Just so you know what I mean by "Swag-a-palooza"
I posted this as a reply on the previous post, but I think perhaps it merits a journal entry of its own.
Here's what I brought home:
7 T-shirts. More than I have ever taken away from any post-Dot Com Bust event. I could have had more but I don't like wearing white t-shirts. I got one that was more Richie's size.
4 stuffed toys. Two penguins are now part of the LinuxChixLA collection of penguins. The other two stuffed toys are non-penguins: a SUSE chameleon with a suitably prehensile tail, and an octopus. The latter is a bit on the scary side: sort of like a purple chibi-Cthulhu. There was a huge mound of them at the booth of the company...the spawn of the Great Old Evil One. No, the booth wasn't run by Microsoft. ^_^
8 individual items from Google: 5 multi-color translucent pens in a rainbow of colors (barrel, not ink), a flashing pin that I wore on my fedora, a green LED yo-yo, and a Google Women pink and silver travel cup. I was given one more of these travel cups because of the Green Tea Mishap. I'm sending the extra cup to beepbeep because she couldn't make it down here for the event. ( beepbeep, please send me your current snailmail address via my gmail email so I can get it in the mail to you. The cup is ideal for tea.)
Yes, I got lots of nice pressed DVDs and CDs of various distros. Since there was no time to debug Richie's lappie issue, I have plenty of other distros to try in the quest to get the audio recording working.
The ultimate best swag item was not swag at all: it was a donation to LinuxChixLA from a little company that makes a Tux robot. The company is Kysoh and they are actually based in Belgium, not China or Japan or Korea like you might think.
The robot can be best thought of as a programming learning tool. You tell the robot what to do with commands in Python, an easy-to-learn programming language which already powers lots and lots of server-side functionality on the World Wide Web and client-side applications and scripting. The little robot-like device (it's actually more similar to the 'audio-animatronic' figures at Disney parks and the Teddy Ruxpin toy) was given to LinuxChixLA under the understanding that it would be used for the group's outreach efforts.
For example, we show up at a school and do a presentation for girls about the importance of learning math, science and computer skills. The Tux Droid does some programmed behaviors, then we give the kids storytime about what we did to produce that behavior from the device.
The Tux Droid lives with me now...I'm the designated "keeper of the Penguin" for the group. My buddies in SFVLUG have promised to help me get the thing working. And it's a great excuse for me to learn how to do something a little higher level than HTML markup.
Now do you see what I mean by "best Swag?"
Here's what I brought home:
7 T-shirts. More than I have ever taken away from any post-Dot Com Bust event. I could have had more but I don't like wearing white t-shirts. I got one that was more Richie's size.
4 stuffed toys. Two penguins are now part of the LinuxChixLA collection of penguins. The other two stuffed toys are non-penguins: a SUSE chameleon with a suitably prehensile tail, and an octopus. The latter is a bit on the scary side: sort of like a purple chibi-Cthulhu. There was a huge mound of them at the booth of the company...the spawn of the Great Old Evil One. No, the booth wasn't run by Microsoft. ^_^
8 individual items from Google: 5 multi-color translucent pens in a rainbow of colors (barrel, not ink), a flashing pin that I wore on my fedora, a green LED yo-yo, and a Google Women pink and silver travel cup. I was given one more of these travel cups because of the Green Tea Mishap. I'm sending the extra cup to beepbeep because she couldn't make it down here for the event. ( beepbeep, please send me your current snailmail address via my gmail email so I can get it in the mail to you. The cup is ideal for tea.)
Yes, I got lots of nice pressed DVDs and CDs of various distros. Since there was no time to debug Richie's lappie issue, I have plenty of other distros to try in the quest to get the audio recording working.
The ultimate best swag item was not swag at all: it was a donation to LinuxChixLA from a little company that makes a Tux robot. The company is Kysoh and they are actually based in Belgium, not China or Japan or Korea like you might think.
The robot can be best thought of as a programming learning tool. You tell the robot what to do with commands in Python, an easy-to-learn programming language which already powers lots and lots of server-side functionality on the World Wide Web and client-side applications and scripting. The little robot-like device (it's actually more similar to the 'audio-animatronic' figures at Disney parks and the Teddy Ruxpin toy) was given to LinuxChixLA under the understanding that it would be used for the group's outreach efforts.
For example, we show up at a school and do a presentation for girls about the importance of learning math, science and computer skills. The Tux Droid does some programmed behaviors, then we give the kids storytime about what we did to produce that behavior from the device.
The Tux Droid lives with me now...I'm the designated "keeper of the Penguin" for the group. My buddies in SFVLUG have promised to help me get the thing working. And it's a great excuse for me to learn how to do something a little higher level than HTML markup.
Now do you see what I mean by "best Swag?"