FSFE supporters Vienna

On the second Veganmania street festival this year taking place on the Danube island in Vienna from August 25. to 27. we finally managed to borrow a sturdy tent. We could get it for free from a local animal rights organisation. This was great for withstanding the high temperatures during the event because it provided urgently needed shade. The only downside was that the name of the well known organisation was printed onto the tent. This caused many people to mistake our information stall for one of this other organisation despite none of our banners, posters and information indicated any relation to this subject or organisation – at least on first glance. Of course this didn’t hinder us to clarify the confusion and to point out the most important subject on our desk: independence on personal electronic devices.

As usual many people did use this opportunity to learn more about free software and the advantages it brings. Other than that we had many encounters with people who already use free software and were as happy as surprised to find us at this event. Of course we could easily give the reasoning why we feel that free software is a perfect addition to a vegan lifestyle. After all, most people decide to go vegan because they don’t want to harm others. And if you apply the same thought to the world of software you end up with free software.

Again I need to order more information material for the next instalment of our information desk on 8. and 9. October this year at the third Veganmania summer festival in Vienna in front of the city hall. Usually there are only two Veganmanias each year but since it is the 25. anniversary of the event in 2023 a third one will take place at this prestigious and hard to get location.
We noticed an interesting re-occurring phenomenon concerning a difference in how male and female people approach our information desk. Of course this is just a tendency and there are exceptions but in general most men will only approach our desk because they already know about free software and they want to check out what material we do offer. And female visitors of our desk mostly aren’t familiar yet with free software but are willing to find out what it is about.

Many people were especially interested in ways to improve their privacy and independence on their mobile phones. Unfortunately many of those did use iOS devices and we couldn’t offer them any solutions on this totally locked down platform. Android is far from being ideal but it at least gives most users the opportunity to go for more privacy focused solutions. Even if they didn’t want to forego all proprietary software they can at least use F-Droid as an app store to add free software apps to their mix. And it is of course always good to know that you can actually upcycle your mobile after the original OS stopped providing security updates by installing a free alternative Android system like LineageOS.

Especially the brochure for decision makers in the public sector investigating what advantages free software brings to the table in this area is still in higher demand than I anticipated. I really need to order more of those.

A large amount of different stickers seems to attract many people. I need to replace some of my over the years rather worn out posters. And I am still not certain if I should actually invest in my own tent because one that can withstand wind, rain and many years of service isn’t cheap. But using a tent with the information of an other organisation printed on it hasn’t proven to be ideal for the confusion it creates.

I also consider joining the annual Volksstimmefest with our FSFE information stall, but I am not convinced how good this idea is because it seems to be more focused on concerts and has a clear tendency to be a left wing political event. Since I don’t consider free software to be a predominantly left wing subject I am somewhat reluctant to position it so clearly in this spectrum.
Manning the desk for three days was somewhat exhausting since my usual helper couldn’t be there due to a clash of appointments. Nevertheless, I consider the information desk on Veganmania 2023 on the Danube island as an other successful event where I was able to inform many people about ways to improve their independency in the digital realm by employing free software.

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.

It was the usual information stall like described several times before in this blog. Unfortunately I didn’t have time yet to write more about it. I created an updated information leaflet and really should get a tent because this time we had heavy rain twice and it was very hard to protect the paper materials with only an umbrella as cover.

FSFE Information stand at Veganmania MQ 2022

From 3rd to 6th June 2022 happened the Veganmania street festival at the Museumsquartier in Vienna. Despite not happening for two years due to the Corona pandemic this over the years has developed into the biggest vegan street event in Europe with tens of thousands visitors everey day. Of course there have been plenty of food stands with all kinds of climate and animal friendly delicious meals but the festival had also many stands for buying other stuff. In addition many NGO tents were there too to inform about important issues and their work.

Like already tradition for many years also the local volunteers group manned an FSFE information stand from Friday noon until Monday night. It was exhausting because only two volunteers manned the stand. But we both stayed there the whole time and the interest of so many people had confirmed once more how well we optimized our information material assortment without losing the ability to bring everything at once using just a bicycle.

