Fwd: Ubuntu Ice House: Repeat Event Today!

ted leslie tleslie-RBVUpeUoHUc at public.gmane.org
Mon Feb 5 22:56:45 UTC 2007


I have some questions/comments ..

My girl friend is using Linux now, has been for a few weeks at least,
she doesn't even know about any connection between a penguin/tux and
linux. Someone who has never even heard of Linux before, I can't imagine
they are somehow going to magically make a connection? I think it would
be useful to get tux a tatoo on his belly/chest area that says "Linux",
maybe have him holding a flag? just a thought.

In one of the blogs it said the Police ask who is in charge, and someone
stepped forward ..... do  you really need to appoint someone to be "in
charge" of a group demonstration?  Probably better that any official of
law enforcement are told it was truly a group initiative.

I actually am very much in support of the linux demonstration at the ice
house, but I also do understand what the neigh-sayers points are too
about the real impact and such. You have to start somewhere however, and
unless you can pay someone to float a blimp above the city (say like
pink floyd did years past), this (ice house demo.)is a pretty economical
way to start. You even got listed now on linux.org and
linuxtoday.com !!!

If one were to plan even a bigger party crash, i wonder .....
you got booted off dundas square because its apparently private
property?, but if the event had of been bigger, many more people, could
the police have even muscled you off the sidewalk and in general just
plain told you to pack it up and keep it out of sight?
I was thinking what would have been ideal, for impact, would be a 30"
lcd monitor hooked to a portable running some jaw dropping beryl/xgl
demo (with help of a rather large battery system i guess...).
And give out DVD like a gamix live DVD/cd so the receiver of it can get
to something good (a game) and later bask in the reflection of a
superior OS if their attention is held long enough.

Linux is a really hard sell (to the home desktop), just because people
don't like change in that area for the most part. 

I do look at the success of linux coming more from the business side,
and commercial side, with thing like cell phones runing linux, and the
purchaser doesn't really care to know its linux, but the name branding
gets out there, or a company like  PSA Peugeot Citroen  putting
potential 20K people at their offices on a Suse desktop, which , once
the employee is use to it, and needs to up grade their OS at home ...
good things can happen.

I think that giving out free CD/DVD distro's is good, but what is even
better is that you can claim that something really cool runs on there
(ala live version) that a person would want to see, irregardless of it
being linux or not, like a game (i.e. gamix).
This would probably drastically increase the take up rate of someone
actually attempting to use it once they do get it home.

I think the really cool thing about the ice house demo. is that, there
might have/be a chance to get say coverage on CITY-TV "newscaster in the
street segment", or something like that, that is, more the traditional
reason you do a protest/demonstration, to get what is usually very
expensive media coverage on TV. Put another 10 people on the corner
handing out DVD/CD and someone with a connection to Mozes Znaimer and
maybe next time you can make the 11:00 news with a headline like "Linux
supporters with a 20' high penguin crash MS and Bill Gates Vista coming
out party" ...  :) 


-tl








On Mon, 2007-02-05 at 17:15 -0500, Jamon Camisso wrote:
> Stephen Allen wrote:
> > Jamon Camisso wrote:
> > 
> >> Nothing embarrassing about the event hitting the front page of digg a 2
> >> times in as may days. Nor is there anything embarrassing about 1600+
> >> hits per hour with a peak of 11,000 per hour at one point on my tiny xen
> >> server hosting my photos of the event and Dave Sullivan's post-event
> >> wrapup. 77,000 hits in 2 days and counting...
> > 
> > <snip>
> > 
> >> I think there may be more of a generation gap at work here than any of
> >> us care to admit. However, repeating the past in an iteratively
> >> improving fashion isn't a bad thing if there are improvements to be made
> >> (IMHO of course). So trotting out a cliche like that lends your argument
> >> little force, rhetorical or otherwise.
> > 
> > Caveat: I'm in the advertising/marketing business. :)
> > 
> > TLinux needs quality advertising and endorsements. This grass roots
> > thing isn't effective, (in this case) because it reinforces the stereo
> > type that Linux enthusiasts are nothing but hobbyists, poor students or
> > geeks.
> 
> So I shouldn't bother getting people to try it out because you aren't 
> out there with me? Dundas Square is a great location judging by the 
> number of other poor students and hobbyists who were there. Geeks too.
> 
> Just remember these words I heard once from a marketing friend who no 
> doubt picked it up from somewhere else: "Geek is chic"
> 
> > Not that there is anything wrong with either of those, but you get my
> > drift, I'm sure.
> > 
> > Judging the success of your endeavour by how many digg hits or visits to
> > your personal blog, doesn't mean much in the real world.
> 
> Perhaps there is more to it than just "real world" success. After all, 
> if someone hears about it and downloads a binary copy, what's real about 
> that apart from electrons over a few tubes? Real or not, I heard about 
> Linux online, learned about it online, downloaded and installed it 
> without ever meeting anyone in the "real world" of which you speak. 
> Suffice to say that I'm guilty on all counts of shameless idealism and 
> complete and utter contempt for the middle class panacea of the "real 
> world" which I'm sure consists largely of white, responsible, pragmatic 
> and career or family oriented, middle management types and decision makers.
> 
> Overly harsh, I know, but I hear this real world thing often enough to 
> know that it is usually a thinly veiled (unacknowledged?) attempt to 
> keep people from trying to do something where they just might succeed 
> where another has failed. I do not mean to imply anything by that 
> statement, your intent is simply to dismiss, not cut down or belittle.
> 
> > Now, if you got some publicity on the main stream blogs or media (as
> > long as it's good publicity) that would be rather successful, in my view.
> 
> Digg is not a small site by any means. Not a "mainstream" blog (of which 
> I'm sure many are commercialized to the point of impenetrability 
> anyways), but not something to be totally written off either.
> 
> > The kind of advertising that Linux requires,(IMO) is the kind geared
> > towards decision makers, and definitely NOT the kind were you're
> > essentially, crashing another's party.
> > 
> > That's pretty negative in my book -- I don't know many people that are
> > that impressed with the type of advertising that happened on the weekend
> > (outside the ice house). In my mind it's no different than being a
> > Jehovah Witness, or an Evangelical, passing out tracts on the street
> > corner, it's just about as effective.
> 
> Suits or not, apart from this list and the MSDN forums, the feedback has 
> been overwhelmingly positive.
> 
> And what utter nonsense that religious bit, whatever the Church of 
> Stallman might say to the contrary. Absolutely different as there is no 
> implicit or explicit moralizing or judgment of the people we were 
> talking to, nor (at least for me) is/was there any smugness involved. 
> Totally different. And effective too as we had someone else post back 
> that they had tried the disc and liked it.
> 
> > I'm not really sure that Geeks are the best suited for this type of
> > work. There generally is a reason why Marketing is separate from
> > Engineering. So obviously I don't think LUGs are good for this either. ;)
> > 
> > It really has nothing to do with a perceived "generation gap", more in
> > knowing how to sell to your customer.
> 
> Who is precisely on the side of the gap that doesn't care about 
> corporate decision making yet. We're not talking about customers, we're 
> talking about and to people--there is a huge difference in approaches.
> --
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