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Toy Penguins and Male Egos Drove Linux Acceptance
An anonymous reader writes "Germany's local and city councils have been pioneering the migration from Windows to Linux. Now, one of the IT staff behind one move has revealed how they persuaded workers to accept the changes. Stuffed toy penguins and Linux t-shirts helped to create an open-source love-in at the council offices, and they got a senior chairwoman to demonstrate the new system to the troops. Male ego stopped anyone claiming that Linux was difficult to use, once they'd seen that the 'weaker sex' could master it :)"
This is hardly new... all it has ever taken to get a guy to do something is say something like "oh, if it's too heavy for you I can ask someone else"
'cept for those of us who learned the game and call the bluff with "sure, go right ahead"
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
This sounds suspiciously like how the world of commercial software works :o
...is to know your audience. Seems like the folks that put this together did.
To rework a famous old saying, no-one ever went broke overestimating the impact of appealing to the male ego.
That's brilliant marketing to use a female rep to demo a product to a bunch of men.
A lot of companies would do well to follow that example, I think.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
The toys made it fun, but the coders made it work. I think marketing droids are also to blame for overhyping linux to some extent during the dot com boom and causing a lot of companies who had good products to die young because they thought they were bigger than life.
Hammer of Truth
Tux toys & t-shirts sound trivial, but they loosen people up about something that a lot of non-tech types think is "hard". Setting up the "sexist" argument ("Even the women can use this OS") is even appropriate if that's what it takes to make decision-makers come around.
<OFFTOPIC>
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
And people wonder where sexism in technology comes from.
Using it to your advantage is not the same thing as working to eliminate it.
I should probably submit this anonymously*, but what the heck.
I don't know if it is in our genes, or if it's a product of our environment, but male ego resulting from male dominance even affects me a ton.
I was running on a treadmill earlier this week, and there was a girl who was running on one next to me at the same time, at roughly the same speed. There was _no_ way I was going to let myself stop before she did--because she was a girl. And I recognized this as I was running.
Seems kind of silly, I know, but that's what was in my head.
*I've heard that posting anonymously at slashdot isn't really, so what's the difference?
...and damned good marketing too.
Somehow it leaves me feeling a little uneasy, though. I bet I'd be influenced by the same or similar tactics, even though I've read this article. It leaves my ego a bit worse for the wear to know that I (hell, we!) am so easily swayed by savvy marketing techniques.
Example: even if janet jackson winds up paying fines for her Super Bowl stunt, I'll bet she gets exactly what she intended in terms of sales and publicity. The people she pissed off were never her customers anyway.
Oddly enough, I recently saw this in Doctorow's "East Coast Tribe", but this was something I learned when I first worked in an IT department.
It doesn't matter if your systems are uber-fast. It doesn't matter if they have a low error rate. It doesn't matter if they are made to be user friendly.
If the users of those systems perceive they are slow, inefficient, hard to use, great, best machines ever - whatever they percieve, that is the reality.
So a good IT staff does two things:
1. Work on their C. I. A. pieces.
2. Work to help the users percieve their systems as being C. I. A. good.
Let's face it - this is why Microsoft is on 90-odd% of all desktop systems out there: people percieve their systems as working, as easy to use, and that everything else is inferior whether that is true or not.
Once you convince them that a Linux or Mac desktop works just as well - if not faster and more securely - on their desk as a Windows box, and that they can use the same kinds of applications, you're set.
I've had IT guys whom I respect greatly tell me they'd love to switch to "OS X", but don't want to because they fear the "learning curve". It's not a "noobie" issue at all - perception clouds everything.
And Brauner made the right calls. To those who had problems, he showed them how it was easy. To those who thought he was being mean, he displayed himself as a "fun guy" with shirts and toys. To those who thought the system was "hard" he showed a secretary doing her job with ease - the person that all my programming teachers taught me to program interface for, since "if a secretary can run it, anybody can".
Excellent work on his part for recognizing that the human element is as important as the technical one at times.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I can just see the marketing people on the other side *cough* those convicted monopolists, remember them ? the guys who claim the GPL should be stamped out ? *cough* making hay with this.. ?
"Ooh, we don't manipulate you", they'll coo. "We just give you a product that you know and is easy to use". And heck, if that doesn't work, they'll just add a whopping discount on top of it to seal the bargain.
Maybe I'm just egotistic myself, but if I heard that I had been manipulated into something I wasn't sure about, and if I heard about it later on (with a "ha ha ha. owned!" comment, to boot), I'd be quite wary of the next thing that particular guy tried to foist on me.
