Ubuntu @ LinuxWorld

[Paul Sladen]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005, lao_V wrote:

Hello lao_V,

> Are you able to tell us why Ubuntu won't be making an official
> representation @ the expo?

I can't give you an offical answer;  but broadly, it's probably for the same
reasons that Red Hat stopped throwing parties and having the biggest stands!

Expo's cost money.  ALOT OF MONEY.  Take of random figure of 100k GBP.  You
can spend that in two days at an Expo.  ...Or you could hire 5 people to
either (a) Hack code for a year, (b) Generate targetted Sales leads.

It's probably best to market Ubuntu in the same way as Debian;  word of
mouth, mindshare, technical excellence, showing it to friends and giving
them a CD, or few.  Mark gave an interview to LugRadio about just this
aspect, you can find the transcript here:

  http://www.paul.sladen.org/lugradio-shuttleworth/

The first answer even starts off with:

  "We're not approaching [Ubuntu Marketing] from a corporate point-of-view."

The monetary cost of having a dozen volunteers (who believe in something and
are willing to provide their time) to chat and give out CDs is fractional
compared to running a huge stand.  Very close to being free (beer) and very,
very effective.

The other way that also helps is being invited to speak---generally you have
to pay for a Keynote because it normally involves selling stuff.  Talking
about a slightly orthagonal matter is the way, for instance ''How to
successfully build a community'' and Ubuntu can be your example.

Big names draw crowds.  Alan Cox gets more grassroots people than the Red
Hat CEO;  people know one, they also perceive one to be a sales pitch.

> How about in the UK expo in October?

Linux Expo has had an .ORG section for the past few years (regardless of the
name of the show, or the shape/size of the 'Village').  Because of past
success Debian has generally been able to negoiate a good stand.  Last time,
Debian/emDebian got 1/6th of the space (and the most prominent!) with a
combined Gnome/KDE/Xorg/FD.org stand also negoiating another 1/6th.

Non-profits are not charged for the space and Debian sells CD/DVDs of
Debian (and Debian derivitives) along with Polo-shirts and case-badges at a
little above cost, with the profits going on things like Debian-UK mirror
hardware and a meal to say Thank You to everyone for coming along and
helping at the show.

In 2004, the UK show was just after Ubuntu 4.10 had been annouced and
pressed-CDs weren't ready, Canonical kindly offered to sponsor a run of CDs
ahead of time, but in the end I didn't get this sorted ...that was my fault.

One issue we had, was what to do with Free CDs, the Debian stand has always
had a policy of charging a small amount---1.00/2.00 GBP---so that the CDs
have 'value', meaning that people don't throw them away, Debian doesn't
waste CDs and nobody is out-of-pocket.

The idea of giving free Ubuntu CDs away on a Debian stand didn't go down
well with all Debian UK people!  I hope that we can talk about this in
advance and decide how to work with Debian derivities---such as Ubuntu---who
might want to sponsor free CDs to give away.

I would also hope that Ubuntu and Debian maybe able to have some sort of
combined/related stand in the same way that KDE/GNOME have---in some ways
competing, but both with the same end-goal and both from the same base.

We'll see what becomes.  Hopefully also, there'll be a Conference/Poster kit
available to make it easier for everyone to arrange promoting Ubuntu at
events on their own.

	-Paul

(Admittedly, I had a problem finding enough UK Debian Developers to run the
stand last year because they were all too busy working full-time on
Ubuntu... :-)
-- 
Is there no safe way to travel?  Edinburgh, GB