Andrew Black

Well I just got home from SELF and I can’t believe how much fun I had I was a little scared at first since I don’t like talking to people I don’t know, and I really don’t like crowds normally either, but this felt like I was around friends so I did on. There was 462 people at SELF this year, which from what I understand is a good turn on for the first year. One of the organizers told me when they started planning it they said they would have been happy with 100 people. I for one will be going back next year and I hope more people will join me.

The real reason I went to SELF was not for my own benefit but for Mer’s. I talked to hundreds of people about Mer some of which own Nokia Tablets and alot of them who didn’t own a tablet of any type. I printed 200 fliers and at the end there was only a few left. So I would say about half the people there picked one up. I can’t say how many people will read it or ever install Mer on a device but I would like to think that at least a few people will.

I was shocked to see someone using a Nokia N800 to record a podcast and when I stated talking to him I found out he records every podcast he does on the N800 because he always has it with him. When we started talking more I asked him if he had heard of Mer. He said he hadn’t and we started talking about it next think I know I’m getting interviewed for one of his podcasts. Which will be released on Hacker Public Radio very soon. He questioned me on Mer and what he thought would be a quick few questions really got him interested in it the more I talked. I let him play with my N810 that had Mer on it and he really seemed to like it. We talked for about another 5 or so minutes after the podcast recording had stopped and I hope he installs Mer and Loves it.

I had long talks with several people including some of the people from Linux Link Tech Show, Freenode.net,Ubuntu, and KDE just to name a few, but my longest talk was with the people Florida Linux Tech Show that is going on in October down in Orlando FL. I was asked to come down and have a table and do a presentation. I decided to go since it will be fun for me and good for Mer. One of the guys from the FLTS had several devices you couldn’t even get in the US yet. One was a Samsung U7 Monitor that is a 7 inch USB powered USB display. It would be nice to add an extra display for say xchat or something to my computer. The device I really fell in love with was a GlobelScale Sheeva Plug. It is a 1.3Ghz computer in a plastic box the size of of my iPhone but a little thicker. They cool thing is they only run about $100. The one they had was given to them as a promo development device and he is going to try and get us one to use as a development device as well.

It seems almost no one I talked to even the ones who had a Nokia Tablet had ever heard of Mer. The ones who did say they heard about it only knew of it in passing and really didn’t know what it did or why it was made. Out of all the people who tried Mer on my tablet I don’t think anyone of were turned off by it and all of them where happy to see the left bar gone and happy they didn’t have to stick with hildon if they didn’t want to.

Not really to do with Mer but at SELF the developers of click2try.com were there and it looks like they have a real neat site that allows you to try open source software in a cloud computer environment. So you can see if you like it before you download and install it. I did not try it on my tablet because it requires Java but I did on my Triple E and it worked good. I just wanted to thank them designing such a good product and having a free option available. I am going to do a full review of there service later. Just wanted to get the word out on them in this post.

Now last but not least there was some really cool door raffles, I ended up walking out with a free Shirt and a book on GIT I didn’t win any of the good stuff like the unlocked Google Phone that Chris Dibona from Google dropped off and no one knew about until they where calling out numbers for it. Of course I got like a hundred free stickers and bunch of distro CDs and a few free magazines. The cooleset of all stickers was the mini Linux Tux stickers that fit over the Windows Key I was given about 50 of them to share with my friends so if anyone wants a couple let me know and I’ll mail them out to you.