Conference 7.286::digital

4716.0. "One Hot, Stormy Night, In Texas..." by SCASS1::WISNIEWSKI (ADEPT of the Virtual Space.) Thu Jul 11 1996 19:02

    One Hot Day In July...
    
    The OpenVMS Ambassador stumbled up to the 12th floor copier with his 
    arms overloaded with recently printed Altavista software pages from 
    Netscape.

    Nethistory, Firewalls, Tunnel products, LANbrowser, and Personal Search
    tools.  Fifty copies each because Digital's hottest products don't 
    automatically ship glossies to a regional DEMO center.  

    Ah sweet marketing thy name is DEC.

    The OpenVMS Ambassador mulled briefly over this truth and the fact 
    that he tended to write like Bob Dole gives Speeches ...In the third
    person... and continued his task of assembling his supplies for 
    the evening's festivities.

    "Going to miss the DECUS LUG meeting tonight" mumbled the Ambassador
    remembering that a couple of the Sales Support folks from the newly 
    constituted and reorganized ASSBU (Account Sales Support Business Unit
    or "The ASS-B-U" as it was fondly refered to by the Sales Support grunts) 
    would be demonstrating WNT Clustering on a couple of Alpha 1000s and 
    and a Digital PC with the logo torn off because we can't sell that 
    obsolete model anymore.

    "All in a good cause" the OpenVMS Ambassador reminded himself "It's 
    not everyday Digital Get's a chance to speak to the Mid-Cities PC
    Users Group.  Just have to get everthing togeather for my talk 
    tonight."

    "Xeroxed handouts.  Check"
    "Alpha workstation quick guides. Check"
    "DECUS newsletters. Check"
    "Field Service PC Discount Coupons and Summer Specials. Check"
    "Three Altavista demo CDrom's. Make a note to do a drawing for these.
     Check.."
    "50 Altavista Key Fobs with http://www.altavista.digital.com/. Check"
    "Laptop, Zip Drive, Internet Insanity and tools, asprin, ginsing, 
     yohimbe, generic malox, and instant coffee... Just in case"

    Placing the box of literature on his shoulder the OpenVMS Ambassador
    shouldered his road-warrior's tool of choice "The DEC Ultra-Highnote
    Laptop" on his other side.  Calling the elevator with this left hand,
    the waited an eternity (that was actually only 5 minutes) for the
    elevator to arrive.  

    He pressed the Lobby key and leaned his heavy paper box against the 
    wood panneling of the elevator.  From the 12th Floor he noticed that
    it was exactly 5:00pm and was treated to the delightful "Rush" of all
    floors trying to exit at the same time.  Still holding his paper burden
    he was relieved that no furthur human cargo could be squeezed into the
    small 8x8 cubical past the 7th floor.

    This fact of course didn't stop the elevator from stopping on floors
    6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and the Lobby just in case someone wanted to get off
    and let some of the folks waiting to exit take their places.

    Once on the Lobby, the OpenVMS Ambassador followed the herd to 
    the underground parking elevator.  Two floors later he was in
    and wisked down to the third level.  Once outside the elevator's
    small waiting room, three stories deep in the Texas bedrock it
    struck him like a hot fist.  

    The 115 degree temperature  had mellowed to the delightfully cooler
    mid 90's by the time it had filtered through the underground complex. 
    The OpenVMS Ambassador's car was of course half an underground block 
    away from the elevator room.

    Struggling with his load (and sweat) The OpenVMS Ambassador got to the 
    car, opened the 1993 Blue Escort (America's least likely to be stolen
    automobile) Wagon's hatchback and deposited my Digital Payload. 

    Breathing Heavily and feeling the heat the consultant melted into his
    driver's side entrance, fished the keys from his pockets and gunned
    the engine into life.  As the car warmed up and the physics of gas
    compression began to cool his car interior and his body, he looked
    about vehical he had come to spend so much time in these days.

    Empty 20 ounce coke bottles, lottery tickets (you never know), and 8400
    brouchures festuned the front seat and floor.  Above the visor there 
    was two quality Digital Pens (still gift boxed), two leather reminder
    folios with the OpenVMS Logo and "Things to Do" pad inside, one 
    Digital wrist wallet, and the car insurance.

