LinuxTag Infomail4

LinuxTag_2007

Subject: [LT07-Pro-Announce] Infomail #4, April 30, 2007 Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:25:46 +0200

Dear Projects,

after further brainstorming, research, meetings, negotiations, some tee and beer we have some news for you:

o Booth Plans o Booth Furniture o Posters o Power and Internet Connectivity o Setting up and Dismantling Your Booth o Exhibitor Passes o Deliveries o Catalogue / Project Logo o Project Workshops o Accommodation o eTickets

So you see, it's a lot of stuff.

1. Booth Plans

Finally we have finished the booth planning for the Free Software Projects. You can find the preliminary plans on our website. They are for your eyes only - please do not distribute them!

o Hall 12: http://www.linuxtag.org/2007/tmp/aufplanung/LinuxTag2007-Halle12-20070430.pdf

o Hall 14.1: http://www.linuxtag.org/2007/tmp/aufplanung/LinuxTag2007-Halle14.1-20070430.pdf

This year we do not have this much space as the year before. It was a really hard job to fit every project into this plan and we have tried to do our best.

2. Booth Furniture

First we have to apologize that you have still to be patient, but Messe Berlin is working very hard on the details of your booth's equipment.

One reason for this: we will have much better furniture at the booths this year. There will be (all dimensions are height x width x depth):


 * Infopoints (2.5 m x 1 m x 1 m): The infopoints have a 2.5 m high and 1 m wide postwall in the middle. At each side, there is a circular desk, which has its deepest point with 0.5 m.
 * Infocounter (1 m x 1 m x 0.5 m): The infocounter is a normal sales counter, which may be used for presenting giveaways, merchandising, etc.
 * Podests (narrow) (1.3 m x 0.5 m x 0.5 m): This podests are a kind of counter, but a little bit higher, so they are ideal for putting an LCD display or laptop on it.
 * Podests (wide) (1.3 m x 1 m x 0.5 m): This podests are a kind of counter, but a little bit higher, so they are ideal for putting two LCD displays or laptops on it.

As we from the project committee talked to every project we were able to contact by phone, we assigned some of this stuff to your booth depending on its size and your provided information in the vCC.

Please do not send us mails about what will be at your booth: we will provide you detailled plans until May 10th. Then there will be a short timeslot for discussing your change requests.

3. Posters

Please prepare at least one large poster (A1 or A0) to be placed on the walls of your booth or infopoint, so that visitors understand what the booth is all about, or what the particular machine in front of them intends to demonstrate. Without posters or other similar stuff the booth will probably look a bit deserted and not that interesting at all.

There are just very few booths which have all four sides open and therefore have no wall to put posters on. This projects will have the Infopoints (see above) at their booth. They should prepare for each side of the infopoint a poster.

You can use adhesive tape to fix the posters on the walls. If you plan to demonstrate fancy hardware at your booth, it is very helpful to describe these particular pieces of hardware in a poster or a large sign, so that visitors recognise its value or notice that it is extraordinary.

4. Power and Internet Connectivity

Power and Internet will be provided by LinuxTag and Messe Berlin for the project booths. You don't have to worry about these. However, you'll need to take enough extension cords and power multiplier sockets with you. We cannot provide them in a proper number for all projects. If you use a cable drum for distributing power, please make sure not to connect any computers or monitors to it unless you've pulled off the entire cable. If you plan to present special hardware, like several servers, which will consume very much power, please contact us.

Please be advised to take long network cables with you. You will also need some switches for the inner-booth network.

If you share your booth with other projects, you probably should plan the booth cabling together with them.

5. Setting up and Dismantling Your Booth

You can setup your booth the two days before LinuxTag opens its doors. On Monday, May 28th, and Tuesday, May 29th, you setup and decorate your booth from 7 am to 10 pm. The earlier you arrive and begin with this the better for all to solve eventually arising problems here. We hope that the booth basics are ready for you when you arrive. Otherwise, please stand nearby, and make sure to have a guard at your stuff.

Because LinuxTag will be opened on Tuesday, May 30th, by some officials there is no way to setup your booth this day, it has to be done before.

As usual it is not permitted to start dismantling your booth on Saturday, June 2nd, before the show officially closes. Please do not start packing your equipment befor 6:30 p.m. You also can dismantle your booth on Sunday, May 3rd, from 7 am to 10 pm.

To get into the exihibtion halls during setup, we will send you special exhibitor passes, which are only valid for the setup and dismantling time. We will send them to our project contact person. Please update your postal address until Friday, May 4th.

