[svlug] Tea Party: Post Mortem...

[Gies, Dennis]

We made it past the door!!  Ok, Ok, so there were only 5 allowed in at a
time, but they let us share the passes, so I think everyone got a chance to
go in and check it out.  *Lots* of CD's were handed out, and I personally
talked to 2 reporters and posed for the Times cameraman...Turns out the NY
Times reporter was there.  There was another guy from a local paper that I
didn't catch the name of as well.  I also talked to a pretty fair number of
people who either had or were planning on installing Linux, and supported
what we were doing (some were openly hostile towards MS).  Guy Kawasaki was
there, although he looked pretty stunned when I approached him; must've been
the yellow jacket ;).  

The really interesting thing was already happening when I got there.  We met
as planned in the coffee shop, *but* there were two MS guys waiting for us I
guess.  I am not quite sure how they heard about it, but I'm sure someone
asked.  I think they were in fact reading the newsgroup.  This really makes
me chuckle.  They were promptly introduced to the NY Times reporter.  They
were also the ones who gave us the 5 passes and the ones who promised to buy
the whole group dinner.  The 5 passes turned up, and the dinner did not.  We
got some coffee though.  Other than that no one really hasseled us.  A
security guard came out and lurked in the shadows every 15 minutes or so,
but he turned out to be pretty cool too, and he even too a CD :).  

On the whole, MS acted pretty good.  But come on, sending out two marketing
something-or-others to _plan out_ a way to deal with a group of Linux
zealots is pretty insane, but I guess that's what makes them the world's
greatest marketing machine:  they don't make asses of themselves in public
(with the occasional blue-screen-during-a-demo exception).  And if nothing
else, at least I have a dirty napkin reading "Microsoft" on my cubicle
wall...

dnns

-------------------------
Speak not for Intel do I.

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