[HH] Open Hardware Summit @ MIT, Sept 6

[Tom Metro]

Kurt Keville wrote:
> The OHS this year is at MIT on Sept 6.
> http://2013.oshwa.org/ 
>
> Do we want to have a booth or something to evangelize BLU or our own
> projects?

That's a fantastic idea, and thanks for proposing, but I've been busier
than usual with my $DayJob lately, and won't have the bandwidth to do
much to facilitate this.

The 6th is the first Friday in September, and I'm not sure if I'll be in
town when the event happens, so I can't even commit to volunteering at
the booth.

Looks like it is a one day event held between 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM in
MIT's Kresge Auditorium (http://whereis.mit.edu/?go=W16). Event tickets
cost $90.

Will exhibit booths be open for that entire duration, or only a portion?

What do you think the "prime" exhibit hours are?

If we decide that there are, say 6 hours, during that 11 hour range that
we deem as "prime", we'd probably want between 4 and 6 volunteers to
cover a booth, so you could have a pair during each period (to permit
bathroom and snack breaks), and 2 to 3 hour shifts.

In the mid-2000s we staffed a LinuxWorld booth for BLU in a similar
fashion. It would be awesome of we could do this for HH, but I'm
thinking that many volunteers is a tall order for this small group.

Are there even 4 people on the list planning to attend the summit? (I
know Kurt will, and I'm guessing Federico probably will, so in theory,
if you two commit to cover 3 hours, we'd just need to come up with two
more volunteers, if my time range guess is accurate.)

I see the event was offering free attendance to volunteers, but that was
volunteering to help put on the summit itself, and I'm assuming working
at a booth doesn't count. Regardless, they've met their volunteer quota.
I'm assuming exhibitors don't get a break on ticket prices, so we'd also
be asking our volunteers to pay their admission, if they weren't already
planning to attend.

Are there fees to exhibit? Deals for no-profit groups? Can we run under
an MIT affiliation?

(I don't see any exhibitor information on the site. Neither how to sign
up as an exhibitor, nor who is going to be an exhibitor. Are you sure
they'll even have an exhibitor area? Closest I see is a list of sponsors:
http://2013.oshwa.org/sponsors/ )

What collateral materials would be needed? For LinuxWorld we made
brochures and business cards. But the whole paper approach seems rather
passé these days. David Kramer had a BLU banner produced. It's probably
kicking around somewhere and could be reused. Maybe we just need to
supplement that with a one-off poster - even just an 8.5 x 11 sheet on a
display easel - with some basic info on the HH group and a QR code.

What message do we want to get across?

What stuff would be demoed?

Mark Woodward volunteered at the LinuxWorld booth and demoed his Linux
robot. This would be an even better fitting audience for that, if he
wanted to participate. I'm sure Kurt has something new on hand to demo,
and Federico always has stuff.

If we had any budget for BLU HH, I'd say the next best thing to a booth
would be a sponsorship, with starts at $100 to get our logo on the site.
It says, "Great option for Hackerspaces or other open maker groups."

 -Tom