    Looking into the back seat and seeing the boxes of literature, systems,
    and network gear, the OpenVMS Ambassador was comforted that if he
    could locate an inverter for his cigarette lighter he would have more
    compute power than most fortune 1000 companies.  

    "There but for want of a single nail..." sighed the OpenVMS
    Ambassador...

    The Air Conditioning was now efficiently extracting the "Hot" Air from 
    the Escort's interior and the OpenVMS Ambassador backed out of his 
    parking space  to begin driving up into the 5:00pm Dallas Sunshine.

    Breaking out of the underground parking complex the mighty Escort's
    engine roared with life.. Until it hit the 115 degree heat baking 
    the concrete and steel of North Dallas.

    5:00pm traffic was at a standstill and the LBJ Freeway was a parking
    lot of overheated, angry, hot Texans impatiently inching their way
    twords home.

    The radio announcer came on to announce that Dallas and Tarrant 
    Counties were under a severe Thunderstorm Alert and two inches
    of rain had fallen in Ft Worth making the freeways there slick
    and almost unpassable.

    A Brief west bound trip on the Frontage road got the Ambassasdor
    on to the freeway in moving quickly twords the bad weather and
    his user group appointment at 7:00pm.  Skirting by the airport
    he looked briefly to notice that fully 500 cars were waiting 
    to enter DFW's north entrance.

    Slowly he crept past this traffic and triumphantly moved forward
    onto the Major East-West artery that lead twords Ft Worth.  Thirty
    minutes later at 6:15pm he pulled into the parking lot of the 
    Richland Hills Recreational Center, traditional gathering place
    of the MID-Cities PC user group.

    No Wind, No rain... Just hot...

    Lugging his two green plastic boxes on his trusty folding dolly,
    he moved the information into the rec center.  The staff Pointed
    the Ambassador at the right meeting room (upstairs) and one short
    elevator ride and he was where he was supposed to be at 7:00pm.

    The room was 60x60 with two folding tables up in front and 60some
    blue chairs set in neat rows.  Dragging one of the tables to the 
    back of the room he unloaded his paper...  Altavista Tunnel, Altavista
    Firewall, Altavista Forum, Altavista Net History, Altavista Search,
    Internet WEBservers, AlphaStations, DECUS / DFWLUG Newsletters, 
    and DEC SERVICEcenter coupons for 20% off...

    Setting the multi-media Ultra-Highnote up with battery powered speakers
    the OpenVMS Ambassador booted and readied the system for his
    presentation.  

    Counting his good gimmees, the consultant had 4 good DEC pens for the 
    Chairman and his staff, and three demo CDroms of the Altavista Forum 
    for a doorprize raffle and last but not least 50+ Altavista Key FOBs 
    with the Altavista webaddress on them!  

    The natives would be satisfied tonight he thought not a little bit
    smugly.

    Looking up from his preparations he noticed no one was arriving yet.

    The OpenVMS Ambassador went to the hallway and went back downstairs.
    Fear had passed through him like the time he was naked in front of 
    a DECUS audiance talking about Digital's commitment to MIPs and 
    Ultrix (or was that a dream?) when the terror left him, the Chairman 
    and Vice-Chair were just walking in the door.

    
    Greetings exchanged everyone went back upstairs and waited for the 
    membership to arrive.
    
    As the room began to fill up discussions took place about the 
    nasty weather that was brewing outside.  Storm Clouds and Thunderheads
    were mixing it up outside in response to the hot weather and GUlf's
    wet cooler air.
    
    The presentation began by talking about the Internet, How many had
    seen or used ALTAVISTA and breaking the ice.  Then we began to talk
    about the upcoming changes in the Internet -- Electronic commerce
    and what that ment for privacy issues.
    
    Couple of the more boisterous in the crowd spoke up about passing
    credit card info and personal data across a public network.
    
    Just like a good straight man this took us into Altavista Firewalls
    and Altavista Tunnels for encription of all data and packets between
    Internet users.
    
    Search engines, locating Java Applets, Links to their webpages and
    everything that 16 Gigabytes and 12 8400 CPUs in two systems can 
    map were the stars of the evening...
    
