Brainstorm: Conference booth improvements
Identify plans to improve Inkscape's conference booth presence.
At the 2019 SCALE conference in Pasadena we had an Inkscape booth, but it felt we were under-equipped for the event. This ticket is to organize ideas for how to up our game for future conferences.
Objectives for Booth Hosting
In increasing order for value to the project, reasons for hosting a booth include:
- Recruit users
- Recruit contributors
- Build links with other FOSS projects
- Develop contacts with companies for sponsorship, co-marketing, etc.
In preparing for attendance at an event, thought and planning should go into maximizing the number of connections lower down on the above list, so identify attending companies or FOSS projects of relevance to Inkscape, and perhaps even make arrangements to get together with them for lunch or to chat and plan.
"Booth Schwag Kits"
Rather than individually sourcing stickers, brochures, etc. the idea would be to identify an all-in-one printer that can produce a full collection of booth items and ship either directly to the conference, or to one of the attendees. Each year we attend a conference we'd ship a new kit.
Random ideas for giveaways:
- Stickers
- Business cards
- Water bottles w/ logo
- Color Brochure
- Black and white info sheet
- "Inkscape News" sheet
- Donor envelopes
- Sponsor pledge cards
- Keyboard shortcut mini poster
"Booth Dress Kit"
Banners, tablecloths, and other decorative/informative items that would be reused from year to year would be provided via a separate kit. For conferences in fixed locations, such as SCALE, we might arrange to have the kit kept with that conference's storage space, or with a local Inkscaper who can bring it year by year. We thus might have several kits spread geographically, such as one in Los Angeles, one in Europe, etc.
- Rollup banner
- Standing signage
- Table skirt(s)
- Booth computer
Trade Show Attendance Strategy
Different conferences have different types of audiences; for instance SCALE caters more to devops than to, say, artists. Depending on our marketing objectives, we might want to target specific trade shows beyond the usual FOSS circuit. For instance, Krita reports having good experience with anima conferences. For Inkscape, other fields we could target might include: Print industry, graphics, game development, desktop manufacturing (laser engravers, etc.), scrapbooking, etc.