FSFE Potteries / Meeting on 13/2/2024: I Love Free Software Day 2024
This page has some brief notes and imagery surrounding a past meeting, you likely got here by clicking a link shown on a past calendar event.
This was a great event, particularly as we hadn't had much chance to have proper presentation-style meeting in the last few months due to the uncertainty of the room we'd normally meet in.
We weren't certain we'd run another of these events, but it helped that FSFE said we could run this event on another day close to the 14th instead (which naturally clashes with Valentines Day)... but we then forgot the 13th is Shrove Tuesday!
This event is being celebrated in various other countries in Europe and is supported by FSFE. The point being to give thanks for the free software that we use every day, and generally socialise over our common love for it all!
Although we've still got the computers and equipment from last year, we lacked a room to put them all in! So instead we booked to use the upstairs of the KPA Clubhouse and ran the event there with laptops instead! As a bonus... unlike the computers from last year... every laptop (we had a Toshiba, a Dell, and a ThinkPad) all had working 3D acceleration when running Trisquel GNU/Linux!.. although we did have to buy some older 802.11n external USB wifi adapters to get onto the Keele Visitor Wi-Fi network!
We had plenty of free software games loaded on to these which people were trying (such as SuperTuxKart, Minetest, SuperTux, Extreme Tux Racer, OpenTTD, Frozen Bubble, 2048, Robots, XBill, SGT Puzzles, OpenArena, Freeciv, Freedoom, and BZFlag) as well as the usual assortment of applications.
Unfortunately we didn't have a whiteboard to write on this year, or anywhere to put posters. However plenty of people took leaflets, stickers, postcards, and even some posters we had been sent by FSFE. Discussions such as the software they were thankful for came up. Of particular note were conversations surrounding the low browser share of Firefox, as well as what decent HTML editors were still about.
We're really thankful to FSFE for helping to foot the bill for all the food and soft drinks! Everyone had a really great time.
Hopefully next year we can avoid both Valentines Day and Shove Tuesday! We did think we'd be able to get pancakes at the clubhouse, but unfortunately they ran out of them just before we tried to order any!
As this was mostly a social... we don't normally do any meeting notes for it... but since we took photos... it's best they go here!
Note: Not everyone wanted to be in photos, so there are only a few people shown.