6. Exhibitor Passes

The exhibitor passes for project booth members will continue to be free of cost for a reasonable amount of booth personnel. However, they are not meant as a means for regular visitors to save the entrance-fee. Hence, please don't abuse this, and don't add random visitors as booth staff if they don't belong to your booth. For this matter we already sent you some eTickets.

You can order the exhibitor passes for each accepted project using the vCC. Please login at the virtual Conference Center and click in the Main menu on "Project" and then in submenu on "Projects".

Each accepted project will find a button "Order exhibitor passes". After you ordered the passes, we will have a look at the list and approve them. Otherwise you will get an email from us.

The deadline for ordering exhibitor passes is May 21st.

7. Deliveries

It is possible to send packaged stuff to LinuxTag independent of your own arrival. However, Messe Berlin is a very large area, and if nobody knows about the packages, these cannot be taken care of properly. Please ensure that they will not be delivered before May 25th, as nobody's there before.

Please read the following thoroughly:


 * At all times parcel post can be send to the parcel service of Messe Berlin which can be ordered using form B3+4 at our exihibitor service sites. Advantages are: it will arrive on schedule, parcel is covered by insurance.
 * You can send parcel post in little amounts (quantity and size) to us ---that is Messeleitung LinuxTag Projektbüro, please see address later on--- but only May 25th (Friday) or 26th (Saturday). Please keep in mind that via this way parcel will not be insured.

Hence, please tell us who sends the packets, who should receive the stuff, and what kind of content is in. The Project Team will act as dispatcher anyway, but can only accept and dispatch stuff properly when the team knows about it. For this reason, send us an email (to projects@linuxtag.org) with this subject: Parcel Post for Project $projectname (#boothno).

Please send packages to

Messeleitung LinuxTag Projektbüro c/o Messe Berlin GmbH ICC Pressegeschoss Messedamm 22 D-14055 Berlin Germany

Please put on the package (but not to the address field) the project name, the booth number, a contact person and a phone number (cellular).


 * Starting with May 29th (Tuesday), you can receive parcel straight at your booth. You have to make sure that there's somebody who accepts the packet. Please only use the address given here, and please inform us about the deliveries you expect.

If you choose to send it to your booth, use this formula for the address:

PROJECTNAME HALL, BOOTHNUMBER c/o Messe Berlin GmbH Messedamm 22 D-14055 Berlin Germany

8. Catalogue / Project Logo

We are currently providing the official fair catalogue. Therefore we will take the information from the vCC. Please have a look at the following fields:


 * Project Name
 * Press Contact
 * Descriptions (short, long)

Additionally we need your logo in an vector format (EPS, PDF) and as bitmap (JPG or PNG at most 400 kB). Please send it via email to projects@linuxtag.org, and please use this subject "Project Logos for $PROJECTNAME". It is very important that you use the correct subject line.

Deadline for the logo and the vCC information is on Monday, May 7th.

9. Project Workshops

There are still opportunities to have a Project Workshop. Use your vCC account to place submissions with category "Project Workshop" in our vCC.

Extended closing date is May 14, 2007.

10. Accommodation

The city has an enourmous, nearly innumerable number of accommodation facilities. Because we have to organise many things virtually, it's hard for us to give you foolproof advice on this score. However, we hope that Sven Guckes, our local scout, can provide us with further recommendations within next week about a number of hostels.

We have heard from several projects that they already have made arrangements here. We want to ask you to exchange information if you have special arrangements, you can make your accommodation provider happy if you book him out together with your fellows.

Although we had started to look for a gym, things went on very tough. We are sorry for this. We look for volunteer who finds a gym for the community, or who can help Sven.

First and good information for traveling to Berlin and Messe Berlin has been collected here:

http://www.linuxtag.org/2007/de/besucher/anreise.html

A number of service providers for accommodation has been listed here:

http://www.linuxtag.org/2007/de/besucher/hotels-packages.html

11. eTickets

Like last year, we will send each project a bunch of eTickets, which you should spread amoung your project community. The tickets are quite the same like last year, but one ticket is now valid for the whole LinuxTag event. So you do not have to collect more of them.

Because we encountered some trouble last year, we urge you to activate your eTicket account immediately after you got the mail from the system: the invitations are only valid for 48 hours and the tickets will be lost afterwards.

So, you will hear from us until May, 10th!

Regards, Susanne Pfeifer, Wolfgang Drotschmann, Marko Jung & Martin Schulte Project Committee LinuxTag 2007

LinuxTag_2007