BoothCheckList
From PostgreSQL Wiki
PostgreSQL Booth Preparation Checklist
Contents |
Prepare Ahead Stuff
Paperwork: make sure you apply for the booth and fill out all paperwork necessary to keep it! If you miss a form, you can end up without a booth. Find out the timeline for this paperwork and put it up on your wall. Depending on the booth, tax forms and other paperwork may be required as well; make sure you read the full vendor's checklist and all deadlines supplied by the conference.
Organizer: usually you. The booth organizer must be able to commit to being available, and preferably present, for the entire event. It will be his/her job to keep track of everything associated with the booth. This is a time-consuming job and will eat 2-3 days of your worktime in addition to the days of the event. The organizer will also need e-mail, address, office, fax and cell phone numbers which can be distributed publicly as the contact for the booth, and may be required to sign legally binding paperwork.
Volunteers: See Booth Volunteers. You'll need to recruit these a few weeks ahead.
Demo: you'll want, pre-installed on some machine, some kind of eye-catching demonstration of PostgreSQL-related technology. Since PostgreSQL doesn't lend itself to eye-catching displays, don't be afraid to base the demo on some trivial use of your software or something tangental done by one of your volunteers or supporters or even a good slideshow. The important thing about the main demo is to stop people from across the hall. You'll also want to be able to interactively show more core features and do troubleshooting or Q&A with visitors to the booth, but this only happens after they stop. For example, at last LWE we had a PostGIS/Perl/GoogleMaps "mashup" as the main demo, but also had PostgreSQL 8.3 and pgAdmin3 with the TPCE database for more interactive show & tell. The demo should not require reliable internet access, as this is extremely rare at shows.
Getting Stuff Shipped to You
PostgreSQL in North America, and in Europe, has a fair amount of the stuff on this checklist available for shipping to volunteers who plan to run a booth. Shipping can take 2-3 weeks, and we might be out of some things, so ask early. The place to ask for the stuff is on the |pgsql-advocacy mailing list.
Literature
You need one or more flyers or brochures which extol the virtues of PostgreSQL and explain it to newcomers. Make sure to think of this well ahead; designing takes a while, and last-minute color xeroxing is a very expensive way of printing. Ideally, these materials will be tailored to the expected audience of the show; technical details for geeky conferences and business buzzwords for "suit" conferences.
Generally, we like to have for each PostgreSQL booth: one cheap 1-sided flyer for everyone and their brothers to take (such as one on the latest release features or other news), one more expensive glossy piece to hand to people who are genuinely interested (such as the 4-page Business Advantage brochure), and the PostgreSQL Business Folders for really serious people. Don't be afraid to call for help on pgsql-advocacy to design this stuff.
Quantities required vary a great deal with the nature of the content and the expected traffic. Straight up trade shows tend to be flyer-greedy and need 100 flyers per 1000 expected attendees, whereas advanced technical conferences usually aren't that interested in paper and you can get by with less than half as much. Do be aware that color printing is both expensive and slow, so you should arrange a sponsor and allow plenty of time do to color brochures.
Swag
"Swag" means stuff to give away at trade shows. There are two kinds of swag we use at PostgreSQL booths; items which are given away free, and items which we solicit a donation for. Generally you want one kind of free swag, and 2-3 different items for donation.
Free Swag
It's generally customary for us to have some kind of free giveaway stuff for our booth. Most commonly, these are cheap plastic buttons, which we buy for $150/1000, and impose on everyone and try to get them to wear. These free items build general goodwill.
If you want to get your own free swag, think of some other item which costs less than $0.30 apiece which you can give away. Last LWE, BayLUG -- who meet in a Chinese restaurant -- gave away fortune cookies with their URL inside. Other groups have used cheap buttons, stickers and pens. Again, giveaway items will take time and money to produce so you'll need some sponsorship and lead time before your first conference.
Up until recently, our primary swag item was PostgreSQL live CDs. We've cut back on these recently as they are somewhat expensive, and rather environmentally destructive, and have a very limited lifespan. However, they may still be appropriate for some conferences, particularly if you can burn them on the spot. See the LiveCD project for disk images.
