, Maurice, and thanks for your recon, Borden.
According to http://www.microsoft.com/canada/wow/icehouse.mspx the Ice House 
is open until 7PM. If we all show up around 3:30pm, it gives us 30 minutes to 
prepare, and then 3 hours (ideally, if we aren't asked to leave) to do our 
Ubuntu and free software push. And I agree: If things go really well, we 
should try and organize another push for Saturday.

Here's the latest news from David Patrick of linuxcaffe:
He is going to purchase a battery for his 10-foot inflatable Tux, so Tux will 
be ready to go for Friday. He may also have a video shooter to document the 
event, and he may have a CTV news crew to cover the story.

I'd like to fire out a press release, but I think its way too late for that 
kind of thing. We sent out a press release a week in advance for a previous 
event and had no responses at all.. but I suppose we could do it anyway.

I'm going to burn off a bunch of copies of Ubuntu/Kubuntu 6.06 LTS. If anyone 
has a spindle of CD-Rs and time they are willing to donate, please, burn off 
as many copies as you'd like and bring 'em down.

Also, does anybody have any suggestions for an already existing document we 
could use to hand out to people? I think something that describes what Ubuntu 
is and why its so awesome, as well as places to get it and get help, would be 
incredibly advantageous. We can hand out the literature like hotcakes, but 
only give CDs to people who seem really interested.

I'm donating 20 CD-Rs or so, and am willing to cover the cost of copying the 
literature a bunch of times.

Hope to see you all at Yonge & Dundas Square, Toronto on Friday at 4pm!

-- 
Dave Sullivan
dave at dave-sullivan.com
647-235-0328