First Crack at a Post Mortem

Mon, 24 Jun 2002 11:18:18 -0700

I am including it.  I will put this up on the main Install Fest page, before 
the Press Release when everyone agrees that this is appropriate.  I am also 
going to update the Contributors page to add Lycoris, TOLIS, and UnityWave.

Lemme know what you think of this as a post mortem.

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Does the word "success" ring a bell? Parking Lot A at SCC was nearly
deserted at 8:30 a.m. The Student Center was locked and dark. By 9:00
a.m. the Turquoise Room was filled with PLUG members setting up the room
for an unknown number of "customers". I was under the impression that all
of our communications with the outside world said that the Install Fest
would run from 10:00 a.m. till 4:00 p.m. That did not stop "customers" from
coming in early - or often.

The only problem that we encountered was finding table space to put all of
the machines that were brought in to have Linux installed on. It seemed to
me that by 10:30 or 11:00 we were scrambling to find a place for a customer
and his PLUG installer to set up. That problem continued well into the
afternoon hours. That was about the only problem that we encountered.
Okay, there was a need for a blank floppy for a network install but who
uses floppies any more?

There seemed to always be PLUG members ready and willing to help with the
next install. During those "down" times, they spent a lot of time answering
questions and helping to resolve issues. The presentations that were held
in the Peridot Room seemed to go very well. I overheard a lot of comments
and they were all extremely positive. The giveaways, as always, went
over very well. Without the support of the vendors, we would never be
able to show the newbies that Linux is about giving and sharing by
giving away so many goodies. Only the RMS video in the hallway met with
less than stellar success, but that may be a result of the location. 

So what were the numbers? There were 107 people who signed in. There were
somewhere between 150 and 200 raffle tickets that disappeared from the end
of the roll. There were 39 installs. I know of at least two installs that
were not completely successful, but I know that one was a hardware issue.
That boils down to over six installs per hour - and that is an impressive
number. 
 
Who do we need to thank? This could be a very long list. We
should start with the Install Fest Committee. Bill, Dennis, Alan, Hans,
Thurm, and Vic did a great job in covering all of the contingencies. I
want to single out Thurm for providing the facilities at SCC. His head is
an appropriate repository for the Red Hat fedora, because without the
facilities the Install Fest would not have been as successful.

We need to thank the vendors who supported the PLUG Install Fest. You can
see the list of all the supporters by clicking on the Contributors link
above (it has been updated to reflect the late-commers because they
deserve mentioning). I want to single out Red Hat and Lycoris. Not only
did they supply merchandise for the giveaways but they also had personal
representatives down in the trenches doing installs and answering
questions. A tip of Thurm's new fedora to both Red Hat and Lycoris.

But I reserve the biggest THANK YOU to all the PLUG members who showed up
to help doing the installs. Maybe we could have done the installs without
being in the comfortable confines of the Turquoise Room. Maybe we would
have had a superb turnout of customers without the tons of giveaways. But
I guarantee that the whole event would have been a miserable experience if
the hordes of PLUG members that did the installs and answered the questions
and showed the newbies how to get more information and told them how PLUG
was always ready to support them were not there. To each and every one of
you, stand up and take a bow.

We did learn a few valuable lessons. We learned that we need to find a way
to keep a better count of people, members, customers, and window-shoppers.
We learned that we need to be prepared for a LOT of customers. We learned
that we should be getting more information from the customers, especially
things like where they heard about the event, what OS they are
replacing or adding to, and what kinds of things they will be using the
Linux computer for.

I know that there are a lot of members who were not at the Install Fest.
For you, we have a couple of links to pictures taken at the Install Fest.
The first one is from Thurm. See them at
http://inficad.com/~thurmunit/plug/installfest. Scott Sawyer from Red Hat
has a large collection of pictures that he took at the Install Fest. See
them at http://www.scottsawyer.org/photo-display/index.cgi under the 2002
year archives.