Non-Free Swag
In order to pay for the costs of setting up the booth, we usually have some items you can offer in return for a donation to the appropriate PostgreSQL Non-Profit. If you can, have several items at different price/donation levels: PostgreSQL North America has buttons (any amount, even $0.25), T-shirts ($20), Books ($40+) and plushy elephants ($30+). Sometimes you can get sponsors to donate these items if they are co-branded; the books we use are donated by the publishers. However, don't get carried away with this idea; donation/sale items are a sideline of your booth and not its main purpose.
Note that many conferences (depending on country/state) will require you to have a reseller permit for your booth. Make sure to find out early and apply for the permit; fines for not having a permit can be up to $1000 and cause you to be banned from that conference permanently. Also, bring a jar or cash box for the money you receive! Putting it in your pocket can lead to awkward questions. Finally, print out some blank receipt forms you can fill in if asked.
Booth Display
Banners/Signs/Displays: At a minimum, your booth should have at least one large banner with the name of your project and its logo. On the cheap, copy shops can do a 3' x 6' vinyl banner for as little as $100 and a week's notice. If your conference is in North America, you can request the PostgreSQL Pop-Up Display, which is a very professional self-supporting booth background sign, 8' square. This takes at least a week and costs $90 to ship, though, so plan ahead. The ultimate combination, in my opinion, is a pop-up for the back of the booth and a small banner (maybe 1' x 4') to be hung from the front of the booth table. Again, banners and pop-ups can require weeks of advance ordering if you don't want to pay a "rush" premium. Also, make sure that you have hooks, tacks, string and tape with you to hang the banners you have.
Demo Station: if you're doing a demo, a laptop or mini-desktop with some sort of large display, either a large, bright LCD monitor or a projector and screen. Assemble and test this rig before the conference, in case there are missing parts or troubleshooting required. As much as possible of this equipment should be able to be off the table, so include long cables, and possibly an external keyboard and mouse (especially if you care about the laptop). Also bring locking cables so that you don't have to worry about leaving the equipment at the booth overnight.
Uniform: all volunteers in a PostgreSQL booth should wear PostgreSQL shirts, ideally the same kind. If for some reason someone needs to wear a suit, they should wear PostgreSQL enamel pins. This makes your booth look much more professional and lets visitors know to whom to ask questions.
Misc
Folding Dolly, Boxes and Bags: most venues will require you to "hand-carry" in your materials or pay through the nose for professional help. This means that your entire booth needs to break down into boxes and bags which can be carried by a regular-strength geek onto a standard escalator. Folding dollies, or wheeled luggage of a "carry-on" size are generally also allowed but full-size dollies seldom are.
Water: many underground conference facilities are very drying, and soft drinks can be scarce or expensive at many trade shows. Get a a box of small bottles of bottled water for your volunteers.
Cash: finally, don't forget to budget some money for necessary on-site expenses, including copies, shipping, cables, adapters and volunteer lunches. I generally find that about $100 to $150 is more than enough "just in case" money for the conference. Our standandard practice is to have you use your own cash and for a PostgreSQL non-profit to reimburse you, so save those receipts.
Harware Kit
Over the years, we've found that there are lots of items which we need to have on hand for various booths. Get a duffel bag and assemble this kit now and you'll save yourself a lot of last-minute panic:
- Tape gun with extra packing tape
- Duct or masking tape
- Spool of string
- Snap-blade knife
- Scissors
- Pens (whole box, they'll vanish)
- Several permanent markers
- 2 or more extension cords and power strips
- Shower hooks (for banners)
- Safety pins
- Tacks
- Mini-router or hub
- Several medium-length CAT5 cables
- Some blank CDs
- USB thumbdrive
- Cable locks for computer equipment (and keys!)
- Book/document stands, if available
- Couple of c-clamps or spring clamps
- Multitool, or at least a couple of different screwdrivers
- USB-PS2 adapter
- DVI-VGA adapters and Mac adapters
- Envelopes for receipts
