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GNOME Accessibility at CSUN – More Thoughts

For the last 2 weeks I imposed on myself not to spend any time on GNOME accessibility as I catch up on work that pays, and spend time with friends and family in Israel. Just landed in Seattle last night, so the restriction is officially removed.

The hackfest at the end of last month was a huge success, here is a partial list of summaries written by different attendees:

More is certain to come, Brad Taylor has some interviews to share, and Bryen has been capturing a lot of photos and videos.
We also has a some media attention, I believe. Should have written this all down when it was fresh in my mind. Willie and I were interviewed for Blind Bargains podcast.

Next Year

This might be a bit presumptuous of me. But I think we should have a GNOME presence on an annual basis. The combination of booth, talks and hackfest went really well. What we need for this is dedicated sponsorship (ie. funds that are for the event specifically, and not for general GNOME a11y).
We talked to some really big employers, like social security, who are interested in FOSS and want to see it in wider use in their agencies. Accessibility for them is key.
We handed out a couple hundred OpenSUSE CDs. A big problem with having a GNOME presence in a non FOSS conference is explaining to people what it is and how they should give it a try. We talk their ears off regarding the merits of GNOME and FOSS, and yet we are not backing it up with a service, or even a download URL. So Novell really saved our butts, besides the CDs, Brad was constantly giving out business cards.
Next year, maybe Red Hat, Novell, Canonical or some other GNOME distributor would like to officially endorse are booth, fund the event, and drum up business at this conference. I really think it has untapped potential for enterprise desktop in particular.