[CREATE] Pitching a community-funded conference

[Yuval Levy]

Dave Neary wrote:
> Yuval: I'll leave this first step (the list of companies) as an exercise
> for you ;-)

Deal. And you try to figure who to contact at those companies, Dave?

SONY (think Linux on PS3 and the hype it is getting, + their digital 
imaging division).

Nikon, Canon - although top tier imaging equipment makers tend to be 
rather proprietary/secretive.

We might get more lucky with the up and coming - LG, Samsung - but they 
are so big we'll probably end up in the microwave or freezer for a few 
months before finding the way to the right department.

Olympus, Pentax, etc. - plenty of good quality hardware that does 
benefit from digital imaging FOSS and could probably benefit even more 
with a little bit of awareness work.

<http://www.dpreview.com/> belongs to Amazon now. It is a small business 
very successful at reviewing them all, and may (or may not) help us get 
in touch. Mail sent, to get in touch through a third party, you're cc:


> Yuval Levy wrote:
>> take that "Linux" away. compromise. Graphic apps are the most desired
>> apps, full stop.
> 
> This is not true though. The most used application on the desktop, by a
> mile, is the web browser. Followed by an email client. Followed by
> (depending on your age) games or word processing software.

*desired* =/= used.

desire: situation of wanting something that does not yet exist.
use: implies something that already exists.

you are right, and I am right too :-)

web browsers and email clients are freely and widely available. I am 
back in Windows today, and I am using the same Firefox and Thunderbird 
as I did yesterday on Linux. word processing is the same. While graphics 
apps have made giant strides forward, there are still areas where there 
are no real alternatives.


> Very few people, when asked what they do with a computer, actually do
> any graphics work.

but they all love the powerpoint templates and the cms, thus indirectly 
using "create" output.


> And yet, when you ask people considering adopting Linux on the desktop
> what apps they miss most, they say "Photoshop", "Illustrator", "Visio".

desire vs. use :-)


> Personally, I would invite Adobe
> if they started releasing some of their graphics applications as free
> software.

we'll leave that one for a future interaction ;-) - the divide is still 
too large to be bridged. I believe that bridging it will be beneficial 
to *everybody*.

Anyway, for as much as I can help, that's it. Plus
<http://panospace.wordpress.com/2008/03/13/conference/>

Yuv