On Thu, 09 Jan 2003 18:46:30 -0500, robin wrote:
-> > John Q. Public does not know beans about Linux. That is a
problem.
-> > What is your solution?
->
-> I will go on making Linux presentations to non-Linux groups,
same as
-> always. The next big one I have scheduled is at an IT
management
-> conference in Mexico City the second week in February. I now
do between
-> 10 and 15 "Linux demo" speeches per year.
Impressive! Speaking of John Q. Public, I get the impression,
in these discussions, that we often talk about "promoting Linux"
in a somewhat generalized sense. Seems to me that one should
think in terms of two totally distinct major groups:
geeks/techies and desktop users. Not that there's no
interaction, because there is, but the "promotion" needs to be
totally different.
That's why, when Paul mentioned promoting SLUG in an earlier
post, I suggested (hopefully without offending) that I wasn't
much interested in promoting SLUG....at least in the context of
our discussion at that time.
To clarify: if we are interested in promoting the "helpers"
page, some of our target audience will be people who are giving
Linux a try because they heard it was a good replacement for
Windows. Many of these people will NEVER come to a SLUG
meeting, nor should they. As Linux becomes viable on the
desktop for ordinary people, I think we need to be aware that
there are people (aka geeks) who are drawn to Linux for its
technical excellence, AND there are people who simply are fed up
with MS and are exploring an alternative. Totally different.
(Somebody with marketing smarts--not me!--might also argue that
there are distinct subgroups within these two groups.)
I only bring this up because my thoughts keep getting drawn back
to the original post by Michael and I think he was including the
non-geek element in his comments. I assume when you give a
presentation to a non-Linux group, you are getting them to look
at a better hammer, and you don't much care if they ever join a
LUG to learn how to pour steel into hammer molds?
John
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