LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Lige (Belgium) Main organization - - PDF document

LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

LPD 2016.2 06/03/2017 page 1/17

LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

Table of contents

LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium)...............................................................1 Main organization steps and feedback..................................................................................................1 Foreword...............................................................................................................................................3 Background...........................................................................................................................................3 Important warning :..............................................................................................................................4 Main organization steps........................................................................................................................4 Week #27.........................................................................................................................................4 Week #28 - #33................................................................................................................................5 Week #34.........................................................................................................................................5 Week #35.........................................................................................................................................5 Week #36 - #37................................................................................................................................5 Week #38.........................................................................................................................................5 Week #39.........................................................................................................................................6 Week #40.........................................................................................................................................6 Week #41.........................................................................................................................................6 Week #42.........................................................................................................................................6 Visitors registrations.............................................................................................................................7 Technical installation............................................................................................................................8 The event day – 22/10/2016...............................................................................................................10 Survey............................................................................................................................................10 Survey question :......................................................................................................................10 Survey analysis..............................................................................................................................11 LPD staff organization........................................................................................................................13 What to do for the next event...and how ?..........................................................................................15 Tasks summary and comments :...............................................................................................15 Special thanks go to :..........................................................................................................................17

• Michel Gerin, editor of this document, is a former LUG member
• Unless otherwise stated, texts, pie charts, bar charts, drawing in this document « LINUX

PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) - Main organization steps and feedback » are licensed to the public by Michel Gerin under CC BY-SA 4.0.

• The « People icon » is licensed to the public by contributor nicubunu under CC0 1.0

(LPD logo is a derivative from the original).

• The «

Linux Presentation Day » logo is licensed to the public under WTFPL (1.0). The concept for the event « Linux Presentation Day » and the idea for the logo come from Hauke Laging, the name from Philipp von der Linden. The logo was implemented by Ralf Vögtle, Annette Kalbow and Hauke Laging with Inkscape.

• All photos in this document were taken in the «Bibliothèque Chiroux» (public library).

They are licensed to the public by Michel Gerin under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 where explicitely specified.

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

Foreword

Liege Linux Team (in brief LiLiT) is a small LUG in Liège (Belgium). This document provides some informations and feedback about its Linux Presentation Day 2016.2 event. It describes roughly different steps achieved to organize it in our city. The debriefing with our partners occurred

• n 19th December 2016. This document was mainly created for internal purposes. We added some

details bound to our region and country. We hope it is understandable for readers « external » to the

• LUG. It may perhaps help other associations wishing to organize such event. Note : some
• rganization details throughout this document are written in telegraphic style.

Background

We received, at the end of June 2016, Hauke Laging's suggestion to organize locally the « Linux Presentation Day » event (in brief LPD). This LPD event occurs twice a year, the first takes place in spring, the second in fall. The LPD concept was developed in 2014 by a German LUG : BeLUG. « The main goal of the event is to gain more Linux users, "quite normal" users, not those for whom Linux is more suitable because of their special needs. The target group are people who know little

• r nothing about Linux but are interested in it a little « (ref : LPD/idea/aims).

After our LUG committee approval, we solicited a public library for help. The library staff was ready to let us use two large meeting rooms in their facility (meeting room « Espace Polyvalent » and meeting room « Espace Rencontres »). An external consultant Greg Siebrand could eventually provide a short GNU/Linux presentation. The event had to take place between 9 am and 3 pm (normal library opening hours on Saturday) on 22nd October 2016. Printed DIN A2, DIN A3 posters and flyers announcing the event within the "Semaine Numérique" (Numeric week) were also offered by the library.

