Guidelines for a Great Exhibition
As an exhibitor, you should always put yourself in your audience's place. How can you help your visitors understand your project's themes and goals? How can you spark their curiosity and make them want to know more about your project and its work? How can you help them overcome their timidity to ask questions or discuss issues with you?
The appearance and layout of your exhibit are very important in addressing these objectives. A good trade fair stand always offers more than a jumble of tables and notebooks. To develop a clear idea of your presentation, start with sketches of the planned space and how you can use it. Don't hide your staff from the visitors behind a barricade of computers, monitors and other equipment. Even though you may want your stand to promote communication among members of your project, but you shouldn't just use it as a developers' meeting. (There are other ways to organize such meetings at LinuxTag: in the conference center as workshops, for example.) Make visitors the focus of your exhibit, and communicate your project's themes to the public.
Posters are not just a covering for ugly empty walls, and they're more than a way to advertise your project. You can use them to explain complex topics through charts or graphics.
Your staff should take an active role in approaching the public, and should be clearly identifiable. Matching T-shirts, buttons, or name tags are helpful. Interactive events at your stand, such as contests, drawings or announced demonstrations, help to raise visitors' interest.
The LinuxTag Projects Committee welcomes such initiatives and supports your efforts wherever we can. They can improve your project's image dramatically, and contribute to a successful exhibit.
It's also advantageous for projects to appear not as lone wolves at the exhibition, but as team players in the community. Coordinated or joint exhibits by projects with related themes are good for everyone, and can help visitors understand the relationships between different areas of development. Communication and coordination among projects also promote cooperation between projects overall.
LinuxTag 2006 in Wiesbaden's Rhein-Main-Hallen will be a spatially concentrated event. The conference rooms and the exhibition will be under the same roof. The surrounding Rhine-Main metropolitan area will attract many new visitors who will be experiencing their very first LinuxTag, and a well-planned presentation can help us to promote the community's viewpoints.
Don't hesitate to contact the Projects Committee at any time with your questions and problems!