Which brings me to the question.. does OSS really need marketshare like this ? It's just me, probably, but I'd prefer people make an informed choice rather than go "hey, why don't we use this because we don't want to be outdone/look foolish". If you can convince people to install it that easily, they'll just as easily be swayed by the next marketing gimmick, and which side (OSS or the other guys) have more marketing muscle ?
when I'm out running along a well used path in my town, there is no fucking way I can live with a woman running infront of me. At times this put me close to a heart-attack. But I have all the more fun because this kind of stuff. Same thing, when I try to overtake someone who is barely slower than me. heh.
Man, this is oart of the fun of life! As long as you realize, that your life does not depend on being cooler/stronger/faster/whatever I consider it good-natured fun. After all, where would be in technology without some good ol' testosterone-driven competition?
plus, women have some fun --uhm, let's call them characteristics to laugh about
Despite all the claims of 'monopoly' scarcely anyone steps back and REALLY analyzes why open source hasn't taken hold. And the answer inevitably leads to little or no marketing. A good product that no one knows about won't be used.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
How about this approach... "Use the damned software!". Really, I dont know why people seem to think they should have complete freedom on a computer at work. The company owns the machine, and the company chooses the software... so long as the company involved the proper employees in evaluating which is the best software(s) to use... thats it, end of story. Employees really shouldnt have a choice one way or another.
Ever heard the phrase "you attract more flies with honey than vinegar?" Honestly, I'd rather work for someone who is respectful of my concerns and seeks to answer them (even in a devious way), than someone who just scoffs at them and says "Shut up and get back to work." Even the military, the only employer who can throw you in jail or have you shot for not doing what you're told, tends to be relatively light handed in how it encourages its members to use new systems.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
That's true, but part of the reason that Open source doesn't go in for marketing is that that's not the point. It's software to solve a specific problem, and if it solves other people's problems, so much the better. Marketing will potentially help the end users become aware of the software, but it really doesn't do the software any good or harm if people know about it or not.
Commercial software on the other hand, is simply to make money for companies. This is not a bad thing; simply the way the market works. The fact that it solves a problem is simply a means to an end. Marketing is definitely essential here, since it increases sales.
Most people are sheep. They follow the rules of society without thought and most of them wouldn't even realise they are following set rules.
Men and women have their roles to play, and any deviation is seen as weird and undesirable.
Wear a pink shirt and tell other males you don't like beer and football if want to see this in action.
Anyone watch that "The Apprentice" show.
Yeah. I've never seen anything more tragic and discouraging on television. The most amazing thing about that show is that it almost perfectly mirrors the modern workplace.
For that matter, so does Survivor: a group of people get together and decide who to ostracize. A fine example for society.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Don't blame the marketer for putting himself in the marketee's mindframe.
The sexist attitude exists in the males they're trying to convince. Not necessarily the marketer. The technique was actually trying to change this perception by preying on the mistaken attitude.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It seems that having a strong woman be an example is a good balance; the sexism is only implicit for those who are more conservative and therefore less likely to want to switch in the first place. As long as you don't run around the office shouting about how linux is so easy even a woman can use it.
A blog about stuff.
So the secret to acceptance of OSS is a stuffed penguin?
Yay, a penguin, it's cute. What does that have to do with the use of software? I'll tell you. It shows the intelligence of the people buying into this.
Look at what the software has to offer...Please!!!
It seems that most commercials and tv shows over-compensate for female equality. On the rare occasion that I catch a new prime-time "family" sitcom, the dad is usually a big idiot and the mom is the one who holds the home together. Especially in commercials when the wife will leave the man of the house in charge of dinner, and he doesn't know how to boil water or something. It's pretty lame. Personaly, I've found that this formula only works on The Simpsons, Family Guy, and maybe a couple of other, genuinly funny, shows.
That's right, The Simpsons can do no wrong.
Frankly, I don't want most hardware makers to be writing lots of Linux drivers. I want them to build their stuff to use documented protocols (USB/Firewire/IDE/etc.) correctly so that their hardware Just Works everywhere. That way, I can pick up a piece of new hardware and have it run without any obnoxious CD loading, file downloading or kernel module installation whatsoever.
That's the sort of ease-of-use we should be encouraging.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
She has won.
She was disappearing from the public radar.
She was loosing her celebrity status.
On Tuesday following the half time show she was:
on the cover of 8 different magazines at B&N
on the cover of a number of local papers
in the headlines on more magazines and papers
on every news cast
in various articles inside the various media formats
AND,
her name continues to be brought up in obscure places like slashdot.
comment directly in my journal
No, its not trying to change it, its trying to take advantage of it. Akin to the traditional Republican technique for gathering Southern White votes in America. Appeal to racism.
And how do you think this would rub those that do not have the same shortcomming? Such as women? or non-chauvanistic men?
