For those that may have remembered my prior post, “New Linux Threads!“, we finally launched the web site September 17th and  renamed the product line to “FOSS Threads.”  It’s been quite a ride to get the site going and quite the adventure getting the t-shirt designs from concept to production.  Again; I can’t thank Kay Ferguson Apparel enough for all the hard work.  I’m pretty proud of the startup designs we’ve put together, but I’d give up my first born really like to know what you all think of them.

Launch Weekend

We wanted to make sure the site was launched before the Atlanta Linux Fest, September 19th.  We made the deadline and now we trying to figure out a marketing strategy to help get the word out.  “We did build it, but how do we get them to come!?” We’ve got a couple ideas, but if there’s a marketing specialist that wants in on this, let us know and we’ll talk (@FergatROn [twitter] [identica], mferguson at digitalalias dot net).

The thing I love most about this site is it’s ability to function on any mobile device. I didn’t use any JavaScript or fancy-dancy DHTML tricks. Well maybe one trick, but it was done using JQuery. With it being XHTML strict and applying the proper CSS it’s working like a dream. The tough part was getting the right CSS combination in order to make it function on multiple platforms.

Developing the Site

Besides the fact that we’ve created a solution to my initial need of having a designer FOSS shirt. I was able to finally create a web site from the ground up using FOSS. How incredible is that!? I’ve been a Dreamweaver/Photoshop developer for many years even when I started using Fedora (distro of champions!) I originally tried to get those programs working through Wine. I didn’t have much fun with them so I decided that I should use native programs.

What I’ve come up with through my research is Bluefish for coding, Gimp for graphics work and Inkscape for vectors (I haven’t worked with vectors though). Interesting enough, I heard of a plug-in for Gimp to make the interface look like Photoshop, and at first I wasn’t for it.  After using it for this project I’m almost considering it. I’m a keyboard shortcut kind-of-guy (watch out gals) and the shortcuts in Gimp make absolutely NO sense to me.  How am I to remember that the erase tool is SHIFT+E instead of a simple “E” key!? At least that one has an “E”. There are other tools that don’t match their name. Very confusing.

The Aftermath

Before completing this project I was a big-time “I’ll code it in gedit if I have to”. Now that I’ve used Bluefish (a full-text editor) for this project I am really considering a WYSIWYG editor. It’s very time consuming doing the code by hand.  Especially when coding  XHTML Strict! I need shortcuts.  I miss Dreamweaver.

Now our main focus is to start marketing this web site and eventually move it into a Magento environment.  I hope you all enjoy the shirts as I have. We’re looking for some serious feedback.  Good and bad, we need it all.  I want to stress the community aspect to this project. True, I made these shirts out of my own need, but I know there are more folks out there that had the same problem. Now that I’ve created a platform, I want us all to benefit from it. Give us your feedback and design ideas (no images, just ideas) and we’ll start making more Free and Open Source Software apparel.

September 19th was the Atlanta Linux Fest, which had about 700+ people show up – don’t quote me though, there were a lot of different head-counts being tweeted that day. That number sounds great, but it’s nothing in comparison to the once great Atlanta Linux Showcase that was started by my LUG, Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts. With that selfless promotion out of the way, it looks like ALF has a great start to making the city of Atlanta a hot spot for FOSS conventions in the future.  It was a tiring day, but I think Nick and Josh from the Ubuntu Podcast will continue to run this event for years to come.  I’m not certain if there were other folks or organizations that started this, but Nick and Josh were certainly considered the poster children for it.

This was my first convention and because of my impulsiveness – I experienced the event in a slightly different way. As I registered for the event, I saw the option to “volunteer”.  I thought to myself, “What better way of jumping into this event.  See the front and back end of it all.”  With that said, I only attended one workshop (Running an Open Source Business, presented by Tarus Balog of OpenNMS) and their was an in-prompt-to entrepreneur meetup. Overall; I had fun. Next time, though, I will register as a regular-folk and attend as much workshops as possible. It was amazing seeing fellow geeks huddled in one area with a common goal of being themselves and talking about what we love – free and open source software.

