On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 07:19:46 -0800
"Tim Mansfield" <tim@whyintheworld.org> wrote:
Hi,
If you had just a brief time in which to demo open source software to a
bunch of K-12 teachers...
Whatever you do, plan well. Rehearse your sales pitch. Nothing kills an IT
demo faster than a disorganized, unprepared geek. I'm one of those :-)
...(who were new to the whole OS thing, and not necessarily convinced it
was all that great)...
Good pitching is rather at odds with open-source geek culture. A good
pitcher has the odor of a slick corporate salesman, which geeks usually
find unpleasant. Your audience is less likely to share that attitude, and
expect a good presentation. Let your passion show.
...the point being to wow them with what OS could do for them, so they
want to explore further...
"wow" is the key word here; don't expect to be able to just show them some
apps and get a chorus of wows. YOU have to wow them!
... what pieces of software would you demo? (Again, just briefly, so
they get the gist of what it does & how they'd really benefit.)
If there is time, ask them what they use now or want, and focus on that.
Having said that, what I think will be most effective in general is to
show them a nice graphical desktop,
... with lots of eye-candy! Yesterday, someone passing by my box
(showing KDE with a Matrix background) said "Wow, that looks a lot nicer
than Windows!"