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Espace Polyvalent CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Espace Rencontres CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback The event “Semaine numérique” in Belgium could be a lever amplifying visitors interest for Linux. The « Semaine Numérique » (in the Walloon part of the country) and « Digitale Week » (in the Flemish part of the country) were organized during the same week as the "Linux Presentation Day". Both events were bound to “numeric” applications but not specially related to Linux. A LIP organizer took care of an Install Party a week after LPD 2016.2. This “Linux Install Party” was planned in the Centre Liégeois du B eau Mur The library staff requested to register LPD visitors prior to the event. The goal was to approximately evaluate the amount of people visiting the event. At first glance, that could frighten future visitors as they had to provide their e-Mail address during the registration pr

• cess. Nevertheless

this procedure wasn't mandatory and clearly mentioned. The link to the registration form may cease to work over time. The LUG may not repeat this registration process, if approximately the same amount of persons take part of the event each time. 16 visitors (of a total of 58) came on 22nd October without being registered. The registration form was created to best suit visitors expectations for the Linux Presentation Day. Thanks to Hauke LPD modus vivendi « No nerd stuff », we planned to explain very basic concepts related to GNU/Linux. We just followed Hauke’s guidelines here and there for this first time LPD

• rganization.

Important warning :

• The following organization steps may seem excessive in some aspects. It took us a bit

more than 8 weeks to organize this event. During the LPD event itself, fourteen persons were busy within the organization staff. A registration form was defined and implemented in

• ur web site. A survey was also organized.

But beginning from scratch with such an event could lead to unexpected results if this latest wasn’t correctly managed. That’s also why, for a first time event, both our LUG and the public library decided to join their efforts for the LPD preparation. This implied more work as partnership needs more exchanges and mutual agreements. Comment : very valuable LPD results can be achieved with a smaller staff and a reduced

• preparation. Some other LUGs had satisfactory results with less means.

Main organization steps Week #27

• first meeting on 4th July with the library staff just before the

holidays.

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

Week #28 - #33

• internal report sent to the library (meeting summary). These small tasks from week #27

to #33 could be easily performed from week #34 .

Week #34

• Registration form topics defined, IT infrastructure requirements sent to the library staff

(use of two large meeting rooms was confirmed, wireless and wired connections to Internet in both meeting rooms),...

• LPD 2016.2 was announced on LiLiT website.

Week #35

• An important event involving various associations

took place in Liège in early September (R etrouvailles). A lot of associations were involved in this event. It made sense to put there some posters announcing the Linux Presentation Day. Before receiving library posters, the LUG took that

• pportunity to use Hauke's provided SVG poster
• files. They were modified to suit our needs.

Posters were placed on different "friend" booths. Due to a lack of place in some of them, a limited amount

• f posters was delivered (max 4).
• during the same week #35, the above mentioned

registration form was available on our web site.

Week #36 - #37

• Minor problems solved, e-Mail exchanges between partners and specially with the

external consultant, internal communications related to the meeting preparation with the public library staff (second library meeting took place on 5th September 2016). Some people began to register during these two weeks #36 and #37.

Week #38

• Linux Presentation Day was announced on the

library web site. This information was probably sent, at the same time, to the "semaine numérique"

• rganization staff and displayed on their own web site.
• Facebook event created by the library on 22nd September 2016 (target : 630 people )

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LPD poster CC BY-SA 4.0

LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

Week #39

• 50 DIN A2 posters, 25 DIN A3 posters and 500 flyers were printed by the library. The staff

put some of them inside their facility and some in town (Liège). Their precise address locations were then registered in a database for future treatment. The remaining posters were sent afterwards to our LUG.

• post about the LPD on the library Facebook page on 2nd October 2016 (target : 1470

people)

• On 2nd October, Jean Henri Colleye, LIP organizer announced the event on Facebook,

Twitter, and Kali Linux (French forum). Poster and flyers were also given to the « Espace cyber senior de Eneo"

Week #40

• Posters were individually sent, by post, to 22 "Espaces Publics Numériques" both in

town and in suburb areas situated max 25 km far from Liège. The so called "Espace Public Numérique" is a location where computers may be used for a small fee. It's generally hosted, in public libraries, among cities and villages throughout the Walloon part of the country (French speaking part).

• During the same week, DIN A2, DIN A3 posters and flyers were placed by our LUG

members at multiple locations in the city. These locations were also registered in a database. At least, two weeks before the event, posters were visible in more than 58 locations. Comment : a « two weeks » delay was perhaps too short for the announcement per posters !

Week #41

• e-mail sent to about 1400 library users : mainly people registered to library "computer

classes" mailing list + users, some aged over 50, from the general mailing list.

