Re: Booth Swag - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 10:51 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Josh,
>
> > Well it isn't even that honestly. The cost is less than 3k USD which is
> > not a big deal. The question is value to the customer. Consider that I
> > can purchase a 4GB pen drive for for <20.00 USD. Why do I want a 1GB
> > model? Because it has a cute elephant on it?
>
> Also, at trade shows, some commercial vendors will be handing out 256MB pen
> drives for a free registration.
>
> > Don't get me wrong, I still think it is a positive direction in
> > comparison to using CDs. I seriously think we need to completely dump
> > handing out CDs. They are wasteful and *anyone* who is going to pick one
> > up at OSCON or LWE or any other US show, has broadband.
>
> Thing is, the CDs have symbolic value.  They say "This is truly free software,
> here's a full-feature copy which you can use for any purpose."

Sure, I don't disagree that it has symbolic value. It certainly has
historical precedence as well. However one of the arguments of open
source is sustainability. Are we being sustainable by handing these out?
Further driving innovation (such as the world's most advanced open
source database)?

O.k. its a little Dirty Hippy, but come one, this is consumerism and
waste at its finest. There is very little if any capital value to the
CDs.


>   Again, I
> think this is a difference for commercial as opposed to OSS conferences; I
> also see less value in CDs at OSCON, FOSDEM, and other pure-OSS conferences
> where people know how to download stuff.

You lost me on this one... do we attend any commercial conferences?

>
> The other reason we started doing the "live CDs" was because one of the
> (unjustified) complaints about PostgreSQL was that it was hard to install &
> set up.  Having a "live demo" which people could boot and play with was a
> refutation of that.  That perception still exists, and I haven't heard a
> better way of addressing it.

Sure, and I am not suggesting stopping work on live versions. I am
suggesting not distributing them for the sake of distributing them.
Let's hand them a gorgeous business card that has links to the ISO image
as well various useful sites (like pg.org :P).

>
> Also, some people *do* pass along CDs to friends who don't have broadband.
>

*some* who would also probably do so anyway, if they had an immediate
download link, possibly even at the show.


> > In comparison the stickers, which are approximately the same cost as the
> > CDs would be, will be seen all over the place. People will put that on
> > notebooks, monitors, laptops etc... That is branding that is worth a lot
> > more than a little pen drive.
>
> +1 on stickers.  I think there is no question there.  I especially want an
> elephant which masks the little "apple" on my MacBook and lights up.

Right, this isn't really about whether or not to have stickers, that is
a done deal.

Joshua D. Drake