[H-GEN] O'Week stuff update

[Russell Stuart]

This is an update on what is happening for O'Week.  Things
have not gone smoothly, but we have managed to work around
most problems so while the details have changed, it is
proceeding well.

Turned out James could not print the posters and CD flyers
on a laser, and so I asked Greg if he could - and he said 
yes.  It was done in the next day or so.  Big thank you
to Greg - you dug me out of a hole.

I taxied the posters + glue + pins to the people who has
volunteered to put them up around the Uni's - Macro Ostini, 
Matthew Franklin, and Matthew Sellers.  Matthew F and I put 
them up at QUT Gardens Point on Monday.  It was a much 
easier job that I thought it would be. We put them up on 
"student" notice boards on all Sci/Eng/IT floors.  Since 
these were student notice boards so no permission was 
required.  I should have counted how many we put up in the 
end. I imagine it was something around 40.  We were out of 
there in under an hour.

Macro and Matthew S have still to put theirs up, but the 
closer to Monday the better.  They have less chance of
being molested that way.

On the CD front we have had a much rockier road.  The one
thing that has gone to plan is printed the 1600 inserts were
printed, and Matthew cut them up.  We were expecting some 
1300 CD's to arrive.  I am not sure where that number came 
from, but in the end only 475 arrived.  Given that I thought 
we would probably go through more than 1300 if UQ Connect 
handed them out at O'Week, this was a problem.  So I sent 
a "Help!" email to the linux-aus mailing list asking for 
more CD's.

While waiting for replies to that, we got word from UQ Connect
they would _not_ be able to hand the CD's to students in at 
their O'Week stand.  They said they might be able to do something 
else, but what that something might be was left unspecified for 
a few days.  So I panicked, and looked for other ways to put the
CD's in the hands of students.  I contacted the head of school
at ITEE, and old lecturer of mine, Paul Bailes, and a few of the
other lecturers for good measure.  They all replied, and I got
distinct impression we are seen as sort of useful to have around.
I hope we live up to that.  Paul passed my request onto the ITEE 
School manager, which it where everything sat over the weekend.

So the state of play at that point was far less CD's then I
expected, and no firm plans for getting them into the hands of
students.  In remained unchanged on Monday.  Today brought
better news, however.

Melissa Draper contacted me to say she had put 10Kg of CD's in an
express post bag.  I have no idea have many CD's you get for 10Kg,
but it sounds like a lot.  Others have also contacted me to say I 
can have their CD's if I gave them my address, which of course I 
did.  Donna Benjamin is also sending some, and there are a few 
other offers as well.  I still have no idea how many CD's we will 
end up with, but it could well be more than the 1300 I thought we 
were getting.  They are all arriving at my house, which is a 
problem because I won't be there.  But that is easily fixed.  I 
have to say the people in the Open Source community are awesome.

In the mean time Macro was chasing UQ Connect, and it turned out
ITEE was beavering away.  UQ Connect came back and said they will
do two things for us: hand out the CD's from their office during
O'Week, and and them out at a sausage sizzle they have for 
students 2 week later.  To be honest I am not sure how useful
handing out CD's from the office will be, but the sausage sizzle 
offer is fantastic.  

ITEE came back and said OCA would have out our CD's.  As I really
don't know much about OCA, so I will quote what they said:

  From: Nikky Holmes <nikkyholmes at mac.NOSPAM.com>
  Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:35:58 +1000
  Subject: Humbug and OCA  

  Margie let us know that you have a stack of CDs with open-source
  software that you would like distributed to students. OCA is a 
  student organisation based in the ITEE faculty at UQ which aims 
  to help students develop networking and other career skills in 
  formal and social environments. 

  We are having tables at two first year events early next week 
  from which we can distribute your CDs, and any additional CDs 
  could be handed out at events we have during the year if this 
  suits you. As we are a student group under the ITEE faculty, 
  if they approve this (which they have) there is no problem in 
  us helping Humbug out. 

  Our first table is in the afternoon of Tuesday the 24th, and our
  second is on Wednesday the 25th. If can arrange to have the CDs 
  either picked up, or delivered to an ITEE faculty member before 
  midday on the 24th this would be brilliant.

In addition the ITEE School Manager sent me this note:

  From: Margie Cole <margie at itee.uq.NOSPAM.edu.au>
  Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:12:37 +1000
  Subject: RE: [oca] Humbug and OCA

  It would be best is Russell is able to deliver the CDs that they 
  be delivered to the ITEE School Office on level 2 of building 78.
  If they could be marked for attention " MARGIE COLE for OCA", we 
  can ensure they are then collected etc...

  Many thanks

  Margie Cole
  School Manager | School of IT and Electrical Engineering | Room 78-425B   
  The University of Queensland |  Brisbane Queensland 4072 AUSTRALIA
  Ph: +61 7 3365 2809 | Mobile:  0413 447 100 | Fax: +61 7 3365 8540 

That, I think, bring everyone up to date.  Matthew has already
put the inserts he cut into the 475 CD's, so that job is done.
It remains to sort out what to do with the other CD's when they
arrive, but I will be back Sunday so I expect Matthew and I can
sort it out between us.

In the mean time, if things happen I will be in contact.

Thanks to everyone so far for helping out.