• Reminder posted on the library Facebook page on 15th October 2016 (target : 809 people).

Week #42

• Reminder posted on the library Facebook page on 17th October 2016 (target : 809 people).
• Reminder posted on the library Facebook page on 18th October 2016 (target : 809 people).
• A couple of days before the event, as reminder, the LUG sent an e-Mail to each registered

visitor.

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

Visitors registrations

From week #36 to #42, our LUG server records a growing amount of visitor registrations. To best match visitors « interest choices » and wishes, statistics were provided to Linux helpers before the event. The goal was to get enough skilled Linux users able to give information about more specific software applications (publishing editor like Scribus chosen by some visitors). Comment : nobody was able to show game software during the LPD.

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

Technical installation

Tables and chairs were provided by the public library for both visitors and Linux helpers. Trunking with electrical outlets and Ethernet jacks were available near the tables as seen on following picture (Ethernet jacks described as « Prises Ethernet » in the picture left lower corner). As the event was starting at 9 am, it would have been probably difficult to mount, between 8 am and 9 am, all the equipements on the same day. Consequently, one day before the event took place, partial network installation was achieved and tested. 5 Linux workstations were available for visitors. They would be able to test a Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon distribution.

• workstations were connected via a switch in the middle of the meeting room

« Espace Rencontres » (layout on the following page).

• an additional WiFi access point was connected to the switch.
• a VDSL modem provided Internet access.
• in case of infrastructure malfunction, a library WiFi access point was also available

(captive portal).

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Espace Rencontres CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback A table layout was defined for the meeting room « Espace Rencontres » so that without moving from his chair, each Linux user (described as « L » in the drawing) could:

• either help visitors (described as V) to discover Linux installed on his notebook,
• r help another visitor testing Linux Mint on an available workstation next to him.

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Table layout

LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

The event day – 22/10/2016

The day before LPD 2016.2, 57 registered persons pointed out their topic preferences. On Saterday 22nd October 2016, 17 of them didn’t come to the event and 18 came without being

• registered. That makes a total of 58 visitors.

Comment: the fact that 17 persons didn’t come may be bound to the lack of « acknowledgment of receipt » from our server after registration process. This could let think that their registration was not recorded –→ reminder for our webmaster. Survey As already explained, each poster related to the LPD has been closely associated in a database to the location address where is was placed. Dedicated IDs were then assigned to the different poster locations. The database was enhanced by associating extended IDs related to the event "Numeric Week" in Belgium, public library administration intranet, e-Mails exchange - Internet as a generic source (Facebook, Twitter...), radio broadcast, word of mouth, the LUG association, the LUG web site, The goal was to associate each visitor to the media source informing her/him about the Linux Presentation Day event taking place in Liège. Survey question : at the library entrance, each visitor was asked where she/he first heard or saw information related to the Linux Presentation Day. The same procedure was achieved with visitors that were not registered prior to the

• event. The pie chart, on page 11 shows the result of 55 answers (3 persons couldn’t

answer the survey question).

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

Survey analysis

Comment : only 3 visitors among 55 noticed the posters in the city. Actually, placing this posters was time consuming...specially the DIN A2 format. Available advertising areas were overloaded, our members had to dis-assemble existing posters at different locations, then reorganize them with the LPD poster within the existing advertising area. We even encountered installation problems with the DIN A3 posters. For such a small result, we wonder if it is worth doing the same job next time. The public library brought 16 visitors with a few posters inside its facility vs 3 visitors brought by posters placed at 57 differents locations in the city and suburb areas !!! . Astonishingly, posters sent to the « Espaces Publics Numériques » didn’t seem to bring any visitor.

• The red, orange and yellow pie chart sectors clearly show that the associated visitors

amount is bound both to the public library and to Jean-Henri Colleye advertisement .

• The three blue sectors are related to the LUG advertisement.
• The green, light green and dark green sectors represent an important amount of

people visiting the LPD. It can reasonably be assigned mostly to library staff efforts with their Facebook announcements during week #38, #39 and 2 reminders in week #42.