    At the break we raffled off the CDroms and gave out the Key FOBs
    and then someone made the announcement that the weather was getting 
    brutal.  As if to punctuate that, a loud clap of Thunder shook the 
    building.  
    
    Half the group grabbed literature and fled to the safety of their
    cars.. and Home...  The rest returned to their seats to hear 
    Digital's story on 'firewalls, hacking, and DEC's two decades of
    Internet history and evolution.
    
    At 10:00pm it was over.  City of Ft Worth wanted the OpenVMS Ambassador
    to come and talk about security with them, Couple business cards, folks 
    wanting firewalls or thinking that maybe consulting wasn't as expensive
    as they thought originally. The big social topic was who (note who
    not what!) was going to win Unix or WNT... The PC people were pulling 
    for WNT...
    
    The OpenVMS Ambassador was invited to Shoney's for a cup of coffee 
    (traditional bonding drink of hackers in Texas) an honor he couldn't 
    refuse without giving insult.
    
    Slice of pie, Big-Boy coffee and simple good hearted folks talking about
    identity evasion techniques, old computers, phreaking, Hacking, and how 
    much they really dislike IBM.  Just give me the simple pleasures of life
    with simple folks to relax and enjoy them with...
    
    The sky had cleared by the time the OpenVMS Ambassador started his 
    hour drive home from the middle of the storm. He thought about the 
    Fifty or Sixty people who would never have heard about Digital now 
    knew that DEC had the best Internet offerings in the industry.  
    
    It's a lot of work sometimes to get out, get organized, and spread 
    the word to customers and potiential customers... 
    
    It's always worth it...  And always appriciated by the customers.
    
    JW
    
    
    Some of the cynical may think that talking to a small user group
    is below them.  Some may question how much business can be won 
    by talking to End Users. All I know is that it's better to win
    one End User at a time then not talk to them at all...
    
    Talk to a User today, you'll be talking to a customer tommorow... 
    
    Do it for Digital...   
    
    John W. 7/96

    .0> It's always worth it...  And always appriciated by the customers.
    
        ... and by the folks in the home office, too, John.  
    
        That was a wonderful piece!
    
    I'm going to volunteer my coming Sunday afternoon to give the AltaVista
    pitch at a local university, and believe me I'm going to take a couple
    hints from the ol' Roving OpenVMS Ambassador.  I.e., yourself.
                                      

John-

Well done.  There are still some left who give what they have to offer to both 
help our clients, and at the same time, help Digital.  I know, I was at a 
smaller meeting (oh, just about two of my customers) preaching the gospel...

Nice note!!!

SteveS

    Re .0: Eloquent!  Keep pluggin' and we'll keep supportin'!

Entertaining as usual!

-- cheers,
   Guy

    Great note !!  Kinda' reminded me of the Peanuts cartoon where Snoopy
    is sitting on top of the dog house with his typewriter getting ready to
    write his next action novel.  It always starts out, "One dark and
    stormy night...."
    
    You know, maybe we are onto somthing here.  I mean, there are little
    nooks and crannys all over the country (and world) for that matter
    where people can gather to hear an orator talk about stuff.  I mean, it
    started with soapboxes in the square down next to the town hall didn't
    it along time ago?  
    
    So, why not put a package together in marketing.  Find one person in
    one office to deliver the talk and do it like John here did.  Go down
    to Barns and Noble some night and lead an Internet discussion right
    there in the store, next to the Starbucks cafe that are there.  C'mon
    down for a cup of java to talk about Altavista and how it works.  We'll
    even show you.
    
    Volunteer to teach high school students about the Internet so they can
    use our products (and secretly promote them!!) when they go to college
    and have to find all kinds of information in support of their studies.
    
    Gee maybe we're onto something here....
    
    What do you people think?
    
    Mav

.5>>
Gee maybe we're onto something here....
    
What do you people think?
<<    

Thats called marketing.  As far as I can tell we don't do that.  Never have.  
Our 'marketing' is nothing more than sales.  And apparently it hasn't been 
enough of that either.

Brad

    Without this kind of work going on quietly by many during these last
    couple of years, there wouldn't still be a Digital. Our continued
    existence will be a measure of their success and not of their
    management.