Photos from the Melbourne SFD Bazaar Event, 2006

Software Freedom Day Bazaar - Melbourne Town Hall

Team Computerbank and Friends

We had a very successful event at the Melbourne Town Hall in the CBD, lots of different FOSS groups came along and got involved: Computerbank, Linux Australia, Linux Users of Victoria, Melbourne Linuxchix, Melbourne Linux Users Group, Melbourne PHP Users Group, Melbourne Wireless, Oz Zope Users Group, Ubuntu Au, Ballarat Linux Users Group, OSV/OSIA, Community Media Services, Melbourne Perl Mongers, Open Source Developers Club and more! Some even travelled from distances afar.

All up around 200-250 people attended the event across the day. Lots of ordinary folks coming along to find out more about Linux and other free and open source software. Lots of free CD's given away too. Judging by the emails and phone calls I've received, people who attended had a great day!

We had great speakers, a documentary and a geek fashion show won by Tux. We got 22 laptops running with a live CD version of Linux.

The door man (who also has some free software to try) commented that everyone who came out was pretty happy and impressed with what they saw inside.

We had two film crews - CMS/Channel 31 and Tektime - so we should get some interesting videos. CMS / Channel 31 already made a community service announcement for the event. I hope they upload it somewhere! It was great!

Bit of feedback and reflection - maybe a stall with spruikers out the front (more balloons and signs saying stuff like 'free event, free internet, free things'), more penguin action, better floor plan, more direct marketing to different groups (e.g. visits to schools and community groups with talks in the lead up to the event). Try harder on the jugglers and performance artists. Involve more community groups. Going on the John Feine show, other radio media. A big group SFD shot would have also been cool to have.

For SFD in general - for everyones benefit - a big google banner ad - pointing people to the SFD website.

Other highlights and activities on the day included the Linux Users of Victoria (LUV) CD handout (1000 cd's in less than an hour), the LUV installfest and the Victorian School of Languages Dutch Class using audacity as a study aid (with Computerbank laptops!, yay!).

A great! day for Software Freedom in Melbourne! Hooray! Big thanks to those folk who made it so.

Our sponsors: Software Freedom International (and sponsors) for organising the event at a global level, Melbourne City Council for sponsored use of the town hall and staff, Computerbank for bandwidth and other resources, Epicure Catering for help with organising the function and display boards, Linux Australia for Public Liability Insurance and general support, Channel 31 and Community Media Services for organising and airing a community service announcement for the event (also videoing the event), Centre Stage.com Costumes for the penguin suit, Creative Contingencies for balloons and other resources, Melbourne Wireless for providing access points, Mike the electrician for testing and tagging equipment, and The WWWShop for providing a whiteboard.

Team Computerbank Volunteers: Rob, Greg, Kylie, John, Cloud, Thao, Jan, Tony, Con, Owen, Barry, Ben/Tux, Clare, Elaine, Sravan, Donna, Peter L, Alistair, Rohan, Julien, Jacinta, Paul and Darce.

Some Comments from others:

"I just wanted to say how great today seemed to go, I got some Ubuntu stickers, my parents were intrigued and everything was looking pretty cool, so anyway congrats."

"I had a great day too." "I spoke to about 30 people about the Open Source Developers' Conference, Melbourne PHP Users Group and BarCampMelbourne. All developers had heard of PHP, the rest were only familiar with it (if at all) through web apps they were using. Similarly with OSDC, most people who were interested were already planning to attend, and were excited and enthusiastic about BarCampMelbourne. We also managed to hand out a couple of distro CDs (mainly Ubuntu). I was pleasantly surprised at the range of people who were aware and interested in F/OSS and believe exciting times a not far away at all; the Open Source 'movement' seems to be heading for critical mass at a rapid rate."

"Thank you for you hospitality at the Town Hall yesterday. It was a good opportunity to meet many wonderful people from the Opensource and Linux Community. It was a good day, however I think that having couple tables outside the Town Hall would have brought greater number of people inside. Many people walking down Swanston st. were not even aware of our event. This does not mean that your effort in organising the event should be underestimated. After all we all had fun and it was worth coming for."

"Anyway, I think without your team and several individuals who worked closely with you this event would not have been possible."

More Info: We have a wiki page over at http://vic.computerbank.org.au/wiki/SoftwareFreedomDay - there is a whole heap of info re our activities in the lead up to the event.

Also see http://www.sfd06.org/melb and http://kyliebraindump.blogspot.com for a blog post about the day too.

--More photos and video footage to come.