[PLUG] OSCON

[John Jason Jordan]

This was my third year manning the PLUG booth at OSCON (with lots of
help from Dave Mandel) and, as before, it was a high point of the year.

The most fun was meeting people engaged in all kinds of open source
activity. Some that stand out in my memory:

	A fellow from Singapore who had started a LUG, but wanted
	suggestions for ways to get it more active. 

	A fellow from Turkey, with whom I discussed the fascinating
	and unusual Turkish language.

	A lady from Uruguay who discussed their national internet
	access and the success of the One Laptop per Child program
	there.

I attended only a couple of the sessions, but both were highly
interesting and well done. It was also cool to have Free Geek as
booth-neighbors. This was their first year with a booth and they did
very well selling T-shirts and promoting interest. 

We handed out 96 PLUG flyers and a couple dozen business cards.
Interest varied from experienced Linux users who wanted to know about
our meetings to newcomers whose focus was on the Clinics. And there were
lots of fallen-away PLUGGERs as well as familiar faces. 

At the end we received donations of left-over schwag from other
exhibitors, including boxes of Linux Pro magazine. The spoils will be
handed out at the general meeting this coming Thursday.

All in all, a fun and productive week. And my hat is off again to
O'Reilly for a terrific show.