[K12OSN] {Spam?} Opportunity

[Petre Scheie]

As to being brave and inviting someone from the audience to PXE boot their 
laptop, I'd advise against it unless you've done it successfully beforehand, 
because if it doesn't work, it will be embarrassing, as Calvin suggests.

Related anecdote: Years ago I worked at a company that made monitoring equipment 
and software used for quality control.  One of our sales reps was making a pitch 
to the makers of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  At the meeting with the customer 
there were several people from the candy company including people in charge of 
producing and controlling quality for the candy. When you're making millions of 
something, even the slightest deviations can add up to substantial amounts of 
money. The sales rep showed them a case of the PB cups he'd gone out and 
purchased the night before, opened it up and took one of the PB cups and put it 
on a scale.  It weighed exactly what it was supposed to.    Anyway, the rep 
pulled out another PB cup, weighed it, and it too was right on target.  So, the 
production people in the room were looking pretty smug.  Then the rep pulled out 
another cup: ooh, it was a couple of milligrams over what it should have been. 
He pulls out another: it was several milligrams overweight, meaning the 
manufacturer is giving more candy than they thought.  This went on for a few 
more cups, some overweight, some underweight.  Then the rep pulled back the 
curtain: the night before he had gone through the whole box of candy and weighed 
all the PB cups and then put them back in the bo, glued it shut, such that he 
could test them "out of the box" exactly in the order that he wanted in order to 
get the maximum effect.  He got the sale.  The point is, like a trial lawyer, 
don't ask a question you don't already know the answer to.  In a demo, don't try 
equipment unless you already know it works.

Petre

Calvin Park wrote:
> My biggest bit of advice to you regarding any demo (and this may seem
> obvious) is to do a complete run through or two prior to the real thing.
> Make sure everything works in as close to the actual environment as you
> can get it. I once sat in a demo where a nice guy put on a demo
> concerning CUPS...when he hit the print button and was like "So, you see
> it's a fairly easy process" (thats a paraphrase) the screen displayed an
> error at him. He turned bright red and it took him 5-10 minutes to fix
> it while we sat there (and some people left). 
> 
> So, the best advice I could give is to be sure that everything works,
> that you've done it a hundred times over. Obviously, in any demo, things
> could go wrong. But if you've run through it in a fairly close
> approxomation to what you're actually going to be doing, it helps. 
> 
> -Calvin
> 
> On Wed, 2005-01-05 at 15:43 -0800, Tim Kaldahl wrote:
> 
>>I am helping put a tech coordinator's meeting together for all of the I.T. in 
>>the Seventh-Day Adventist School system in at the end of this month. (Is PAA 
>>sending you Huck?) My main contribution is going to be to set up a K12LTSP  
>>Demo. I happened to mention this to my CDW Rep who is also going to be there, 
>>and he is excited about the possibility of putting together a package that 
>>schools could just buy and have a turnkey network, as well as a list of specs 
>>that would go on our extranet for the more adventurous who would build from 
>>scratch. I want to make sure I do this right, so I asked if he could possibly 
>>bring a thin client to demo the K12 system.  What could you recommend as a 
>>thin client? CDW of course is interested in selling them, so the rep asked if 
>>the HP T5300 would work. Since it comes pre-loaded with WinCE I'm doubtful, 
>>but you would know better than I. 
>>
>>For my demo I am going to be using my Toshiba Laptop (currently running Vector 
>>Linux) with 512megs to boot two older laptops (that also work well with 
>>Vector Linux). I am going to be very brave and see if one of the people in 
>>the audience would be willing to try pxe booting their laptop just to show hw 
>>great it is. I am open to (and seeking) any advice from the collective wisdom 
>>of this group on do's or don'ts for this demo.
>>
>>TIA
>>
>>Tim Kaldahl
>>Maplewood Academy
>>I.T. Coordinator
>>tkaldahl at maplewoodacademy.org
>>www.maplewoodacademy.org
>>
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> 
> 
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