The front of our stall was covered with a big FSFE banner while the sides are used for posters explaining the four freedoms and GnuPG email encryption. (We very soon need to replace our old posters with more durable water resistant paper since the old one has gotten rather worn down and doesn’t look very sleek any more with all the tape pieces it is hold together.) In addition we use a small poster stand we built ourselves with just two wooden plates and a hinge. This was of left over material from a DIY center. Unfortunately this time we didn’t have any wall behind us where we would have been allowed to put any posters or banners on.

Also our usual leaflet stack has proven to be very handy. Since most people talking to us are not yet familiar with free software the most important piece is probably our quick overview of 10 different free software distributions. It is just printed in black and white in a copy shop but on thick striking orange paper. This way of production is rather important because it is very easy and not to costly to quickly print out more if we need to. It also allows us to adapt it often for new developments because we don’t have a big stack which might become outdated. Experience also shows that the generous layout with enough border space to write ad-hoc or very personalised links onto the matte paper comes in handy in almost all conversations. The thick paper it is printed on gives it also a much more valuable touch.

Less tech savvy people find a good first information in our local version of the Freedom leaflet which is basically RMS book Free Software, Free Society distilled into a leaflet. It combines this basic conceptual introduction using tools as comparison to software with some practical internet links to things like privacy friendly search engines, and a searchable free software catalogue.

Our leaflets Free Your Android and the one on GPG email encryption find much interest too. And of course many people like taking the There is no cloud … just other peoples computers and some other creative stickers with them. Our beautiful leaflet on free games attracts people too but this time after the event someone reported back that our link led him to kind of a Japanese porn page. After some back and fourth we discovered he tried to type a capital o instead of a zero in the link: play0ad.com. We did use this folder for years and he was the first to report back that the link didn’t work for him. Unfortunately we still have many of those games leaflets. I suspect in future we should point out that the link contains a zero and no capital letter.

We also consider putting together a more detailed walk-through for installing free software on a computer and we often hinted people to check out different distributions by visiting distrotest.net.

Normally we don’t even have time to get something to eat because we usually talk to people until after all other stands have closed up. But because we do not have a tent we needed to protect our material on two evenings from the storm in the night. So we closed up an hour early (about 9pm) and could still get some delicious snacks.

It has been a very busy and productive information stand with lots of constructive talks and we are looking forward to the next information stall on the Veganmania in August on the Danube island. Hopefully we have managed to renew our posters and information material by then.

Due to the Corona lock down we couldn’t man the traditional information stall at any Veganmania summer festival in Vienna in 2020. So we where pleased that from 27 to 29 August 2021 we were able to be present on one again. Officially, about 12.500 people visited the event each day this time and we had many encounters with people eager to hear our arguments for free software. Many hadn’t even heard about free software before. Others knew about open source or Linux. And of course we also met many people who already use free software at home or at work. In fact, maybe even more than ever before on those information stalls – except of course for those on our local Linux Week events.

Weather

On the first day we needed to pull out our plastic cover for our information material twice because short bursts of rain challenged our intent to inform people about independence on their own electrical devices. Unfortunately, we do not have a tent for this purpose yet. (It would be rather expensive and might prohibit us from being able to transport everything we need at once on a bicycle.) But fortunately, the weather remained stable for the rest of the weekend. Over all we had mostly ideal weather conditions since in previous years the summer heat was almost unbearable at times. This weekend, staying for hours in the open wasn’t an issue at all.

People and safety

Maybe due to the fact that people hadn’t been to such events for quite some time, it was was very well attended. Despite the huge interest, the organisers kept everyone safe by closing off the area and only letting people in who could show a recent negative Corona test or who already could prove they were immunised either by having recovered from the infection or by being fully vaccinated.

We often had to answer the question why the FSFE of all organisations was present on an event focusing on veganism. We gladly explained our reasoning: Most people chose a vegan life style in order to protect the well being and rights of those not having the power to protect themselves. If you transfer the same reasoning into information technology you end up with free software because there as well, the main concern is protecting the rights of all users and to ensure fair conditions for everyone.

