[wplug-board] Are we doing anything for Software Freedom Day? (Possibly just a theoretical question....)

[Pat Barron]

Software Freedom Day is September 20th.  We didn't do anything the last 
two years (we intended to - but it just didn't work out....), and we 
have a very short runway if we're going to do something this year.  So I 
don't know if we can (or if we should even try).

But, theoretically, if we were to do something, I would think the 
following considerations should be ... considered.  ;-)

 1. I would assume that any SFD activity would be an "outreach" kind of
    event.  I don't think it makes any sense to plan an SFD activity
    intending it to be attended by folks currently in our sphere, or who
    currently have any awareness of the open source community. 
    Preaching to the converted, and all that.
 2. In view of that, I would think we'd want to hold any kind of SFD
    event in a very public place that has lots of foot traffic. I don't
    think we'd be able to productively "promote" such an event, because
    the intended audience isn't even aware this is something they might
    want to be interested in (I'm not saying that it's not possible to
    promote an event like that to such an audience - I'm just saying I
    think successfully doing that is beyond our skill set).  So people
    would have to find it "by accident", so it should be in a place
    where a large number of people are there for other reasons anyway. 
    I still think the idea of trying to talk to the management of one of
    the local shopping malls, and seeing if we could convince them to
    let us use a vacant mall kiosk for an afternoon, would be good -
    though I admittedly have no contacts in the "management of local
    shopping malls" community...
 3. Even though we did nothing last year, we actually did register a
    "project team" for an SFD event, and we were hoping to receive the
    SFD "goodie package" with banners, stickers, pamphlets, other
    giveaway items.  But we received nothing (I know other teams did,
    but we did not).  I'm not convinced we'd receive anything this year
    either.  That may affect whether we think it would be useful to even
    try to do anything.
 4. Related to the above - team registration, and pretty much everything
    else, related to SFD 2014, seems to be running way late this year
    (i.e., later than in previous years), so I am not confident that
    they'll even mail out the "goodie packages" in time for September
    20th anyway.

Basically, I don't know that we can really do anything on this - but I 
thought (especially since we intended to do something the last couple of 
years) that there should at least be an opportunity to discuss it, if 
anyone else disagrees with this.

--Pat.

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