It's photoshopped. If you zoom in on the "LINUX" on her panties, the color of the text is #FFFFFF. That doesn't happn in real life.
Mod "Overrated" instead of replying "I disagree with you," you coward.
Right, that's a good management style. Make unilateral, completely unpopular decisions with no effort to win people over or assuage their fears. Great management style. In general, having employees not hate management is a good thing. Especially since all it cost here was a couple of t-shirts and stuffed toys.
How about this approach... "Use the damned software!". Really, I dont know why people seem to think they should have complete freedom on a computer at work. The company owns the machine, and the company chooses the software... so long as the company involved the proper employees in evaluating which is the best software(s) to use... thats it, end of story. Employees really shouldnt have a choice one way or another.
Again, treating your employees like shit is a great way to kill morale and drive them away from the company. I'm assuming you're not a manager.
So instead, you get this boneheaded company in germany, that is now going to have a number of mail employee's that have no clue how to use the software, and thus loose productivity, because there ego refuses to let them be beat by a girl?!?!
Management wouldn't do it if they didn't think it was a good idea, and that's another issue. They were doing what they had to in order to overcome linux-phobias. And they did a great job.
Besides that point... does male ego really apply that much to intellectual persuits? I mean, do most people think men are better then women at using a computer because of genetics? I doubt the number is high.
Really? There's not a perception that males are better at computers than females? Because as it stands, 90+% of CS grads are male, for whatever reason. The old "no girls on /." joke is so old, yet true, that it's just taken for granted. Yes, many men are unwilling to admit a woman can do ANYTHING better than they can. And you'd be surprised, evidently, about their distribution - it's not all neanderthal plumbers, but doctors, lawyers, and computer engineers too.
To see a woman demonstrating software? I mean, I assume they didn't put her on the stage and say thinks like "Hey! *Even* women can go this!". It was a 'by example' thing. So the women and non-chauvanistic men would be offended...why?
The American record for the mile is 3:47.69; the women's record is 4:16.71. That is worse then the men's worldwide record of 1895.
There's plenty of thing men can do that women do more poorly, and plenty of things that women can do that men do more poorly.
OH MY FUCKING GOD
This post could have been from 1999.
OH MORE DRIVERS. OH EVERYONE USES WINDOWS!
You are a fucking GENIUS!
An appeal to racism (lacking an example, I assume you mean something like "the Blacks are taking all our money and jobs"?) is very different than what you are calling sexism here.
:-)
To put it differently, is this out-and-out sexism, or is it just marketing a stereotype?
A similar discussion took place here a few weeks ago when a woman accused salesmen of being sexist because she would be ignored in tech stores if her husband was present. The counterpoint was that the stereotype (as in learned behaviour by example, not discrimination) is that women are less interested and thus know less about technology and "geek toys".
I know two women who can use Linux. TWO.
As is mentioned in the adjacent post, if the product was marketed in a "Hey look! I can do this, and I'm a woman! A BLONDE woman, at that!" then that is sexism. But by having a woman carry out the demo as a professional it goes against the stereotype, the learned behaviour, and the message is all that much clearer. For those who don't have such a stereotype it is EXACTLY the same as having a man do the demo, except her voice probably doesn't carry quite as well
My 2 cents
The problem *really* is, most "marketing" is centered around lying or pushing around half-truths, so people hear only what they want to hear about a given new product.
If "marketing" really equated with "teaching people about the product", advertisements would point out all the pluses AND minuses.
Linux lacking "marketing" is probably partially because open source developers don't stand to benefit in the long run if everyone goes around heralding their unfinished work as the ultimate solution to a problem. Folks find out it's not, and then they're soured to the whole project. Developers, unlike businesses, are just concerned with building the best product they can build. Marketing is about generating *sales* and bringing in the maximum amount of *profit*. These aren't an integral part of the Linux requirements for existance.
That Sex sells...
Any chick no matter how ugly can get paid for sex, and any guy seeing any chick doing something nerdy/geeky, makes her automatically attractive in the mind, if not physically by definition.
I'm glad to see that a mighty superior all-powerful MS killer OS is getting people to make the switch by using squeek toys, scratch and sniff adds, and hot chicks in longerie. Yeah god forbid they try and get a larger user base by making the actual OS appeal to average non-techys UI desires and creating a more user friendly environment. Oh wait this is slashdot you don't care abotu those things here....
Ave Molech Setting
Yeah, and how did you find out about Google? I've certainly never seen an ad. Do they make those?
SIG: HUP
What is your record for the mile?
You are talking about the extremes there. How many women at your workplace can outrun you in the mile?
War is necrophilia.