Information material

Once more our information materials proved to be useful for this not usually very technical audience. Especially our introduction leaflet to the idea for freedom in technology and our locally produced practical overview of well known distributions came in very handy. In addition, the guide for email encryption and the stickers and post cards with motives like: “I love free software, but I love you more …”, “There is no cloud, just other peoples computers.” and some other funny freedom related stickers found many happy new owners.

A short time ago I found the domain distrotest.net and was very pleased by how easy this web page makes it to explore different free software distributions. It is simply fun to quickly test many desktops by starting virtual machines directly in your browser. The people I told about it, obviously liked this prospect too. I will certainly include a link to this in future versions of our distribution overview leaflet.

Another well received leaflet we hadn’t had on our desk in previous years was a short practical guide on computer security for activists. In this we didn’t go into complicated advanced stuff but rather very practical things everybody can do to improve the trustworthiness of their used system. It elaborates on 12 very basic things like creating backups and using a password manager or using software as a service only if there is no other possible way of doing things. It also explains why relying on well known centralised social media platforms can be especially dangerous if you want to challenge powerful institutions as an activist.

In addition we made good use of our little local online list of free software experts on freie.it who are ready to help out in case people lack the time or patience to dig through the extensive amount of online documentation and guides if they get stuck at any point in their adventure into the joyful free software world.

Thanks

I want to thank the very knowledgable volunteers who spontaneously dropped by and helped me to man the FSFE stand this time. Even if there wasn’t much opportunity to talk to each other they did a fabulous job at taking care of those who wanted to learn more about our common cause: free software.

FSFE Information stall on Veganmania Donauinsel 2019

Once more free software activists from Vienna used the opportunity of the local vegan summer festival to inform about the possibility to increase our independence on computers and mobile devices. It was the second such event in Vienna this year. But unlike the first which was directly in the city center with loads of passers by this street festival took place in Viennas big recreation area on the island in the Danube river. It is rather close to the city center also and therefore many local people visit it in their spare time. The organisers estimated 9000 visitors per day.

The FSFE booth was manned there all the time from Saturday between 12:00 and 21:00 and Sunday from 10:00 to 19:00. It had a great spot far enough away from the stage with live music in order to allow undisturbed conversations and still close enough to the other 90 stalls with drinks, food, merchantise and a variety of stalls on other subjects like animal welfare, veganism sustainability, shelters and environmental protection.

Since it was an outdoor event on a meadow and because we don’t own a tent we couldn’t hang-up our posters. We just used our umbrella to not be exposed directly to the strong summer sun. And we had huge luck with the weather. Shortly after the festival was closed down on Saturday heavy rain started and it lasted until shortly before the event started again the next day.

Over the years we have collected a few regulars on our information stalls who normally drop by but again mostly totally new people frequented our FSFE information desk. Many of them had no prior knowledge what free software is about. Most of the time we were engaged in conversations with interested people and many explicitly thanked us for being there. We frequently explained why we man an FSFE information stall on a vegan summer festival: If you use the same ethical considerations that lead people to adopt a vegan life style in information technology you end up with free software.

A researcher explicitly came from an other county to the city because he wanted to visit our FSFE stall and talk to us about social implications of free software.

This weekend was an other very successful FSFE stall and we look forward to the next opportunity to man our information desk. We might even try to have stalls on other public events in the future which feature NGO information desks. At least if the fees are not unreasonably high.

Linux Weeks in Vienna 2018

Veganmania at MQ in Vienna 2018

Linux Weeks in Vienna 2019

Veganmania at MQ in Vienna 2019

Veganmania at MQ in Vienna 2019

As has been tradition for many years now, this year too saw the Viennese FSFE volunteers’ group hold information stalls at the Linuxwochen event and Veganmania in Vienna. Even though the active team has shrunk due to former activists moving away, having children or simply having very demanding jobs, we have still managed to keep up these information stalls in 2019.

Linux Weeks Vienna 2019

The information stall at the Linux weeks event in May was somewhat limited due to the fact that we didn’t get our usual posters and the roll-up in time. Unfortunately we discovered too late that they had obviously been lent out for an other event and hadn’t been returned afterwards. So we could only use our information material. But since at this event the FSFE is very well known, it wasn’t hard at all to carry out our usual information stall. It’s less about outreach work and more of a who-is-who of the free software community in Vienna anyway. For three days we met old friends and networked. Of course some newbies found their way to the event also. And therefore we could spread our messages a little further too.

