[Sig2006] Public announcement

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

I've posted this on blender.org now:

http://www.blender.org/cms/Newsitem.607+M5b28fa7802a.0.html

I've added the complete text below too. This text is specific for the  
Blender community, so feel free to re-edit the text for your own target  
group.

A more generic "Press release" is wanted too. Any volunteers?

-Ton-

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Blender on Siggraph tradeshow

Thanks to the bundling of organization power and sponsoring we can  
present ourselves on a large "Open Source Pavillion" this year.

The Blender Foundation, the Gnome Foundation (umbrella for Gimp) and  
the Uni-verse consortium have partnered together to organize a  
presentation of free and open source software for the entire Computer  
Graphics creation pipeline.

Thanks to a big discount granted by the Siggraph Committee, and a  
substantial (but anonymous still) donation we can put ourselves on a  
giant 20x30 island booth amidst companies like Disney, Electronic Arts  
and Boxx, in the main aisle of the trade show... just a couple of  
booths away from Lightwave, Maya and 3DStudio. Will be exciting!

Of course we'll use Elephants Dream as an eye-catcher, but also will  
present other compelling Blender art and animation samples to show the  
audience the state-of-the-art of open source 3D creation.

Our "Open Source Pavillion" will be roughly divided in 2 parts. One  
half is for the three partners, for a permanent showcase and  
demonstration of the products. The other half is a common area, with a  
large projection screen which we share for public tutorials, but also  
with plenty of computers to use freely. It has to become a cosy hangout  
for everyone!

We don't want to limit our presentation to only the three organizing  
partners, also other open source CG projects are very welcome to  
present on the booth. For example Inkscape and Aqsis have been  
contacted already. My target is to have at least for them (together) a  
designated 'demo pod' as well.

With less than 2 months to go, we've already started a lot of  
preparations, but still could use some help and/or additional  
sponsorship. Most urgent to solve now is:

<b>Booth construction</b>
We need an "approved" (yes, USA Unions...) contractor who can construct  
us a simple but efficient booth. (We can use the default Siggraph  
contracter too.)

<b>AV rental</b>
A good deal with a company for rental of large (plasma) screens, video  
(back) projection and audio system.

<b>Computers</b>
We are looking for a sponsor who can borrow us (Linux of course)  
computers + flatscreens. Some companies have been contacted already.

<b>DVD hand-out</b>
Then we would love to have free handouts... like a DVD-ROM with a  
complete collection of all open source CG tools, binaries ready to  
install and run, for each platform. It can also have documentation,  
video tutorials, and extras like artwork and movies. For this I seek  
both a sponsor and someone who'd like to produce it.

<b>Volunteers</b>
Then we'll need plenty of volunteers;

- people who can help setting up the systems (install linux, the tools)  
and a network
- artists who would like to demo Blender (one to one) on our permanent  
demonstration 'pod'.
- artists with sufficient guts to demo Blender on the giant screen, and  
talk about it even... doing public tutorials.
- and people who like to be around for general services... like getting  
bottles of water, do urgent shopping (powerstrips, cables), get  
sandwiches for people, and so on.

These volunteers can all get an official "Exhibitor Badge", which  
grants Siggraph access close to "Conference Select" level.

<b>Free admission tickets!</b>
And that's not all... we'll get in total 150 free admission tickets for  
the tradeshow. How to apply for that (and probably will be first come  
first served) will be announced later.

If you have feedback or ideas, you can use this forum to discuss with  
us. Volunteers can post that here too, or just email me personally.

This is definitely going to be big fun! And not only that, I really  
look forward to doing this together with other open source projects.

http://www.siggraph.org/s2006/
Tradeshow: 1-3 August. Boston Convention Center.

Laterz,

-Ton-




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Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
http://www.blender.org