Audience targetting at ITEC

[Warren Togami]

----- Original Message -----
From: "joel" <jijoel at lava.net>
To: "Linux & Unix Advocates & Users" <luau at list.luau.hi.net>
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 1:19 PM
Subject: [luau] Audience targetting at ITEC


<SNIP>
>
> What if we were to hand them a disk with programs they could use, right
now,
> today, to extend the capabilities of their existing systems? This would
show
> them that open-source programs can be as good or better than the software
> they can buy.
>
> I think we should have a CD of open-source software that works under
Windows,
> including the Gimp, Mozilla, Abiword, Star Office... can anyone think of
> other open-source programs that work in both Linux and Windows? They could
> take the CD, play with the programs on in for a while, read some of the
> philosophical ramblings (also on the CD, surprisingly enough ;-), and
start
> using open-source software themselves. Then, it's not such a foreign
concept.
>

I totally agree that "normal people" need an easy, low-risk and possibly low
fear way of seeing that free software can be excellent.  My way of showing
this is to show the amazing things you can do with free software
interoprating with Windows, a platform that people feel comfortable with.
This upsets a few people here, but I believe that is only because they don't
understand exactly the concept that you said very well here.

End-users fear what they do not understand, and they certainly don't want to
learn anything new, especially if they had a hard time learning it the first
time.  Bridging the gap like this is necessary to assuage fears.
Fortunately the state of Linux desktop software is quickly approaching a
point where "normal people" can recognize many of it as "familiar", one of
the first crucial steps toward acceptance.

Unfortunately, I don't agree about the software on the CD.  There is very
few excellent open source or free software available for Windows that the
end-user would understand.  Of course Apache, PHP and MySQL work great on
Windows, but end-users would not understand nor care about that.  It would
actually scare them. I'm talking only desktop software, and the only
appropriate example in my book would be StarOffice.  Mozilla has no
understandable benefits to that user, because they'll see instantly that it
does the same thing as Internet Explorer and Netscape, only slower.  Abiword
is a lean and mean promising project, but in its current state and lack of
features, it would only reinforce a user's idea that "Free software can't
possibly be good."  GIMP can be totally awesome to show the power of free
software, but the end-user would need to figure it out themselves and the
GIMP interface is totally unintuitive.  You could possibly include a
"Getting Starting Guide" that is easy to read for newbies, but newbies don't
like reading ANYTHING.  Well, there's also the problem that GIMP for Windows
isn't being developed much, and it can be very unstable and crash prone.

Back to StarOffice... I'd seriously wait for StarOffice 6 before mass
distributing CD's.  First impressions mean a lot, and StarOffice 6 will be
such a large improvement over the current SO that it will be well worth the
wait.  It finally gets rid of that stupid "Desktop" thing and behaves like
individual applications.  There are many thousands of additional features
and improvements, along with serious performance benefits over the current
StarOffice.

I'm sorry that I'm so cynical about everything....

Regarding the rant, it may be most effective to include a video of several
really good and convincing speeches by several Open Source advocates.
(ANYONE BUT Richard Stallman.  He's a lunatic and he will scare everyone but
Libertarians and the rare non-stupid Americans).  Bruce Perens, Eric S.
Raymond, Joe Barr, Lawrence Lessig, Linus Torvalds or Matthew Szulik all
have made several awesome speeches in the past.  We should find recordings
and videos of these and find the best among the bunch.  Sort them into
"Normal People" , "Technical non-Linux People" and "Linux Techie Education"
categories and give the appropriate category to the right people.

> This also gives us another opportunity. Instead of seeing ITEC as a
one-shot
> deal, we could give them a taste of free software there, and mention that
> we'll be hosting an install-fest next month, if they're interested in
doing
> *more* with free software. Not having a date, time, or place for that yet
> could work in our favor, because it'll give us a chance to gather e-mail
> addresses of interested people ("we'll e-mail you all the details later").
>
> At an install-fest, we could have people installing Linux on their own
> machines, help them set it up exactly like they want it, fix all the
little
> problems that periodically surface, and help them through the initial
> learning curve.
>
> In a few short months, they'll be ours! Mwuahahahaha! >;-)
>
> --Joel

I agree.  We should schedule follow up newbie help sessions and installfests
after the event, already on our web site calendars when they visit them
immediately after they get home from ITEC.  I'm thinking the following...

* Newbie Educational session targetting suits- What can Linux do?
* Newbie Educational session targetting techies - Installfest
* CompUSA Linux demo day

Warren