[Members] Re: Member/Board Interactivity

[Alan Coopersmith]

Egbert Eich wrote:
> In the past the argument for attending industry events was to 
> be able meet decision makers there to increase our sponsorship.

Having worked the booth at a few LinuxWorld Expos (SF & Boston),
I can't remember seeing anyone come by who would be deciding to
sponsor us.   (Current sponsors stop by to say hi - but I never
got the impression that it was part of deciding to renew their
sponsorship.)

The vast majority of the people I've talked to in the booth have
been end users - at the beginning, a lot of whom needed explained
what the difference between XFree86 & X.Org was, but most seem
to have learned that now.   (At the August LWE, the question was
much more commonly phrased as "What ever happened to XFree86?" or
"Is XFree86 still around?")   Many have questions about their
X configs, or about new features ("When is Xgl going to be 'done'?").

While it's valuable to get end-user feedback and help with their
problems, we might be able to get similar results by connecting
better with the distro & desktop environment groups running booths.

On a related note, besides funding travel to X-centric developer
gatherings, it would also be good for X.Org to fund our developers
to have a presence at developer gatherings of related projects,
like GUADEC & aKademy.

-- 
	-Alan Coopersmith-           alan.coopersmith at sun.com
	 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering