🚀 go-pugleaf

In <9210420.18671@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> ggr@corowa.acci.com.au (Greg Rose) writes:

>Hi there. I'm baacckkk...

Some sort of warning would have been nice ;-)

>And I'm depressed to hear the tone of Pat's president's letter in the
>recent AUUGN, as much as the tone of Bernd's reply to it.

Pat and I have tangled keyboards on a prior matter. A
misunderstanding was cleared up.

>Unfortunately, I don't know what led up to these words (not being the
>sort of thing the New York Times prints, you know). (On second
>thoughts, maybe I am fortunate that I don't know the lead up...)
>Anyway, both of the aforementioned tomes read a lot like the contents
>of a standard flame war in any newsgroup.

OK. I admit that I do fly off the handle occasionally. I
only do so under careful consideration. (I cooled off a
couple of days before posting!. So what you saw were
embers, not flames.)

>So reading this gives me an opportunity to make completely unwarranted
>assumptions about what people have been doing and thinking while I've
>been away, and to use that as a vehicle to give my own thoughts on
>whatever the subject is that we've been talking about...

Lucky you...

>In article <1992Apr12.133451.12877@metapro.DIALix.oz.au> bernie@metapro.DIALix.oz.au (Bernd Felsche) writes:
>>... expounded the virtues ...
>>... defending an "attack" ...
>>The President's wording ...

>These are fighting words, and I like to think that Bernd and Pat are
>on the same side. The problem with carrying on discussions like that
>via written words (especially public ones) is that the bandwidth is
>not nearly high enough to carry the non-vocal part, and so meaning can
>be lost.

I like to think that we're on the same side too. Once again,
I'd like to mention that I delude myself into thinking that
I choose my words and phrases carefully. I seldom repeat
anything. I am terse. Some people reckon I should go back to
writing man pages. Posting takes time, and epic postings
such as the one you are referring to, seem to take the best
part of an evening to compose.

However, I do not employ an editor (the human type) so I
cannot always tell if the wrong interpretation can be taken
of what I write. I do read what I post before I post, and
from my limited knowledge of the language, try to permute
the possible consequences. If you still don't understand,
it's still my problem because I've failed to communicate.

>What I'm trying to say is, let's calm down and solve the problem,
>rather than yelling at each other.

Who's upset? Remember: this is not real life. Take one
Vallium with each article.

My posting was a criticism (is that a flame?) of the
President's Letter and what it said, and what it implied.
It's a shame that you missed out on earlier -- ummm --
discussion threads which set the background for my posting,
and of course, Pat's letter.

>>Although we all appreciate the past efforts of the
>>President, I'm sure that I'm not alone in believing that
>>some of these efforts have to say the least been misguided.

>Am I alone in saying that I think most of the efforts have not been
>misguided? Probably. However, the real question which is begged by the
>word "misguided" is: "What were these efforts intended to acheive?"

"some" > 0.

>In particular, when I preceded Pat in her current role, I felt that a
>split in the group was unacceptable. I still think so. Some of the
>current directions of AUUG are my doing. 

Some of the directions chosen have been more divisive than
beneficial to unity. You apparently missed out on some of
the earlier discussions in aus.auug (though I can't for the
life of me believe that something that important would
escape the New York Times:-)) where significant dissent came
about purely because Pat, and some of the others on the
committee thought that AUUG should not be called a Unix
group. [ Put that flame-thrower away! ] That's how it seemed
at the time. Everything is cool now.

>>The President is apparently not au fait with how marketing
>>works, ...

>I'm sorry to break my own rules, but I had to laugh at this. Pat is
>Asia Pacific Marketing Director for Amdahl. Before that for Pyramid.

Laughing is not against the rules!

Anyway, who said Directors knew anything about what they direct? ;-)

Why does AUUG need to hire a marketing organization if it
already has such expertise on tap? (Yeah, I know. Busy
people.) Sorry, just thinking aloud.

>>       ... otherwise the correlation between vendor influence
>>(however subtle that may be) and the image of the "unbiased"
>>associations which are supported by the vendors would have
>>been apparent.

>>When a notionally independent, respected user group gains a
>>high profile, the vendors associated with it are illuminated
>>by the light, and they can claim association/support of the
>>particular group. This is not a bad thing for the user
>>group, or for the vendor, but the user group must be aware
>>that it adds to the vendor's marketing leverage, and must
>>take care not to increase this leverage beyond its real
>>significance.

>I don't understand the comment without context, but I really don't
>think that it is *possible* for a vendor to increase the leverage
>beyond its real significance. If they contribute, they contribute. ..

Perhaps I can clarify: TLA Inc support AUUG, UniForum,
X/OPEN and SESSPOOLE. Now, TLA Inc gains credibility ( o.k.
maybe they'd better not mention SESSPOOLE ) and has a
toe-hold with customers, even before somebody asks "How?"
and "Why?". You see, they don't have to do a damn thing
except join and pay fees, to validate their statement,
though what they infer has much greater value in the eyes of
the "punter". 

