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The First-Ever Installfest in Egypt

Posted by timothy on from the pent-up-demand dept.

MadFarmAnimalz writes "On the first of May, the Egyptian LUG had the first ever Linux Installfest (check out the photos and for Pete's sake mirror them!) at the Sawy Cultural Center in downtown Cairo. Turnout was absolutely incredible; the hall was maxed out at something between 500 and 1,000 persons for 7 solid hours (not bad considering our geurrilla marketing campaign can't have cost more than 7 or 8 dollars), and we were absolutely swamped!" Read on below for more details.

"The atmosphere was just unbelievable; people who had had linux installed realised the LUGgers were overwhelmed and stayed on helping other people with installs, we couldn't burn CDs fast enough, several thousand educational pamphlets were not enough by a wide margin. We were expecting maybe 150 or 200 people throughout the day, but we had already reached that number by 9:45 a.m. (15 minutes before opening!). To the best of our knowledge, the most successful LUG-driven event in the middle-east, certainly the biggest, and one hell of a day that we'll all remember. Note that we are now looking at the possibility of another Installfest during summer at the Bibliotecha Alexandrina and would welcome any extra resources. (A big thanks to MadFarmAnimalz' family who served the volunteers sandwiches carefully wrapped in copies of the GPL preamble and the deCSS code)"

2 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. marketing by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 0, Redundant

    What exactly did this extremely effective guerilla marketing campaign consist of?

    --
    main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  2. Re:We now need one ... by Elektroschock · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Egypt is a country full of experienced young men and women who know that Linux will have a huge boost on future technology and that they will lose when they stick to Windows and Unix. Linux is their great opportunity to get to the first row while Europe and the US is trapped by the proprietary lockin.

    And: Egypt is an arabic country and you know the great Islamic culture and the strong sharia law is very similar to GPL rules. Only GPl software conforms.