[nycbug-talk] linuxexpo

[G. Rosamond]

today illustrated the increasing relevance of bsd in a way i haven't
seen in years.

we were regularly *mobbed* by people gazing, asking questions, listening
carefully.

the most interesting point to me was the many people who approached the
table and said, "i was using redhat, but the licensing change isn't
making me happy.  so i decided to look at xxxbsd. . ."

the "old" stalwart of funy (free)bsd users of new york was with us
regularly, and had much insight into the operation of a bsd user group.
additionally, someone i spoke to briefly via freebsd-advocacy was there
all day dealing with questions.

we now have over sixty users on the mailing list.

in years past, we had some downtime.  this year, we barely had any.
redhat, sco, bsd reputation. . .it was a combination of many factors i'm
sure.  but the important thing is that we are able to address people's
questions about the bsd family.

jan from netbsd brought some dated but awesome netbsd tshirts we are
selling for $15.  dan from bsdcan has the brochures for the ottawa
convention in may, which some of us are planning to attend.  we also met
a group of mac/unix users who meet monthly, even if the date falls on
xmas and turkey day.  they were enthusiastic about our outreaching to
the apple world.

some of us have also had some discussions with the two visiting linux
tag (one of the most important open source conferences around) from
germany.  they also created knoppix, the cd-bootable version of linux.
we should consider the notion of an open source conference in nyc at
some point, with the linux user groups, new york php, etc, as this is
probably the last year for linuxexpo and macworld in nyc.  they're both
most likely moving to boston.

i want to encourage all to hang out at the table and get involved.  we
are making a splash, even though we may have the worst table location in
the place.  and didn't receive the most recent netbsd and openbsd cd's.
and freebsd 5.2 isn't out yet.

looking forward to the bof tomorrow.  we'll have a speaker from bsdmall,
wasabi, michael from nycbug and wes.

be there and get involved.

g