Fedora

FAD LinuxTag 2007 Country Overview

From FedoraProject

Contents 1 Country Overview 1.1 Germany 1.2 Italy 1.3 Switzerland 1.4 France 1.5 Austria 1.6 Netherlands 1.7 Bulgaria 1.8 India 1.9 Mozambique

Country Overview

Summary for the FAD.

Germany

• how many Ambassadors
• 17

• communication between the LOCAL Ambassadors
• neither IRC nore phone, sometimes smaller meetings in local area

• communication between the INTERNATIONAL Ambassadors
• neither IRC nore phone, mostly done by international events (like

FOSDEM)

• how many events / major events per year
• 3-4 big and approx. 5-6 smaller

• which event is covered once/twice everytime
• Linuxtag (biggest with 10.000 visitors)
• Chemnitzer Linux Tage since 2006 also FrosCon
• smaller events are CCC-Events, local area "Install-Party" and/or with LUGs

• which event has to be covered in future
• we have to try to send German Ambassadors to Events in the neighboured Countrys like Switzerland, France, and the East...

• how much money you think, you'll need
• Germany / Europe is expensive; 5' - 10' for all events and for accommodation / helping with

• local problems
• no legal entity to "make" money for helping out and pay for
• contact between international Ambassadors must be better
• most Ambassadors are private driven (means have own job, family and time ...)

• local benefits
• large qualitative Group
• concentration in the south (area Stuttgart/Karlsruhe/Basel)
• Communication skills also with Austria and Switzerland (same mother tongue)

Italy

• how many Ambassadors
• 5

• communication between the LOCAL Ambassadors
• E-Mail
• We are discussing to meet together the next year to discuss face to face regarding our future plans, guidance etc...

• communication between the INTERNATIONAL Ambassadors
• Mailing Lists discussions
• European events ( FAD Basel, FOSDEM, LinuxTag ...)

• how many events / major events per year

Currently we haven't big events (like FOSDEM, LinuxTag etc...), we are focusing our attention to small but successful events, like:

• LinuxDay:
• covered by Italy's LUGs
• ambassadors join their own local event

• Local presentations:
• we are offering presence to public events (LUGs, University, etc...)

• which event is covered once/twice everytime

• which event has to be covered in future
• LinuxWorld 2008: we will be in the .org pavilion (if it will be available)

• how much money you think, you'll need
• Swags
• 2007 (500 DVDs for LinuxDay, some t-shirts)
• 2008 (t.b.d.)

• local problems
• lack of big events
• big country, few ambassadors (we have to start a recruitment campaign)

• local benefits
• ambassadors are truly motivated to help Fedora Project and Open Source
• in Italy Linux communities are growing fast
• local and national institutions are helping Open Source's initiatives

Switzerland

• how many Ambassadors
• 33 (two swiss ambassador and an ambassador who cover Germany and Switzerland)

• communication between the LOCAL Ambassadors
• we live in a small world and the german ambassadors are my local fellows  :-)
• the usual technologies (phone, IRC, e-mail)

• communication between the INTERNATIONAL Ambassadors
• main communication with the german ambassadors
• sometimes with the french and the italian

• how many events / major events per year
• 2

• which event is covered once/twice everytime
• none

• which event has to be covered in future
• OpenExpo (http://openexpo.ch/), September 19-20, 2007
• Orbit-IEX (http://www.orbit-iex.ch) commercial, unknown status of support for opensource projects May 22-25, 2007

• how much money you think, you'll need
• This is only an estimate... CHF 0.- to 100.- depends on the numbers of events. Money for swag is needed. The production of this things is extremly expensive in switzerland. For myself, travel costs within europe I would pay by myself.

• local problems
• 4 official languages (french, german, italian (and romansh)) . The communication has to be done in french, german or italian.
• the swiss users get help from the communities around Switzerland (Germany, France and Italy)
• most linux users are using Debian (-> Ubuntu) and SuSE

• local benefits
• we have the most beautiful mountains to show the world  :-)
• lowest goods and services tax (aka MwSt or VAT) in europe

France

• how many Ambassadors
• communication between the LOCAL Ambassadors
• communication between the INTERNATIONAL Ambassadors
• how many events / major events per year
• which event is covered once/twice everytime
• which event has to be covered in future
• how much money you think, you'll need
• local problems
• local benefits

Austria

• how many Ambassadors
• communication between the LOCAL Ambassadors
• communication between the INTERNATIONAL Ambassadors
• how many events / major events per year
• which event is covered once/twice everytime
• which event has to be covered in future
• how much money you think, you'll need
• local problems
• local benefits

Netherlands

• how many Ambassadors
• 2

• communication between the LOCAL Ambassadors
• Well, given the fact I've alerted/invited Thijs on the LinuxTag event, and not yet get a response, I'd say the communication is pretty bad.

