On Feb 11, 2005, at 8:44 PM, Anthony Atkielski wrote:
Robert Marella writes:
As far as the codebase question, he was not the one to bring it up. If I can read between his lines, I understand that when you go in front of the suits you can't tell them RTFM. You have to explain why FreeBSD is head and shoulders above the leader of the pack.
Yes. Things to remember if you must present FreeBSD to "suits" (not an exhaustive list):
- You must provide sound arguments and/or hard data to support your suggestions. "FreeBSD is just great!" will not do.
- You must provide costs. "It's free" won't do. Nothing is ever free. If you don't have costs, either you aren't being serious, or you haven't done your homework.
- You cannot killfile anyone who asks questions that you don't like.
- Calling the suits stupid because they refuse to unconditionally agree with you guarantees failure. Do not throw tantrums.
- You must be confident, but not arrogant. Stick to your guns when you are discussing something that you know to be objectively true, but do not argue about opinions.
- You must know exactly what point you wish to make to the suits, and you must stick to it. A long discussion of how much you love Beastie will not impress.
- You need to leave documentation with them, including a copy of your presentation.
- You need to explain how they will obtain support when something goes wrong. "Nothing ever goes wrong!" will not work.
- You need to explain how FreeBSD will fit in with their IT strategy. It's up to you to research this; it is not up to them to figure it out.
- Don't knock the competition unless you can objectively back up what you say (even then, be judicious).
- Be prepared to address legal issues, such as licensing, patents, and copyrights.
- If you say "If you don't like it this way, go somewhere else," they will.
This is all very well and good, but is irrelevant to the earlier discussion. You are not a Suit we are trying to impress or get to use FreeBSD. You are on a general technical support mailing list and "behavior" here is different than would be in a formal presentation or even official support mechanism.
Chad
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