What is the latest on that MSN rebate offer in California?
----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Moen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2000 5:52 PM
Subject: Re: [LDD] Hello again
> [cc list snipped]
>
> Quoting Deepak Saxena ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
>
> > As you can see from the announcement I just sent out, I'm trying to
> > get people to go out and do something to coincide with the Win2K
> > release.
>
> As chance would have it, this is two days after the first anniversary
> of Windows Refund Day.
>
> > I am also looking at other possible dates throughout the year for
> > massive advocacy events.
>
> It seems timely to mention some of the lessons of Windows Refund Day.
> The event was declared unilaterally by Matt Jensen of Seattle, who
> put up a Web site suggesting that people who had bought x86 machines
> with unwanted MS Windows preloads all separately, and with a total
> lack of coordination or publicity, descend upon the separate OEMs and
> demand a refund, on Monday, February 15, 1999. The page was immediately
> Slashdotted, with the predictable horde of people declaring this a RAD
> K00L idea.
>
> In setting this up, Jensen was somewhat handicapped by lacking Clue One
> about planning, publicity, organisation, and even use of calendars (as
> I shall explain).
>
> Looking on this spectacle from the San Francisco Bay Area, a number of
> us saw considerable potential for disaster. Reporters used to toeing
> the Redmond party line seemed likely to portray Jensen's event as a
> software bootlegging scam on a massive scale, giving a black eye to
> (particularly) the Linux community in so doing: All such a reporter
> had to do was find _one_ kiddie bragging about scamming money off
> Microsoft Corporation while continuing to use his Win9x installation
> thereafter, which the reporter could then sell as representative,
> because large parts of the populace take as given that a machine is
> useless without MS Windows.
>
> So, Bay Area Linux publicist Don Marti recruited me and Nick Moffitt to
> run a Bay Area Windows Refund Day information site and newsletter, and
> start planning a local event. Since hundreds of computer geeks
> individually banging on OEM coutertops in obscurity was an obvious PR
> loser, we replaced this notion of Jensen's with one of a mass visit to
> a local Microsoft office.
>
> Simultaneously, Don's New York City associate Jim Gleason got the LXNY
> group and Jay Sulzberger involved to plan a local event at a Microsoft
> office there, and Orange County Linux activist Deirdre Saoirse
> volunteered to do likewise in Irvine, California. At the same time,
> Jensen asked someone to take over his Windows Refund Day site, since
> he wasn't prepared for either the traffic or the maintenance work, and
> luckily Mark Bolzern volunteered to take it over at his Linux Mall site.
> Total elapsed time for arranging all this via group e-mail discussions:
> About three days.
>
> So, I then checked my calendar, and found that Monday the 15th was going
> to be Presidents' Day, a public holiday in the USA. I mentioned this
> to the other planners, and Matt Jensen reacted as if this was calamitous
> news, saying he was going to change the date (with publicity for the
> event already well under way).
>
> I replied that we were _not_ going to change the date, not least because
> Jensen's accidentally picking Presidents' Day turned out to be a stroke
> of good luck: Many businesses would be closed that day, such that we
> stood a good chance of having high turnout at USA locations, _but_
> Microsoft Corporation offices were going to be open. Good planning
> includes checking on such things.
>
> Eventually, we attracted equally meticulous planners of local Windows
> Refund Day events in New Zealand, the Netherlands/Belgium, France, and
> Japan, and coordinated with them via private group e-mail discussions
> (_not_ via public mailing lists). We were also extremely careful to
> avoid this being portrayed as a Linux-only event, thereby drawing in
> activists from the FreeBSD, Solaris, NetWare, SCO Unix, and BeOS
> communities.
>
> My point, in part, is that considerable damage control was necessary,
> to repair Jensen's poorly-thought-out idea, and give the publicity
> effect some helpful spin control instead of leaving that entirely
> to chance and the sympathies of reporters, a minority of whom were
> outright Microsoft shills. A potential PR disaster was turned into an
> event with a very clear and dramatic message. (Hundreds of people
> attended the march to Microsoft, in Foster City, near San Francisco --
> where we held our press conference and presented our written request for
> reimbursement and justification for it, since, as expected, Microsoft
> reacted to our presence by hiding in the building's upper floors and
> locking those floors out of the elevator system.)
>
> My point, with more specific application to the present situation,
> is that any Win2K event had better have a well-thought-out, local,
> physical focus at one or more places. There should be a coherent
> message for the press. There should be contact telephone numbers.
> (If you plan to make news, you need to be accessible to reporters.)
> There should be people in charge, who know how to talk to the press.
> It's best to have publicised Web sites with FAQs pitched to the level
> of the target audience. The event should be reportable and packaged
> as _fun_, colourful news, not just yet another boring and confusing
> nerd non-event. And planning should be among a manageably small of
> people, and in private.
>
> Above all, y'all need to think through what _specifically_ you're trying
> to accomplish, where, with whom, and how. Logistics, calendars,
> project planning -- all the tedious, necessary stuff. If you aren't
> prepared to start tackling those tasks starting _now_, don't even bother.
> You could end up being an object lesson of the _other_ side's publicity
> campaign.
>
> (Presidents' Day, 2000 is Monday, January 21, in case anyone's curious.
> Microsoft's Win2K launch is scheduled for the preceding Thursday.)
>
> References:
> http://LinuxMall.com/misc/refund/
> http://linuxmafia.com/refund/
> http://zork.net/refund/
>
> --
> Cheers, My pid is Inigo Montoya. You kill -9
> Rick Moen my parent process. Prepare to vi.
> rick (at) linuxmafia.com
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