Yes, for me it was amazing. Last year wasn't that useful (even though it was fun, maybe even more than now) but this year we spoke to a huge number of visitors, got quite a few to sign up for the supporting membership (and hopefully convinced many others to sign up later on), got away with a lot of business cards to follow up on and spoke with many other FOSS people. And as usual, there was a lot of hugging. I'd complain if there wasn't (must admit I had to surprise-hug a few ppl - what's wrong with a hug?).
Eckhard did a good job at organizing the booth stuff as usual, and boy, was he nervous the first morning... We all had to stay out of his way a little as he was jumping-jumping and trying to move the world a bit to make it fit better. Now it's surely the case we can improve a few things - we should set up booth rules at some point to prevent a few baddies (yes I know, baddies is not a word). For example, sitting at the booth for hacking is NOT GOOD. Yes, I did that too, a lot, sorry Eckhart...
Another rule I'd like to institute is "more Lea's". We actually thought about simply putting her in the booth box, but were afraid Daniel wouldn't like that. Lea? Oh, she was amazing... She came with her boyfriend and Amarok hacker Daniel Dewald, and initially was sitting in a corner of the booth, looking around with a face saying "wtf am I doing here". Understandable, of course, if you're not a big geek. So at some point I gave her the excellent talkpoints we had on paper about our supporting membership program (written by Sebas) which, in bulletpoints, explains what KDE e.V. is, does and why you should support it. Frederik and a few others gave her further info about KDE later on - and she turned out to be a wirlwind, eclipsing us all when it came to talking to visitors. I think over half the people who signed up at our booth for the supporting membership did so because they were approached and convinced by Lea!
And although the high heels on the first day didn't work out that well for her feet, she had a great time and claimed she wanted to do more conferences - sounds good to me, we can use some help...
Now of course I shouldn't dismiss the other people at the booth, I especially think Torsten Thelke (our KDE e.V. intern) did an amazing job, and so did Frederik in his sometimes-scary way. Yes, showing off Fluffy Bunny themed plasma desktops, then jumping some of your fellow booth mates for a hug could be off-putting. Especially for ppl with gay-fobia - I even heard some opposed the Fluffy Bunny project as it might make young boys gay. Interesting concept - I've heard of ppl claiming to be able to 'heal' gay ppl into being hetero, so pink could 'heal' hetero's into gays? Who knows... Either way, a warning for you all - Frederik, despite his hugging and happy nature, is NOT gay, and I would keep your girlfriends away from him as he's quite the womanizer.
There were at least 10 more booth people I should talk about but this blog is getting long and potentially boring so I'll stop... Count on two more blogs with less ppl content and more thoughts over the next week ;-)
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