Photos from the Hamilton NZ (WLUG) SFD Event, 2006

Centerplace Mall, the day before. (Penguin Area signage was added using The GIMP)

Mystique costumes did us a great Tux costume to fit Cairo. They rock!

Tux checks out the site, evoking curiosity from nearby shoppers

8AM, Saturday September 16th, Craig and Ian bring the supplies out of storage

and set up the tables.

Tux checks the supply of Ubuntu (and a few Kubuntu) disks to be handed out.

And Ian starts putting computers together (BTW; most of the hardware was loaned to us by IT Partners in Hamilton, where Craig works. You guys rock too!!)

The Mall is open and people are walking by, Craig quickly puts together a slideshow to display on the big screen.

Lots of people looked interested, we explained to them about vendor lock-in and freedom and ubuntu, and that "Free software" wasn't just about the price. Then we gave them a kiaora CD, an Ubuntu CD, and a flyer. A few people had Mac's and got the PPC version of Ubuntu instead. And everyone was encouraged to copy and pass on the CD to friends, if they wanted to.

Tux wandered around the area attracting lots of attention and telling people to go talk to the people in the orange shirts to get free software.

It was all very tiring work for such a little penguin!

At the end of the day we had given away 147 kiaora CD's (similar to TheOpenCD, but with a Kiwi theme) and about the same number of Ubuntu disks. Many people had heard of Linux and Free software and some had tried but didn't really know where to get support.. Lots of people knew who Nelson Mandela was, but were not familiar with the concept of 'ubuntu'. Everyone had heard of Google, but not as many knew it all ran on Linux. And lots of people were very inspired and thought we were doing a great job.

The full set of photos are at http://zcat.wired.net.nz/photos/softwarefreedomday2006/ I think Ron Dean still has bigger versions of his photos, he only sent me 1024x768's