FSFE supporters Vienna

From the 2nd to the 4th of June, the first of this year’s three Vienna Veganmania Summer Festivals took place at Vienna’s Museumsquartier. Naturally, once again our local FSFE group was present with the traditional information booth.

Originally we were instructed by the organizers surprisingly to set up at another, less favorable stand location, because apparently it was not permitted to have our usual place. But after about two hours the head of the district came by and demanded that we finally set up the stand at our usual corner again. This was fine with us, because we had a wall behind us and could enjoy the shade for the whole afternoon, although this year all three days were cooler than in previous years. And this was optimal, because it was much more pleasant to chat with the many people who visited our information booth. Rain was announced for Sunday morning, but we were lucky and accordingly our materials stayed dry the whole time. Nevertheless, we would be better off using a tent in the future so that we are no longer completely dependent on perfect weather if we want to avoid rain damage to our materials.

We had ordered supplies for some of our materials ahead of time, so we also had some new brochures and stickers available. However, we exhausted them almost entirely in the three days and we clearly need to reorder more materials for the two remianing events.

It was particularly amazing that the brochure Public Money, Public Code, which is quite large, thick and specific, was almost completely snapped up on the first half day. And this was not because we were offering it to an unsuitable target audience, but rather because a number of people came by who told us that they worked in administration and would find the brochures very interesting for this reason.

Almost all info booth visitors take our locally produced overview of 10 of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions with them. Especially popular are also the Free Your Android leaflets. Our locally produced Freedom and The Truth About Your Computer leaflets are no less popular. And of course our small assortment of FSFE stickers is no wallflower either. Even our somewhat outdated games leaflet is taken again and again. It certainly helps that we have had a <0AD poster stuck to our table for years. The game is of course an eye-catcher because of its still comparatively nice graphics, even if our poster is quite worn out by now and could definitely be replaced.

Certain info posters in particular need to be re-produced because the paper no longer looks so attractive due to repeated use and the ravages of wind and rain. It might be worthwhile to have them printed on plastic so that such environmental influences cannot cause any damage. We have been wanting to add a practical install-guide to our equipment for some time. Unfortunately, we have not yet had the opportunity to put this plan into practice.

This year we met comparatively many interested people who already work professionally with Free Software themselves and we discussed some possible synergies. We have to temper our hopes, however, because experience shows that many people have spontaneous ideas but do not take them up later. Time will tell what emerges from our many constructive conversations.

But of course, the diversity of people at our information booth was much greater. As usual, we were able to reach people who had never heard of Free Software. However, many already knew at least the term Open Source and quite a few had tried a free operating system themselves at some point. Nobody reported unpleasant experiences. However, some people described the problem of the network effect, which eventually led them to switch back to proprietary solutions. Others had gotten free systems from acquaintances and simply used what came pre-installed when buying new devices. However, they had obviously not lost their interest, because they came over to us voluntarily and struck up conversation.

Only one person told us that they were happy with their proprietary equipment and did not want to change anything. Several visitors to the information stand remarked that they had visited us at our information stand several times before. Little strokes fell big oaks! 😉

The wind blew the FSFE balloons around a lot and sometimes we had to catch them because they came loose. The bottom line in this regard is that we learned that it is more practical to display only one or two inflated and give them to people uninflated, as most kids seem to enjoy inflating them.

In conclusion, we can happily announce that this information stand was once again a complete success. It once more proved that it is worthwhile to intentionally go outside the usual Free Software environment.