My wife, @fossthreads [identica] [twitter], was a vendor at the event and just as luck would have it – the Fedora booth was right next to us! Sweet! I didn’t talk to them much though… I was too busy. Now don’t get me wrong, the STAFF of the event didn’t hold me at gun point telling me to “do this” and “do that.” I really did volunteer, sacrificing the experience of the workshops for the experience of helping to operate, hopefully, one of many-to-come Linux-related conventions. I was actually falling asleep in the workshop I did attend, but that’s only because I was very tired at that point in the day.

The Unsortable List

I was very excited when I reached the venue. I got my ALF t-shirt, badge, and asked them what they wanted me to do. They asked me to greet the folks and let them know there were four places at the front desk where they could sign in. Later on it was apparent that the IBM facility had a WiFi connection, but a lot of people didn’t know how to connect.  I asked someone about it and they said they have a list and folks that preregistered get their own username/password. I said, “Awesome! Can I have a list?” They gave me one and I walked around (for about 5 minutes) like a big shot!  Thank the maker – that no one asked me for any WiFi information.  As I looked through the list to get myself familiar with it, I realized that this particular spreadsheet was sorted by registration date! What!? I don’t even remember when I registered.  It was about 6 – 8 pages and after 2 minutes of searching, I couldn’t even find myself on the list.  Who printed that sheet!? It must have been a joke.

Micro-blogging

One of the most exciting aspects of the day was tweeting about it while I was dead in the middle of it.  When I noticed that folks were looking for coffee and they didn’t find any, I thought it would be helpful to use the #atllinux hash and spread the word. I ended up using that mechanism to confirm and inform folks various things going on during the event. It was very cool and I felt very connected with all these avatars!

My First Meetup

Nick Owen from WiKID tweeted about an open spot in the schedule and asked if folks wanted to do a quick meetup. Me, Christopher Johnson from if PEOPLE, Josh Sweeney from <ALT> Invest, Sanjay Parekh, Matt Smith, and Urvaksh Karkaria graciously strolled into the conversation and thus the meetup took place. Coincidently; this “first” convention procuded a lot of “firsts” for me: live tweeting, the convention itself, an entreprenur meetup, volunteering outside of a church event, and rubbing shoulders with vendors of an event.  So; again, event though I didn’t see all the workshops – I still had a great time.

I’m proud to announce that I’m working with KayFerg.com in producing some new, design worthy, Linux apparel. Since this venture is still in the beginning phases, we’d really love some feedback from everyone, especially the Linux community. Visit her site, take a lookie-loo (or purchase something) and post your feedback here.

The Designs We’re Looking For

The slogan for the “teaser” shirt came from the signature I use in Gmail. It may not appeal to everyone, but I got a kick out of it and knowing that I can have it on a tee – well, that just made my FOSSy-day!

With that said, we are really looking for input on other concepts from the community. We don’t want to have too many “wordy” slogan-like tees, such as “There’s no place like ~”, “RTFM”, etc. The main idea is to really make designer apparel, so even if the people looking at your shirt, don’t get the underline message – they can still say, “Cool shirt! Where’d you get it?”

Also, for our protection and yours please only convey concepts (i.e. “How about a shirt that says; When life gives you lemons, make Linuxade”).  Copyright infringement is a sensitive issue for everyone and since KayFerg.com is handling the design/art aspect of the shirts they cannot accept or look at any images, drawings or anything that resembles artwork, so please do not post those things in your feedback. It will not be considered. Okay… I  got the legal jargon out of the way!

Wait, Lurking, Feeding the Need

I’m very excited to see this idea materialize. I really think the combination of my enthusiasm for Linux and working with KayFerg.com should produce some really cool apparel for my Linux community. I’ve been wanting to show the world my love for Linux, but most of the shirts out there really seem lame. I mean not to offend, but that’s my take on what I’ve seen thus far.

KayFerg.com is going to be a vendor at Atlanta Linux Fest 2009 and 15 designs are currently in the works (scheduled to be released in September).  Since these apparels are for you, your feedback on designs and concepts is greatly appreciated. ALSO, if KayFerg.com decides to design a shirt around a concept you were the first to contribute, you will get a FREE shirt for yourself.  Lets really run with the essense of “open source” and see what the community can produce! “Go Team Venture!” (Venture Bros. quote, if you don’t know)