• communication between the INTERNATIONAL Ambassadors
• Gheghe, I attend meetings, I'm online 24/7 minus a little, I occasionally reply to the m-l. Pretty good communication  ;-)

• how many events / major events per year
• NLUUG Conferences, HCC Dagen, What-the-hack

• which event is covered once/twice everytime
• I recently started to attend to NLUUG Conferences, and I've always been attending the "HCC Dagen" (Dutch Hobby Computer Club, pretty large,

3-day event with appr. 80.000 visitors).

• which event has to be covered in future
• I'm not sure. To me it's not about promoting Fedora rather then being available as a techy to discuss problems with and maybe get some help,

or I just keep notes on what I think I can improve in Fedora. Anyway, we have too few ambassadors to cover the 80.000 visitor-event.

• how much money you think, you'll need
• I don't think I need any money or other resources for events in the Netherlands. However, events in Germany are most often pretty big and

far more interesting, and to travel there...One needs money. Luckily my employer pays up for the travel costs  ;-) , and for LinuxTag there's some RH sponsoring too. The rest, or even all of it, I('d) have happily paid myself!

• local problems
• Between you and me... Most Dutch Fedora users just want the Ubuntu experience and are not really concerned with whether stuff is

proprietary or free in every sense of the word. Then again, they don't really care about validly licensing their Windows or Office either (or any other application for that matter!). The strongest difference Fedora and their alternative is the usability -from an end-user perspective.

• local benefits
• Obviously, there's enough feedback for me as an Ambassador to work on Fedora and improve that what matters most to end-users. This is kind of an inverse of what an Ambassador usually does, it's the other way around. While not actively promoting what we have in Fedora, I'm trying to listen to what people are missing, and get that (back) in Fedora.

Bulgaria

• how many Ambassadors
• 2

• communication between the LOCAL Ambassadors
• n/a

• communication between the INTERNATIONAL Ambassadors
• I am attending in meetings, and also drinking some beers with Romanian Ambassador and maybe with some other too. I am traveling a lot into

Balkans area.

• how many events / major events per year
• We have 2 major events here. One is organized by me - WebTech, the other one is called OpenFest and it's about Free Software. We have also about

5-6 smallest events.

• which event is covered once/twice everytime
• WebTech and OpenFest (every year)

• which event has to be covered in future
• WebTech and OpenFest

• how much money you think, you'll need
• We are trying to get some money from local sponsors and at this moment we don't need any money for nothing. Maybe I'll need some advertisements

in the near future.

• local problems
• Not at all. We are trying to spread the country about Fedora.

• local benefits
• Most of business start to realize that moving to GNU/Linux will give them great benefit, and we will help them.

India

• how many Ambassadors
• 34

• communication between the LOCAL Ambassadors
• Infrequent and mostly IRC driven.

• communication between the INTERNATIONAL Ambassadors
• Primarily on Mailing List and IRC

• how many events / major events per year
• 4 (foss.in, LinuxAsia, FreeD(el) and Calicut)

• which event is covered once/twice everytime
• All of them are covered

• which event has to be covered in future
• SJCE, PESIT, TIFR-HBCSE

• how much money you think, you'll need
• Taking out the travel bit, what is needed is money for generating schwag locally and at the current rate of 1USD=40INR one would require around 5500 USD on an annual basis. Need to figure how we can raise a large bit of it from within.

• local problems
• Too many local events, Not much PR in the form of structured PR, Lack of local mirrors, Schwag, No preloading by assemblers of hardware

• local benefits
• Good brand recollection, Preferred OS at server end slowly on desktop, Strong L10n focus helping usage

Mozambique

• how many Ambassadors
• 1

• communication between the LOCAL Ambassadors
• n/a

• communication between the INTERNATIONAL Ambassadors
• IRC Meeting, Telephone, Email

• how many events / major events per year
• I have recently started working here, planning then.

• which event is covered once/twice everytime
• n/a

• which event has to be covered in future

• I am planning to start one day workshops in universities/colleges.

• how much money you think, you'll need
• I am not sure, here a lot of work has to be done, but currently i will finance all expenditure, i will need help in printed material e.g. CD covers, Banners, etc.

• local problems
• As i am alone here and i have just moved to this country so i have a lot of hurdles in term of organizing any event, but still struggling to take a start.

• local benefits
• As Mozambique is an African country so people prefer to have Free software, but due to unawareness they are unable to find right direction.

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