The following is my completely unorganized brainstorming of ideas related to the prospect of the Mozilla Foundation exhibiting at computer/internet related trade shows. I believe that this is an excellent way to promote Mozilla to the wider community, get our name out there. I think a strong (physical) public presence is what the project needs to counteract the recent events, and the subsequent mischaracterizations thereof. If there's a better way to convince someone to use a certain product than face-to-face contact and product demonstrations, I sure don't know about it.
I plan to organize these ideas into a coherent document, a formal proposal to be submitted to mozilla.org for approval. Later. When I've had some sleep.

Last updated: Thursday, July 31th, 9:55pm








Shows we should consider attending:



BOOTH

Concept drawings - one and two

10x10 - smallest space available at LinuxWorld

table, pipe-and-drape sides and back w/vinyl printed banners/signage.
Signage specifics - 6'x3' sign for front of table - red. Attention-grabber. :)  Two square panels, hanging on the interior left and right, possibly with informative text, statistics, charts - marketing-speak, basically. - Ah! Quotes from the various media which have positively reviewed Mozilla might be a very nice touch.

Centerpiece - curved painted plastic backlit sign, to be designed. Needs to be component-ized, to fit in possibly smaller booths. Don't want to lock us in to 10' wide.

The 'centerpiece' and vinyl banners will be the only pieces of the exhibit to be reused. Tables and pipe-and-drape can be locally obtained cheaply for each individual event.

Literature - pamphlets, fliers, postcards, something. I don't know yet. An "About The Mozilla Foundation" might be a good document to have..

Lighting - nifty gobo, perhaps, of our theme logo, projected by a Source Four onto the wall or ceiling or something. All speciality lighting equipment will be provided by me, at no cost.


Issues

Cost. The 10x10 booth, the smallest size that the LinuxWorld Expo offers, costs $45/sq. ft. - that works out to $4500.

Manpower. I will likely not be able to be there for more than one day, and that's if I'm lucky and can find someone to cover for me that day. Additionally, I suspect that the Mozilla Foundation will want approval of the specific people in the booth, to ensure that accurate, mozilla.org-approved information is being disseminated.


PROMOTIONAL ITEMS

--> CD-ROMs (cd-rom layout mockup here) (UPDATE - we will use the official Mozilla Foundation CDs)

Need to be pressed/burned as close to date of event as possible, to ensure that they contain the latest stable release.
CD replication costs may be prohibitive - good vendors seem to have pricing in the range of $1/disc, including screen-printing and packaging. Wait, if we're dropping $4500 on 100 square feet of floor space, what's another five hundred?

I'm thinking of contacting similarly-sized organizations, Ximian, for instance, and asking who / what they use for CD replication services, and how many they usually give out over the course of an event. My initial thought is that 500 CDs should be sufficient for a three-day event.

Mozilla / Firebird / Thunderbird versions - latest stable release for:
Win32
Linux
Mac OSX
Mac OS9 - wamcom version
BSD
Solaris

latest stable release source tarball

Select themes/extensions - Calendar, Multizilla, Optimoz, Enigmail, Googlebar, Mycroft



--> T-shirts

Solid color shirt (white or black), small logo on right breast, large image on back
sizes - S, M, L, XL
high-quality shirt. Hanes Beefy-T or similar.
50 or so per event, not simply handed out. Sold, perhaps, or given to select people, for example, if Linus or the CEO of  Red Hat stops by. :)



--> Stickers

2-3 varieties

black background, red dino head, red "Mozilla" text
white background, red dino head, black "Mozilla" text
red background, "Mozilla" text