Dear Projects,
please read on for information about
Booth Size, Location, Layout & Equipment
- Sponsoring
- Booth Concept
- Completion of Your vCC Record
Booth Size, Location, Layout & Basic Equipment
After the Call for Projects has come to its end, we are working on a first draft of the booth layout, which will be presented to you in about three weeks. We will continue our efforts to create a more communicative and open experience at the exhibition. Therefore we will merge thematically related projects to a bigger booth - we occasionally use the word 'island' here 
We talked to a number of you in the last days. If you would like to share your booth with other projects, please tell us your suggestions right now. To get the equipment for each booth planned, we urge you to check for your vCC entry regarding equipment you'll bring with you. Please updated the 'Equipment' field as soon as possible. We will provide for each booth at least basic furniture, power and network connection. Sponsoring
LinuxTag is Europe's leading event for free and open source software, but possibly caused by the huge dimensions of its conference and fair, we are highly dependent on the engagement of commercial exhibitors and generous sponsors. Since more than a decade we are giving as much as we can back to the free software community. This year we will provide again at least 500 square meters of fully equipped exhibition space for free projects. Even though this means a reduction of about one third, which we have to do to cut back costs, we still have one of the largest exhibitions of community driven projects on the world.
To keep this going we ask you to help us to acquire further sponsors or exhibitors, possibly companies which already have a strong relationship to your project. There are several ways of supporting LinuxTag and promoting a business or brand at our event:
- Get yourself a sponsor and offer him an infopoint on your project stand for 1.600€
- Acquire a commercial exhibitor to exhibit along with your project and save yourself additional bonuses as reward
Acquire a sponsor for conference tracks and support LinuxTag 2008
In case you have any questions or a potential sponsor, please contact Mr. Nino Grüttke from our team:
Nino Grüttke phone +49-30-3038-2326 gruettke@linuxtag.org
Thank you for your support! Booth Concept
LinuxTag especially welcomes projects' suggestions and initiatives for exhibits that go beyond conventional trade fair stands. Coordinate such ideas with the Projects Committee so that LinuxTag can publicize your activities appropriately. Likewise, be sure to let us know about unusual items at your exhibit, and about your important announcements. Together we can feed that in appropriate channels.
But let's get back to the booth. As an exhibitor, always put yourself in your audience's place. How can you help your visitors understand project's goals and matters? How can you spark their curiosity and make them want to know more about your project and its work? How can you help them overcome their timidity to ask questions or discuss issues with you? Think about this for a moment - at the end this visitor could be a new and valuable member of the project.
The appearance and layout of your exhibit are very important in addressing these objectives. A good trade fair stand always offers more than a jumble of tables and notebooks. To develop a clear idea of your presentation, start with sketches of the planned space and how you can use it. Discuss this with your peers. And then, to cut a long story short: send us informative sketches as PDF until April 9. Please use the usual address projects@linuxtag.org with a meaningful subject: Booth Concept for Project <your well-known project name>).
Of course, please keep in mind that these sketches need reasonable chances of feasibility.
Please take this serious. If prospects of satisfied visitors or a good media coverage doesn't motivate you enough, try this: Good concepts may translate into larger booth spaces or greater support with booth equipment. Completion of Your vCC Record
One advantage of a central data source is... well, you can get all the data you need from there. LinuxTag's source is the vCC. We use the information you fed into it to automagically generate the bits of information the visitor wants to know. Which are:
- Project Title
- Descriptions {en,de} x {long,short}
Please complete or proof-read your vCC record until 13. April 2008!
Thank you for your support and please stay tuned.
Regards, Susanne Pfeifer, Wolfgang Drotschmann & Marko Project Committee LinuxTag 2008