May 9, 2017

Attending conferences is not only an excellent way to gain new skills and meet new collaborators, but it’s also an ideal place to spread the word about FreeBSD. Whether it’s giving a presentation or just talking to folks during the hallway track, you can help the community grow by engaging other conference attendees in the following ways:

Raise Awareness About the FreeBSD Project.

How:

  • Highlight the latest developments
  • What’s new in FreeBSD 11
    • arm64 work
    • Showcase the features that make it the OS of choice
  • Highlight the research platform aspect
  • Point interested parties to getting started locations
    • Foundation How to Guides: https://freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd/how-to-guides/
    • Get Involved Brochure
    • FreeBSD Handbook
    • Digital Ocean tutorials
  • Talk about the welcoming community/ plentiful documentation
  • Mention how obtaining a FreeBSD skill set is a marketable job skill for students and job seekers
  • For desktop questions, mention TrueOS

Questions to Ask

  • Have they used FreeBSD before?
  • If they used to, why did they leave?
  • If they use Linux, what are their favorite features? – see if you can match features with FreeBSD
  • What are the reasons they are currently a FreeBSD user
  • If their company uses FreeBSD, please make a note of who it is and how they use it.
  • If their university uses FreeBSD, please make a note of which one it is and how they use it.

Encourage Attendance and Presentations at Conferences and Dev Summits

  • Mention BSDCan, AsiaBSDcon, EuroBSDcon, and Cambridge Developer’s Summit
  • Point out that the Foundation provides Travel Grants and can help with talk preparation if necessary.
  • Ask if they attend any FreeBSD/BSD Meetup groups.
    • If so, do they need speakers? The Foundation can help.
    • If not, would they be interested in starting one? Again, we can help.

Raise Awareness of FreeBSD Foundation

  • What We Do:
    • Accelerate operating system improvements
    • Advocacy and Education – TeachBSD, advocacy materials on websites
    • Provide travel grants for community members to attend face to face meetings and promote FreeBSD
    • Purchases hardware to improve and maintain FreeBSD infrastructure
    • Acts as a legal entity for the FreeBSD Project
  • How We Do It:
    • We are funded entirely by donations from both corporations and individuals.
    • If they wish to donate, please send them to the donate page on the Foundation website. 
    • Also remind them to check to see if their organization offers matching grants.

Raise Awareness of the FreeBSD Journal by pointing to access of the FreeBSD issue and open articles on the Foundation website.

Additional Notes:

  • Please do not actively bash Linux to attendees. It’s great to point out why we’re better but we should be polite about it.
  • If there are questions you are not sure how to answer, please direct the attendee to contact marketing@freebsd.org and we will filter the question to the appropriate party.
    Journal related questions should be directed at: walter@freebsdjournal.com

You can find a list of upcoming events here. 

If you’re speaking about FreeBSD at an event that is not currently listed, please email us so we may add it to our calendar.

Thank you for your continued advocacy for the FreeBSD Project!