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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).<br>
<br>
But, theoretically, if we were to do something, I would think the
following considerations should be ... considered. ;-)<br>
<br>
<ol>
<li>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.</li>
<li>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...</li>
<li>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.</li>
<li>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.</li>
</ol>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>--Pat.<br>
</p>
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