In addition, we once again provided well visited workshops for Inkscape and Gimp. The little talk on the free rally game Trigger Rally even motivated an attending dedicated Fedora maintainer to create an up-to-date .rpm package in order to enable distribution of the most recent release to rpm distros.

Veganmania MQ Vienna 2019

The Veganmania at the Museums Quartier in Vienna is growing bigger every year. In 2019 it took place from 7th to 10th of June. Despite us having a less frequented spot with our information stall at the event due to construction work, it again was a full-blown success. Over the four days in perfect weather, the stall was visited by loads of people. There were times when we were stretched to give some visitors the individual attention they might have wanted. But I think in general we were able to provide almost all people with valuable insights and new ideas for their everyday computing. Once again Veganmania proved to be a very good setting for our FSFE information stall. It is always very rewarding to experience people getting a glimpse for the first time of how they could emancipate themselves from proprietary domination. Our down-to-earth approach seems to be the right way to go.

We do not only explain ethical considerations but also appeal to the self-interest of people concerning independence, reliability and free speech. Edward Snowden’s and Wikileaks discoveries clearly show how vulnerable we make ourselves in blindly trusting governments and companies. We describe with practical examples how free software can help us in working together or recovering old files by building on open standards. Of course pointing to the environmental (and economic) advantages of using old hardware with less resource hungry free software is a winning argument also.

Material

Alongside the introductory Austrian version of the leaflet about the freedoms free software enables, which was put together as a condensation of RMS’ book Free Software, Free Society, one of our all-time favourite leaflet features 10 popular GNU/Linux Distros with just a few words about their defining differences (advantages and disadvantages). I updated the leaflet just a day before the festival. I replaced Linux Mint, Open Suse and gNewSense with the recently even more popular Manjaro, MX Linux and PureOS. I also updated the information on the importance of open standards on the back. We have run out of our end-user business cards for our local association freie.it which makes knowledgable people available to others searching for help. Therefore, we decided to use the version we originally designed for inviting experts to the platform. It obviously was wrong to order the same amount of cards for both groups. Our selection of information material seems to work well as an invitation for people to give free software a try. Of course it feels probably also like a safeguard that people can contact me if they want to get my support – or that of someone else listed on freie.it.

Experiences

The first day was rather windy and we had to carefully manage our material if we didn’t want to have our leaflets flying all over the place. In the very early morning of the second day the wind was so strong that some tents where blown away and destroyed. There was even a storm warning which could have forced the organisers to cancel the event. Fortunately our material was well stored and the wind died down over the day. We also had to firmly hold-on to our sunshade because it was very hot, but beside that everything went fine.

It was just coincidence that Richard Matthew Stallman had a talk in Vienna on the evening of the first day of the Veganmania street festival. So at least one of us could take this rare opportunity to see RMS at a live talk while the other carried on with manning the information stall.

As we didn’t have our posters on Linuxwochen we investigated where they were and got them sent to us via snail mail just in time. We didn’t only get our posters but merchandise too. This was a premiere for our stall. It was clear from the beginning that we wouldn’t sell many shirts since most designs assumed prior knowledge of IT related concepts like binary counting. The general public doesn’t seem very aware of such details and people don’t even get the joke. (If we had had the same merchandise at the Linuxwochen we probably would have sold at least as many items despite having reached a much smaller crowd there.)

Outlook and thanks

There will be another information stall at the second Veganmania in Vienna this year, which takes place in end of August. The whole setting there is a little different as there isn’t a shopping street nearby but instead, the location is on the heavily frequented recreational area of Vienna’s Danube Island. Just like last year, it should be a good place for chatting about free software, as long as the weather is on our side.

I want to thank Martin for his incredible patience and ongoing dedication manning our stall. He is extremely reliable, always friendly and it is just a real pleasure working with him.

Thanks to kinderkutsche.at, a local place to rent and buy carrier bicycles, we could transport all our information material in a very environmentally friedly way.

