Solutions Linux 2005 Paris was held at the CNIT, Paris-La Défense from February, 1st 2005 to February, 3rd 2005.
I was responsible for the Debian booth again this year.
I arrived at the CNIT at about 2:40pm, an hour later than what I expected, but Nadine and I met had a dinner with a friend. Aurélien, Christian, Nicolas and Niv were here already, and apart from Christian's 2 Dell machines, there was nothing else. Troubles coming.
As it turned out, the organizers did a pretty bad job of getting the booth material shipped to the exhibition floor. The booth themselves were set up, and despite a few problems with the height of some separation panels, nothing terribly bad had been done. Having nothing else to do, Christian booted the mirror server, and Aurélien set up is switch. A few minutes later, a couple of network cables flowed in our direction ;) (that's the Debian mirror effect)
Around 4pm, the guys from HP arrived with the material for their (nice) booth. We got our 3 demo machines, as promised. Our friends of the ALDIL (Association Lyonnaise pour le Développement de l'Informatique Libre) kindly gave us one of the two tables they managed to grab, as they arrived sooner than we did.
The installation of the 3 HP machines went flawlessly with debian-installer RC2 for two of the machines, and a daily build for the third one. We did a little installer race, then Niv took care of setting up the demo machines. One GNOME desktop, one KDE desktop and XFCE on the third machine.
The Linux Magazine France staff arrived in the meantime, so I went to fetch the 100 Sarge DVDs and the posters they shipped for us. We then proceeded to hang a couple of posters.
Loic Bernable asked us to install a Debian machine in the demo area. Niv took care of this machine too, and had to compete with some gentooist. A few -funroll-loops later, we eventually won :p
At 7pm, the tables and chairs from the organisation arrived. Finally. A couple of minutes later, the VideoLAN team arrived with a long table and 4 chairs for us. Sven arrived at about the same time, along with his Pegasos machine and 2 17" LCD screens. Unfortunately, the Pegasos needed to be reinstalled, due to some video problems.
At 8pm, we went for food, leaving a nice booth ready for the opening.
We arrived at the CNIT at 8am, and took a breakfast at one of the cafés. We joined Christian on the booth at 8:40am. Most of the booth staff arrived around 9am; a lot of nice people met this morning.
Fabrice Lorrain brought us 2 giant flyers; that was the missing piece of the booth. It rocks.
Niv arrived a bit later, bringing with him the file needed to netboot the Pegasos, so Aurélien took care of that later in the morning. Unfortunately we missed something in the installation, and couldn't get it to reboot (we hadn't pay attention to the partition number). Sven completed the installation when he arrived around 2pm.
Niv found a videoprojector for the booth, in exchange for his (well, his girlfriend's) LCD monitor.
We've been busy with answering questions for the rest of the day; nothing special happened, apart from an OOM on the mirror machine. We went for food by teams, which was really nice. In the evening, some of us went to the dinner organised for the .Org Pavillion.
Arrived at the CNIT at 8am, got breakfast, just as the first day. Met Christian on the booth, set everything up, did a bit of tidy up, then the rest of the staff arrived.
Yet another busy day on the Debian booth, business as usual.
Well, not really "as usual". There was something strange this year. The exhibition wasn't exactly as it was the past years. I learned later that the organizers failed to advertise the exhibition properly. Should have thought of that, as Apple wasn't here this year (good thing, if you ask me. They have no Linux business, what the hell were they doing here anyway ? Couldn't even install a Linux machine on their booth.)
The result is that we saw less administrations and companies visiting the exhibition.
I found the time to discuss with the guys from MGE (of which, Arnaud Quette who is a DD), Linux Magazine, HP.
We went for food by teams again, and it was, again, really nice. Had to take a train back to Lyon in the evening, so Nadine and I went for dinner alone, unfortunately.
My school sucks, you know. Had to take an exam on this thursday morning.
So, well, I finally arrived at the exhibition at 3:40pm, and found a crowded Debian booth, as usual. Everything was fine.
Raphaël offered me a copy of his book, with a kind dedication. Thanks !
At 4pm, we shut the demo machines down, and brought them back to the HP booth. Exhibition is over, let's pack everything up and go home.
Nothing more to say, this is always a sad moment. I really hate that moment. Sure, these 4 days are really tiring, it's really hard not to headcrash on your pillow; but it's a nice time anyway, meeting the community, meeting fellow DDs.
A drink was set up once the booths were packed up on the .Org Pavillion, so we went there and discussed a bit before everybody left the exhibition. We were all very pleased with what we did during these 4 days.
I have to say that I am very proud of the Debian booth we had this year. 6 months of hard work, but it's really worth it.
Thanks to HP and Jean-Marie Verdun for the demo machines. Thanks to the ONERA (the French Aeronautics and Space Research Center) for allowing Christian to attend the exhibition and to bring two machines.
Thanks to Fabrice Lorrain and the University of Marne la Vallée for printing two giant flyers, they were really nice.
Thanks to the VideoLAN team for bringing a long table and 4 chairs.
Linbox/Free&Alter Soft paid for our (color!) flyers and allowed Cédric Delfosse and Ludovic Drolez to join us on the booth. Thanks Sébastien !
Thanks to Martin Michlmayr, our DPL, who made it possible for me to get all the required authorizations my school needed to let me go for a couple of days.
Once again, Loic Bernable did an amazing job organising the .Org Pavillion, thank you Loic for all the time you devote to this exhibition every year. Thanks to Alix Guillard and Anne who helped Loic.
Thanks to Linux Magazine France and its editor Denis Bodor for shipping part of our material again, for giving us a hundred free Sarge DVDs, and for printing some really cool Debian stickers.
Thanks to the people who helped with the booth, I really enjoyed meeting you all.
Thanks to all the visitors who stopped by to say hello or to get information about Debian.
Hope to see you all next year !