Hi All,
 
I am pleased to announce that Squeak will have its own booth at the
Smalltalk Solutions show. I have just signed the booth agreement, and faxed
it back to the it360.ca show management.
 
I got the idea for a Squeak booth by attending the Toronto Linux Users Group
pre-show meeting in February. I figured if they could get a free booth as a
non-profit, then so ought we.
 
So, this brings up a number of questions, and I'll try to answer them here.
 
The booth will have a sign, a table, two computers, a pile of one-sheets,
and 100 copies of Parasol magazine.
 
Two weeks ago it360 show management asked for the Squeak logo. I contacted
Tim Rowledge, and he furnished a quarter page, 300 dpi Tiff, which I
forwarded to the show manager, so they could add our logo to the print
material. I have forwarded this file to Brad Fuller of the Web Team, so that
it might become permanently available. This file is too small for a sign, so
I will contact Tim Rowledge for a vector file of some sort (SVG?) to take to
a printer, and produce a sign.
 
I'll say now that there are a few things that are going to cost a small
amount, but I'm happy to pay that small sum, as I entertain the notion that
I'm starting a business: web host, quarterly magazine, etc.
 
The table, unless I can find something more suitable, will be this olive
green number with the plastic surface that sits in front of me, and has been
around since it looked fashionable in the 1970s.
 
The two computers will be my iBook ... Actually it's one computer and two
screens. I plan to take my iBook and have it run in tandem to my 17" LCD
with a mini VGA-to-ADC adaptor. They will plug into the electricity I'll get
from the hall organizers.
 
The purpose of the two screens will be to run 5-minutes screen-capture
Quicktime videos for people passing the booth to become hypnotized by. I
will make a few, but since many people cannot be present at the show, then I
invite people to send me a link to any 5-minute, silent, Quicktime video
demo they happen to make. (cunnington at sympatico.ca) Please attach three
paragraphs describing what we are seeing, as the booth people need to know
what they are presenting. You can be at the show by proxy.
 
The booth people so far are myself and a talented young professional
Smalltalk programmer here in Toronto named William Harford. His company
supports him in working in the booth, and so he is doing it as part of his
job. That said, if anybody wants to do booth duty for an hour or two, so we
can sit down, we would be delighted.
 
The one-sheets are for the general public. They are single sheets with a
series of links for getting started, and links to the purveyors of the demo
videos, should there be any others aside from my own.
 
The magazine, Parasol quarterly, the first issue, will be available free to
attendees of Smalltalk Solutions. The authors who have agreed to write are
Carl Gundel of Shoptalk Systems on his experience creating a website
(runbasic.com) in Seaside, Yanni Chiu on how to get started using PostgreSQL
with Squeak, John Magnifico of Blue Plane on what happen at the panel
"Beyond Education" at the C5 conference in Kyoto in January, and Todd
Blanchard on version readiness. If we run out at the show, you will be able
to purchase it at parasolmag.com, after the show.
 
I have an agreement from the Web Team that they will build a press releases
page. I have six or seven banner gifs from it360.ca for the Web Team to
choose from to put one at the top of the Smalltalk Solutions press release
page to link to the it360.ca homepage. I¹ll forward them to Brad Fuller, who
had the excellent idea of staring a media contact list.
 
I hope links to the print and sign files from Tim Rowledge will be in this
general vicinity for whomever wants them. Once we have created our first
press release, then we can create more in future about changes to the
license and the release of new versions of the virtual machine. It is to be
hoped that we will use this platform to get Slashdotted.
 
 
Chris Cunnington
PR Team leader