This is just to share my experience. (I am in no way affiliated with Technoethical.)

My background

I am a satisfied Debian user since I moved away from Windows in 2008. Back then I thought I could trick the market by ordering one of the very few systems that didn’t come pre-installed with proprietary software. Therefore I went for a rather cheap Acer Extensa 5220 that came with Linplus Linux. Unfortunately it didn’t even have a GUI and I was totally new to GNU/Linux. So the first thing I did was to install Debian because I value the concept this community driven project. I never regretted it. But the laptop had the worst possible wireless card built in. It never really worked with free software.

In the mean time I have learned a lot and I started to help others to switch to free software. In my experience it is rather daunting to check new hardware for compatibility and even if you manage to avoid all possible issues you end up with a system that you can not fully trust because of the bios and the built in hardware (Intel ME for example).

The great laptop

Therefore I am very excited that you can actually order hardware nowadays that others have checked for best compatibility already. Since my old laptop got very unreliable recently I wanted to do better this time and I went for the Technoethical T400s, which comes pre-installed with Trisquel.

I am very pleased with the excellent customer care and the quality of the laptop itself. I was especially surprised how lightweight and slim this not so recent device is.

When the ThinkPad T400s was first released in 2009 it was reviewed as an excellent, well built but rather expensive system for about 2000 Euros. The weakest point was considered the mediocre screen. The Technoethical team put in a brand new screen which has perfectly neutral colours, very good contrast as well as good viewing angles. I’ve got 8 GB RAM (the maximum possible), an 128 GB SSD (instead of 64 GB) and the stronger dualcore SP9600 with 2.53 GHz (instead of the SP9400 with 2.40 GHz) CPU. In addition I’ve received a caddy adapter for replacing the CD/DVD drive with another hard disk. And all this for less than 900 Euros.

This is the most recent laptop of the very few devices worldwide that come with Libreboot and the FSF RYF label out of the box. The wireless does flawlessly work right away with totally free software. This system fulfills everything I need from a PC as a graphic designer. Image editing, desktop publishing, multimedia and even light 3D gaming. Needless to say that common office tasks as emailing and web browsing do of course work flawlessly. To get everything done properly only few people do actually need more powerful working machines.

Even the webcam does work out of the box without any issues and the laptop comes back from its idle state well too. I didn’t test the fingerprint reader and bluetooth.

The battery is a little weak

The only downside for power users on the go might be the limited battery life of about two hours with wireless enabled. It is possible to get a new battery which might extend the life to about 3 hours but because the battery is positioned on the bottom front you can’t use a bigger one. (The only sensible option would be a docking station, but I was never fond of those bulky things that crowd my working space even when the laptop isn’t on the desk.)

Summary

Over all this is a great device that just works with entirely free software. I thank the Technoethical team for offering this fantastic service. I can only recommend buying one of those T400s laptops from Technoethical.

We organised an FSFE information booth on Linuxwochen Wien from 4 to 6 of May and at Veganmania at the MQ in Vienna from 24 to 27 May. Like every year it went very well and especially at Veganmania we could reach many people not yet familiar with free software. Since during the Veganmania there was a Wikipedia event in Vienna at the same time we even encountered some people from all over the world. For example an FSF activist from Boston in the US.

We had re-stocked our leaflets with new versions of some well received handouts we had in the past and we put the new leaflets on free software programs for specific tasks from the Munich group to good use.

Even if we didn’t have much diversity from volunteers we managed to keep our information desk open to visitors who wanted to ask questions for the whole time the events had opening hours. In some cases we were the last booth to close since we had engaged consultations going on.

At Linuxwochen Wien in addition a local volunteer hosted a well attended 3 hour workshop on image editing with GIMP and an other one for creating new maps in Trigger Rally.

Especially the GIMP workshop did attract many people and there is a clear demand for follow-ups not only on GIMP but on other free designing programs also.

It is noticeable that more an more people are aware of free software and do use it on purpose. If this slight and slow shift is related to our outreach work is uncertain but it is for sure a welcome observation.