Put yourself in the position of a UNIX ignoramus who's
looking for impartial advice. The closest you'll get is user
groups. So you look around, ask a few questions and find
that AUUG glossy in your junk mail. Hey, this crowd really
seem to be what I need! Ah, TLA Inc is a member. They must
be OK for supporting such a wonderful organization.

AUUG now has a larger proportion of vendors as members, and
my posting was meant to highlight some of the concerns about
this, as well as pointing out some of the statements made by
the President.

>Again, I don't get what you are trying to say here. Softway and Labtam
>were involved because they wanted to be, and I for one never wore a
>suit that was in bad taste. Softway never tried to push its own barrow
>(very much anyway), but don't mistake that for a lack of marketing
>intent. It was a very direct statement of how Softway wanted to be
>perceived. Of course I can't speak for Labtam, but would Softway have
>a bunch of Labtam X terminals if we didn't know the people involved
>through AUUG?

Doubtless, all vendors will try to maximise their return
from AUUG, but AUUG should be aware that it is not there to
maximise that return. Vendors already get a return in excess
of that of individual members because their entire
organization gains from its association with AUUG. Dare I
say prestige?

>>If I recall the infamous posting from which the President
>>quotes selectively, it drew attention to the change in focus
>>of the group. The trend is now for non-technical people to
>>join (have we run out of geeks already?) the group for
>>technical advice which is probably beyond their grasp.

>Yes, we have run out of geeks. They just aren't being born anymore.
>Unix (qua Unix) is boring.

>The non-techs also have a habit of being prepared to pay for advice
>given in any quantity. Do you want to be appreciated, or paid? (I vote
>for *both*.)

>>AUUG provides a channel by which the vendors can efficiently
>>feed "information" to prospective clients. Hence AUUG
>>becomes an extension of the marketing arm of the vendor.

>There is information, and there is information. If the information is
>useful, then it should be fed through to the prospective clients,
>often known as "members". This is the correct behaviour. If the
>occasional piece of virtual information slips through, it is a pity.
>If more than an occasional piece slips through, then I believe it is a
>direct result of the fact that the submission or whatever was not
>adequately vetted.

>[The term "virtual information" is Copyright C 1992 Greg Rose.]

>This IS a REAL PROBLEM. AUUG simply (Hah!) needs more people to put the
>effort into making it work right, by filtering out this stuff.

>>I'm sure that we'd all like for AUUG to maintain its
>>credibility, but as I see it, we're trading credibility for
>>size. Bigger is not necessarily better.

>The market, er, sorry, the number of technocrats and businesspeople
>interested in things related to Unix other than Unix itself
>is increasing dramatically. If AUUG doesn't grow apace I think it is
>trivial to demonstrate that it is not doing what its constitution says
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 that's what I used to say on my exam papers, and failed.

>it should be. Once, it was. Therefore, not bigger implies not better,
>and better implies bigger. I don't enjoy this logic personally, as I
>too miss the old days of sleeping in residential colleges vacated for
>the holidays.

One of the things that goes against the grain with some of
us old-timers (you can smile) is that AUUG is spending lots
of money, marketing itself, just to grow. Why doesn't AUUG
look back and see that most of its growth in the past has
been by word of mouth? If it's really worth somebody's
trouble to join, then they'll repay the compliment by
encouraging others. This costs AUUG nothing more than
providing the services it's notionaly obliged to provide.

AUUG must not mistake the UNIX market size as being
representative of the number of UNIX users. The vast
majority of commercial systems run applications as login
shells -- what operating system?? AUUG should not try to
capture those areas, except maybe to shanghai the on-site
'guru" (who often thinks that fsck is a 4-letter word).

>>I think it's preferable for AUUG to go back to discussing
>>things nobody else understands and shrink in size, than to
>>grow into a marketing front for vendors which provides very
>>little useful information to the users.

>I am quite sure that we can't go back. Anyway, the summer meeting
>program is starting to cater to just these atavistic tendencies I find
>in myself. And we can go to more than one each year! Or we can take a
>leaf from the USENIX book and start to specialise the subjects a bit
>more and try out specialised meetings.

The good thing about AUUG Summer conferences is that they
seem to happen all year round. ;-) Please, somebody, think
of a different name!

>I don't know about last year, but in other times past we often had
>trouble filling the technical program with technical papers. Lowering
>the standards allows virtual information to slip in. Again, submit
>more papers, and the standard goes up. I'm writing three abstracts
>now, and I didn't touch the Unix kernel for a whole 14 months.
>I didn't touch the AIX kernel either :-)

Lower the standards. Crikey, they even let me speak last year.

>There is also the possibility that AUUG has outlived its usefulness
>entirely, and may as well give up now. I know who would lose from such
>a course of action.

UNIX still has a long way to go, and AUUG can still provide
valuable services to the members. It doesn't need 30,000
members to do this, or $200,000 a year for marketing.

See if you can get Pat to mail you the last of my previous
mail responses, which suggests various means by which AUUG
can increase membership benefits and widen the spectrum of
members. Perhaps "the wicked witch" can post if there's much
demand.

[ Frankly, and just between you and me and 2000 other readers, ]
[ I prefer to think of Pat as a puppy dog which hasn't been    ]
[ house-trained, but then, we've never met ;-)                 ]

Oh dear, another two hours...
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