[H-GEN] Software Freedom Day (new thread)

[Russell Stuart]

On Tue, 2005-09-06 at 16:49, Mark Ellem wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Sep 2005 02:51 pm, Russell Stuart wrote:
> > I am not sure an individual store would attract enough people.
> > A largish shopping centre would be good.  If you could find
> > one that will allow us to set up a stand on Saturday then I
> > personally go for that.  As Harry said, it would give us
> > more people who haven't heard of OSS before.
> 
> Centro Properties Group could be a place to approach. At my local shopping 
> centre (Centro Lutwyche) there always seems to be stalls representing various 
> community organizations. I've seen similar in other Centro managed centres as 
> well (Toombul and Springwood for example). They own some fairly large-ish 
> shopping centres in Brisbane so it could be ideal for SFD.
> 
> Otherwise, the SCM looks good despite the fact it would be a day later. I'm 
> still up for volunteering on the day and can make it to the SCM easily 
> enough.

I rang Centro Toombul.  It all sounded very positive, except
for one thing - they only have one community spot available
per day.  The person I spoke to didn't know what was
available, but said they were usually heavily booked.  
Somebody from Centro will ring me tomorrow morning.

I think this venue is more likely to bring us into contact 
with people who are unaware of OSS, so it would be my choice
if it worked out.  If it fails it will have to be SCM as we 
are running out of time.

Interestingly, I have rung a number of people today and 
had to explain the concept of open source software to them.
With the exception of Chris at SCM, it was a totally new 
concept. Most were familiar with Microsoft Word and I 
presume its price.  You could sense their amazement when I 
explained there were free work-a-likes available that have
been written by volunteers.