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback The important participation of seniors visitors seemed to be bound to e-Mails sent by the public library during week #41 to approx 1400 library users, some aged over 50. Library web site is much more visible than ours and, everyday a lot of people visit the

• library. There was a good chance that, by « word of mouth », they spread the information

more than our LUG members could do. Better than words, the two following bar charts show the resulting amount of visitors to the Linux Presentation Day. It’s mainly due to library staff efforts to promote the LPD event. Correlation must be done with Facebook announce done between week #38 and #42. It is less significant during week #38, #39 and #40 but it appears clearly during the two last weeks #41 and #42.

• The bars in burgundy colour are related to registrations before the LPD 2016.2.
• Some registered persons didn’t visit the event. They are represented in “yellow-

green” colour.

• The light greenish-blue colour bar represents people visiting the LPD on 22nd

October 2016 without being registered. comment: during week #38, three persons were previously registered. Two of them didn’t come to the library event. The remaining visitor couldn’t answer the survey question. The registered person during week #37 was not present during the

• event. That’s the reason why no bars are displayed on the next bar chart both for

week #38 and week #37 (see following page).

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

The bar chart shows that the most important part of LPD visitors were people coming to the event, either registered or not, in the two last weeks before the event took place.

LPD staff organization

• Right at the beginning of the event, two library staff members managed the visitors flow.

Participants were invited to gather in the meeting room « Espace Polyvalent » where they could follow Greg Siebrand general Linux presentation. Afterwards, they moved to the other meeting room « Espace rencontres » where GNU/Linux users were answering Linux dedicated questions. A total of 14 persons were busy during the day :

• 1 LUG member brought 5 workstations with his van,
• 2 at the entrance managed the small survey,
• 2 library staff members managed visitors flow,
• 1 external consultant accomplished the general Linux presentation ,
• 8 GNU/Linux users ( 4 intern and 4 extern to the LUG) answered visitors dedicated

questions. At 9 am most Linux users were ready to help visitors in the meeting room «Espace rencontres ». Mainly Ubuntu and Mint distributions were installed on their notebooks .

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback At the same time, additional educational support was provided either by the public library itself (books) or by differents schools that have GNU/Linux and Free Software related courses in their education programs.

• itlg.be : this school allows student registration for a Bash (Unix Shell) course, even

if it is organized within a larger education program called «Bachelier en Informatique et Systèmes finalité : réseaux et télécommunications ».

• f
• rmation-continue.be (mainly Gimp and Scribus courses).

Because of yearly changes, the above links may over time cease to work. Nevertheless www.itlg.be and www.formation-continue.be may still exist.

• At 9 am, the external consultant Greg Siebrand started his first short Impress presentation

in the meeting room « Espace Polyvalent » ( comment : the file related to this link is in Impress format . odp ). He regularly repeated his presentation all day long from 9 am to approx 2 pm when enough visitors were present. Comment : apart to the valuable GNU/Linux information he could provide to the visitors, he was of great help by managing the visitors flow during the LPD but was completely exhausted at the end of the day! During the next event on 22nd April 2017, a precise timetable including breaks will be defined to avoid this problem.

• Previously, printed labels describing specific Free Software user skills, related to visitors

« interests choices », were placed near each Linux users. Comment : very quickly, it appeared that visitors didn’t take care about this feature. They just requested Linux users help where place was available around the tables. Labels (folded half DIN A4 page) were perhaps not big enough to be clearly seen.

• Hauke advice was to not organize an Install Party during the first LPD event, or at least not

to announce it. Even if clearly announced that no « Install Party » would be organized the same day, things happened unexpectedly... two visitors brought their notebook. Finally two Linux installations were done.

• Additionally, as planned, a LIP organizer took care of the « Install Party » a week later.
• Some visitors were a bit disappointed by the event time slot (9 pm to 3 pm). We had

anyway to follow library schedule. Shortly before 3 pm, as planned, we left both meeting rooms. Some people coming late couldn’t get the information they expected. Our normal LUG meetings are hosted at another place in the city. So, some of them came back to our LMP (Linux Meeting Party) on 3rd November.

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback A third of all visitors were older than 60 years. The age ranged from 16 to more than 70. Some of them had interest for Linux because of Windows 10 privacy issues.

