The Waikato Linux Users Group (WLUG) want to thank you for joining us at our Software Freedom Day event!
http://wlug.org.nz/SoftwareFreedomDay2008
September 20th 2008, 10am to 5pm Waikato University S-Block lower foyer
Free Wireless and Coffee all day. Presentations
WLUG have scheduled a series of presentations on a wide variety of subjects:
10 am: The free software environment (Nandor Tanczos)
- How free and open source software is good for all.
11 am: Documents, spreadsheets and presentations
OpenOffice Writer, Calc and Impress
12 noon: Graphics software
- Scribus, Inkscape, Hugin, the Gimp
1 pm: Gaming
- An overview of the hottest free games
2 pm: Free software and you
- A tour of the best programs and how to use them.
3 pm: Setting up your own WebServer
- Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP/Perl/Python = profit!
4 pm: Photography
- From 35mm to the GIMP
There'll also be minor presentations through the day on a number of other topics (to be decided!).
Hackfest
Come along and join in the all-day hackfest. We are planning an installfest, some demos and general hacking.
Installfest
An InstallFest is a chance for users new to Linux and open source software to bring their computers to have Linux installed on them at no charge by experienced users, as well as providing a supportive environment to ask questions, try out the software and get any technical problems resolved.
Open Source Barcamp
A barcamp is an open, participatory event or “unconference”, with content provided by all those attending. WLUG have organised VoIP telephony and WebCams (all Linux-based hardware) and plan to connect with other SFD events around the world, as far as timezones allow!
Feel free to browse through our web site:
WLUG members keen to help run the day please sign up on the SFD 2008 Hosts page.
Enquiries about this event may be directed to president@wlug.org.nz or phone me on 021-214-1196
The writeup;
Volunteers involved: Nandor Tanczos (www.nandor.net.nz) Cairo Kingsbury (11) Destiny Kingsbury (13) James Pluck Chris O'Halloran Rod Alderidge Bryce Utting Graham Lauder Lawrence D'Oliveiro Tom Butz Michael McDonald Matt ? (Midi keyboard and ubuntu studio) Jamie Curtis (Was working most of the day, but Provided our network connection and gave a brief tour of 'symphony', a linux just up the stairs from our event) Lindsay Druett Marieke Boleyn (Handled sending out Press Releases and printing flyers) Bruce Kingsbury (President of WLUG and main event organiser) Over the week that the library display was up we distributed just under 400 flyers.
On Saturday morning, one of the volunteers let me know that we'd been mentioned in the Waikato Times that morning. I'm pretty sure we're the only SFD event in New Zealand that got mainstream press coverage. Major coup!
Destiny made about 100 cups of (organic fairtrade!) coffee over the day and a healthy lunch for the volunteers. She also took most of the photos.
I had planned to set up a 'timelapse' camera first thing in the morning and get a short video clip of the whole thing from setup to takedown, but the spare computer just wouldn't behave properly with the capture card. Destiny took a few photos from up on the balcony where I had planned to put the video camera and it would have been really awesome. Perhaps we'll do that next year?
A number of people brought along their eee pcs, to demo, and with the free wifi this worked out really well.
Graham Lauder brought along an LTSP setup running on OpenSUSE, and did a presentation on OpenOffice.org. We'll get him to do more presentations during the year I think!
John Billings talked about Free graphics software, mostly Gimp and Blender.
There was a bit of confusion involving our keynote speaker; at the time we printed up all the flyers Bryce didn't know what time Nandor was due to turn up so guessed 10am, then Rod had trouble getting hold of Nandor with the revised time, so he turned up a little after 12 as Rod and Nandor has originally agreed.
Nandor's presentation went really well, lots of people in the lecture theatre listening and asking questions afterwards, and I got to talk to Nandor about FreeGeek which is something I'd like to set up next year.
Cairo did a great presentation on gaming, talking about 6 games that use the Free ioq3 engine and a VoIP app called mumble. Big laughs when she described Urban Terror as 'Lots of blood, not really appropriate for kids'. I was pretty impressed, she did all the slides herself and included screenshots and demo videos. The rest of the day she wore the penguin suit, drew names for the hourly 'USB stick' draw, and gave away a dozen chocolate fish around lunchtime.
Lindsay then did a presentation on Flightgear, showing some of the more advanced features.
We decided to skip the final talk on photography and the GIMP, since by 4pm most people had left.
44 feedback / competition forms got filled in, and we gave away about 60 each of the OpenDisc and Ubuntu CDs, and 15 DVDs of Big Buck Bunny.
Big thanks to the Department of Computer Science at Waikato University who provided us with the venue, and paid for the very large poster in the main public library.
Big thanks to the WAND group, and especially Jamie Curtis, who sorted out our network connection as well as a couple of switches and an access point at short notice.
And a HUGE thanks to everyone who helped out on the day. I was really happy at how it all worked out.