From our point of view the most important reason why free software is not the default but still an exotic exception is the fact that it almost never comes pre-installed with new hardware – at least not on laptops or desktop machines. Many people understand this instantly as soon as they are told about common business practices where big corporations do offer better conditions for resellers if they sell their software on all products exclusively. This is almost never an advantage to the customers but profits are usually more important as customers satisfaction and most people are just unaware of the tight grip in which corporations keep them. Sticking with certain products is rarely about satisfaction. Most of the time it would just be to burdensome to try something else. And this obstacles are by design. Unfortunately it is hard to give an impression on what people are missing out if they are not even prepared to try something different. Most people are not very happy with the situation but because all their friends and colleagues share the same frustrations they have the impression that there is no better alternative.

Maybe it would be a promising approach to make testimonials from non-technical people satisfied with free software more available to the public …

On the weekend of 24 to 26 February, the first indoor Veganmania festival took place at Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna. At the first celebration of the 20th anniversary of this yearly event (two more celebrations to come) we once again had a very successful booth. And it was even bigger than in the years before.

Our booth was placed directly opposite the entrance. Our neighbours where the vegan running team on the left and VGT, the most active animal rights/animal welfare organisation in Austria, on the right. Therefore we couldn’t have asked for a better spot. A further advantage was the fact that this event was indoors. This way we could use our roll-up and many posters we normally can’t use when we do booths outside.

Confirming our experience from previous years, we can only state once more that the Veganmania festivals are exceptionally good events for having FSFE booths. During the three days we only had rather short breaks from talking to people to take photos or to get something from the many stalls with delicious vegan food. On Friday we started at about 3pm and carried on until 10pm. On Saturday, the longest day, we started at about 10am and went round the clock to 10pm. Sunday was a little shorter again since we started at 10am but had packed up by about 6pm.

Since in past years the Veganmania always took place in a prominent shopping street we thought that most of our visitors where just there by chance. But this year showed that this is not the case as we were in a concert venue with no shoppers passing by. It can’t be denied that Veganmanias really do attract thousands of people.

As usual we had plenty of opportunities to introduce the concept of free software to people who hadn’t come across it before, and many showed serious interest. Our red I love free software baloons made kids happy until we didn’t have any more left. Some people even decided to set up their home computers with free software a few days later. Of course we where happy to assist them with any questions or help they asked for.

Over the years we have become a well trained team of volunteers on our stall. For some strange reason we all seem to share the odd trait of not actually wanting to leave the stall for breaks. Therefore, most of the time we had at least 2, but often even 3 activists at once who where engaged in discussions with all kinds of people. I am very happy that Gregor and Martin supported me again. Without Gregor’s bicycle trailer it would have been hard to get all material to the venue. Martin is an absolute treasure as I hardly gave him any warning. I called him the day of the event and he joined us almost immediately, not leaving the stall (during opening hours) until Sunday evening. Martin actually is someone I first met at our Veganmania information stall a few years ago. Since then he has become a very reliable, competent and always friendly backbone of our public outreach work. I can’t thank my colleagues enough for their patience and commitment.

We were able to convince local activists from other organisations to bring us some leaflets to complete our rich assortment of information materials. We had stickers from the local Chaos Computer Club group and from epicenter.works, a very productive data protection association. On Friday I realised that we could really do with some additional leaflets that we had in the past but which had run out. So I updated these leaflets in the evening and went to a print shop on Saturday morning in order to have them for the rest of the weekend. Unfortunately we didn’t get around to printing an other batch of our well received free games folder in time. But we will organize this soon. In time for the local Linux week’s events and two further Veganmanias.

More

A few days later I realised that the local group System Change not Climate Change offers workshops called Skills 4 change. These include teaching people about Scribus, Inkscape and the GIMP. I went there and offered to do joint workshops going into more detail. Their original workshop didn’t include much practical training due to the fact that they worked on theoretical design know-how at the beginning, giving introductions for all three programs on just one afternoon. I hope we will be able to do proper workshops with practical examples soon.

This is a good addition to the basic computer security workshops I’ve held at the VGT, mostly explaining why free software is the only way to go when aiming for trustworthy computer systems.