What to do for the next event...and how ?

A LUG volunteer is a very precious resource to achieve different tasks along the

• year. But he is not always available ;-).

For this reason, optimizing organization tasks for future events is essential. Tasks summary and comments :

• Mainly between week #34 and week #42, two LUG members were partly busy with

the LPD administration tasks (two meetings and e-Mails exchanged with the library staff and other partners + miscellaneous tasks). comment : with the LPD 2016.2 experience, our LUG administration tasks will be certainly reduced for the LPD 2017.1 as most documents exchanged with partners will be only slightly modified. If correctly managed, LPD preparation can be shortened to one month or to one and an half month. This assertion is only valid when working with partners. LUG volunteers schedules don’t necessary match partner’s one. Thus, partner exchanges may slow down LPD preparation. Working solo (without partners) is also possible and has benefits ... but also some obvious

• disadvantages. Lack of LUG financial means may lead to request public or private
• help. A search for sponsors is a bit tricky. It’s time consuming and doesn’t bring all

the time the expected result (personal experience) .

• Our webmaster had to program and install the « registration form » previously to

LPD 2016.2. comment : this task doesn’t have to be repeated as the available registration process

• nly needs to be reactivated. Registration form can also be modified to automate an

additional survey. As reminder to our webmaster, the registration process needs to send a “acknowledgment of receipt” to the registered person right after the registration

• process. Otherwise, she/he could think that her/his form content was not recorded.

Attempts to register twice the same person were noticed for LPD 2016.2. On the other hand, previous visitor registration is not all the time essential. If after a few events, the amount of visitor is stable, there is no need to repeat this task. Spending time by collecting this type of information consumes human resources.

• A LUG member used his van to move the 5 Linux workstations.

comment : task to be done again as LPD main goal is «have a look at Linux and give it a try ».

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback Linux workstations are not always available. When available, they often request transport and handling logistic. With fewer visitors and no available workstations for the public, with help of a notebook and a beamer, it’s possible to limit LPD events to presentations. Shools and public libraries own generally this kind of equipments.

• Finally, in Liège, the event itself requested the presence of 14 persons : 2 from the

library staff, 4 external to our LUG, 4 LUG members, 1 external consultant, one additional LUG member moving workstations and accessories with his van and 2 persons at the library entrance for the survey. comment : the survey doesn’t necessarily need to be renewed. This could spare two persons. No need either to gather a lot of helpers if the expected amount of visitors is limited. ▪ An interesting feedback was provided by Dutch GNU/Linux users in Rotterdam. During LPD event, 5 Linux users were busy with 15 till 20 visitors. « Almost every visitor red about LPD in a local newspaper 3 days before the event. The event was also mentioned in the agenda of the Dutch LUG website ». comment : this LUG managed every tasks on their own without getting specific help from external partners as we did in Liège. Check LPD in Rotterdam

• The visitors flow, in Liège, was due essentially to library staff efforts.

Their Facebook and mailing list announces were much more profitable than our own LUG advertisement. To answer visitors questions 8 Linux users were present during the event. It is bound to the registered visitors amount as seen on bar chart page 7. It is proportional to visitor density. It may be reduced with fewer visitors. A registration process and analysis of its result may be useful for this reason. comment : without partners help, we could only expect to get maximum 15 visitors (statistics analysis). Hauke (German organizer) told us: « be happy if you get 20 visitors for a first event ». As an individual may also be involved in such an event, there is no need to rent/use huge meeting rooms. Thus, a smaller room can also be used. In Germany, we noticed that some partnerships involve schools ( Volkshochschulen ). It’s up to each association to choose the best local partner or to do it solo.

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LINUX PRESENTATION DAY 2016.2 in Liège (Belgium) Main organization steps and feedback

Special thanks go to :

Aline, Bénédicte, Benjamin, Christophe, Emmanuel, François, Frédéric B., Frédéric D., Greg, Hauke, Jean-Henri, Julien, Michel Ge, Michel Gi., Olivier M., Patrice, Réginald, Sébastien, Serge, Simon, Xof. They all participated, directly or indirectly, to the LPD preparation and follow up.

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