[ale] I was a Booth Monkey for linux

[Charles Shapiro]

At the ripe old age of 41, I find it difficult to code all day, come
home, and then code all night. But after using and enjoying linux for
several years, I knew that I had to give something back to the
community. That was why I volunteered to help man the Atlanta Linux
Enthusiasts booth at the Association for Information and Image
Management (AIIM) convention on April the thirteenth. It
was truly a Learning Experience. The main thing I learned was that
there is in fact a place for the marketing types we love to sneer
at. 

I learned a bunch of stuff Not to Do. Don't use a reference to the
Nuremburg Rally when you're talking to a German, even if you are
explaining how the local users group members intend to greet Linus.
Don't juggle clubs in front of the vice president of ALE. It makes him
real nervous. The Juggling Gig in a China Shop story won't help
this. Don't try to pack your usual run around the block in before
getting to the show, then buy one of those $3.00 soft drinks
there. The bottles do not fit over the water fountains, so you'll
never be able to get your money's worth of liquid into the bottle.

The day offered some entertaining moments, although perhaps only
in retrospect. I had the chance to sit down with the proud holder of a
software algorithm patent and try to explain the Benefits of Linux to
him. That let me feel the pain of a salesman asked to sell an
unsaleable product. I got to try to explain the Wonders of CORBA in
100 words or less to an intelligent but non-programming
audience. That helped me to see some of the joys of sales. I got
to kibbitz on a lot of conversations between people who did not
necessarily want to listen to me.  The trials of being a sales
assistant came instantly to mind.

Many of the people who came by the booth seemed to have trouble
understanding the idea of a linux movement. We had to explain
that Redhat does not own linux more than once. The concept that the
different distributions of linux all act roughly the same once they're
installed on your hard disk was also difficult to get across.
To people accustomed to monolithic control of all aspects of an
operating system, the idea of a gaggle of people getting together and
producing valuable software seems magical.  This was not a "rough
consensus and running code" crowd.

Another persistent question was "Where are the people who base their
products on linux at this show?".  This was difficult for someone
who didn't wander the floor a little bit, especially since several of
the people who _did_ offer products based on linux were not
necessarily pushing it as a feature. One CD jukebox vendor was rumored
to use linux for his control program, but you had to actually ask the
people in the booth to find that out.

Many of our visitors had trouble figuring out a business model which
would work if they freely distributed their software.  Making money
from linux is perhaps the quitessential example of "doing well by
doing good", but it does take ingenuity to figure out how --
especially if you're used to thinking in terms of making a profit from
keeping secrets. I raved about the benefits of providing support for
money, but one guy from New Zealand pointed out that his customers
"would rather do it themselves than ask for help". He feared that if
he opened his source and distributied linux might he would shoot
himself in the foot.  A good answer to this dilemma exists, but I
could not come up with it in five minutes.

The ALE booth attracted the usual flow of suits and programmer
types. A small but vocal subset of people wanted to sell _us_
something as well.  One guy had a magic psychological system to make
you More Creative at Work. I quickly moved to the other end of the
booth from him. Another was giving out free sets of whitepapers on
imaging technology.  These included a truly fawning analysis of
Microsoft, which predicted that no matter how the Boys in Redmond
screwed up, they would still retain control of every PC on the
planet. After all, as the essay said, "People just want to do the best
thing (for example, buy Windows) and get on with their jobs".  The
packet did, contain some interesting nuggets, such as the equation "1
pulp tree = 1/10th cord of wood = 10,000 pages = 1 file cabinet = 4
boxes = 1/2 gigabyte = 1 CD".  A useful approximation at the ends,
although the middle has some slop. A CD is actually closer to 700
megs, for example.

Of course, at any trade show it is important to score stuff.  The ALE
booth had cool bottle openers and linux CDs, both courtesy of SuSE.
If you go to something like this, make a point of taking a break to
wander the rest of the floor. I missed the Falcons cheerleaders (they
probably would have appreciated a little juggling), as well as a
really nifty toy car keychain.  Many other booths offered food
(fortune cookies, gummy bears).  A dedicated guy could probably have
hustled some interesting stuff for nephews and other under-14
relatives. And you might be able to justify it by trying to sell linux
to the other exhibitors.

So I may not have done as much for the Cause as I planned. Perhaps one
person was truly impressed by my spiel that all linux jocks can juggle
5 balls. Maybe something I said will make someone remember their SuSE
CD and put it on a '486 box to see if it runs right.  Perhaps one of
the Linux Showcase folders I put into a CD folder will find a reader
who will come.  Such is the life of a Marketing Type, scattering
mustard seeds.

Charles Shapiro
cshapiro at harbinger.com                            72300.3632 at compuserve.com
Funny saying + 22-line ASCII art masterpiece here.