… at technology expositions/fairs I’ve been to this year, mostly as an Ubuntu advocate:

• Cool, free stuff!  I want one… errr… what is it?
• Will this let me use the internet?
• FREE???  What do you mean Linux is FREE???
• C’mon now… what is the catch?
• Why should I use Ubuntu Linux?
• What is in it for you?

and my favorite one so far:

• Jeff Waugh does a hell of a Badger dance!

Went to the Trenton Computer Festival this Saturday to advocate about Ubuntu Linux and Open Source in general.  Drove for 2 hours in the rain and ended up arriving 30 minutes late…  Turns out not a lot of people had arrived yet, which gave me time to set up.  Luckly my new friend Bryan showed up before we arrived and grabbed us a table.  Tarik spotted another table and we swiftly brought it over to our side…  Roberto unpacked the CDs, books, and tons of flyers he had printed the night before, and quickly set them out on the tables, next to the 3 laptops we had brought.  Tarik even built a nice pyramid made of CD cases…

Slowly but surely people started arriving, mostly running from the annoying rain that spoiled the flea market right outside.  The majority were older people and I was very surprised how many of them not only new what Linux was but had also run one of the older distros before too!  The four of us tried our best to answer all of their questions and there were moments when we were completely surrounded by visitors.

By mid-afternoon it got pretty quiet out there, enough for us to relax a bit and get to know each other.  The thing is that I had met Roberto (we actually work at the same place) and Tarik before, but Bryan was one of the few people who volunteered to help out.   But the three of them had never met or heard of each other before…  Bryan (the guy in the far right above) did a great job and his slide show attracted a lot of people to our table.  Roberto (the guy in the middle) was the only real noobie among us and quickly picked up the proper terms and answers to most asked questions.

Tarik also did a great job at the festival, and his live demonstration of Totem playing Star Wars had many people drooling over his laptop!  Hopefully he will be able to make to the Norther NJ MySQL MeetUp Group meeting this Wednesday so that we can do some more advocating…