Linux Australia was very well represented at the Sydney Education Expo (24-25 June) this year. Pia wrote excellent summaries of the event, and I won’t duplicate what was already said.

This was only my second trade show, after CeBIT, and I must say that I enjoyed this one better. CeBIT was full of business-oriented people, and on the whole the event felt quite dry and corporate. Visitors to the Education Expo were mostly parents, teachers and children. I felt like I was making more of a difference with this group, helping to improve the education and development of children. To me, this is what free software is all about: helping communities and ordinary people.

Pia and Sara Kaan did a fantastic job or preparing and co-ordinating the stand. Craige drew in the kids (and kept them there) with the Linux Challenge. This proved to be a wonderful way to show how appropriate Linux is for education. Steve drove all the way from Canberra and brought some vital supplies. We were clearly the busiest stand there. On the Sunday I was talking to people non-stop for the whole six hours without so much as a toilet break, and I loved it.

There was one major letdown, however. We had made the assumption that the Edubuntu CDs we were handing out were based on the Ubuntu Dapper installable liveCD. I went to great lengths to explain to people how easy it is to install Edubuntu since it is a liveCD. Unfortunately and unbeknownst to us, Edubuntu is based on the Dapper Alt CD, which includes the Debian installer and is not a liveCD at all. We only discovered this the week after, and we have no means of knowing what the fallout of that was

This was, I felt, the only blemish we had. We are assured of success next year if we base our strategy on this winning formula.