I think this is a bit of a different issue really. On a booth, its
unlikely that you will always have available an "official spokesperson"
unless there are very many of them. Some shows might have press people
there to talk to others don't. We didn't see any press at NEA but there
were press people at DLS. It won't always be predictable either. At LUG
radio, no press but Mark Shuttleworth came up to the booth to talk about
education and FLOSS. I think proven expertise in the target market is
more important than being a project lead when dealing directly with
customers. The best person to sell OOo to a bunch of lawyers is a
lawyer, to teachers a teacher etc. If the show is a sales opportunity
its different from a press conference.
What I'm saying here is that if people talk to the press and thus
voluntarily or involuntarily become official OpenOffice.org
representatives, they should be very careful about what they are
saying. There unfortunately have been occasions (which I won't
explain because I don't want to do finger pointing) where people
got "too excited" about getting the opportunity to talk to the
press that they did not present the official OpenOffice.org view
and the reality, but their desired state/strategy.
People can express their own opinions wherever they want, but
I believe it is not good if these opinions appear as the
"OpenOffice.org opinions". This becomes in particular dangerous
if self-elected tiles are included in those articles.
The thing about NEA is that I did fly from Europe to LA and I did pay
all the expenses because education is important. Ok, Sun didn't think so
and that's fine, but if people can prove expertise in the focussed
market and they can raise their own funding it seems rather silly to say
it can't be done because it wasn't on a planned list. Again back to the
fundamental principle. Will it help promote OOo?
I personally don't mind privately sponsored activities as long
as the project benefits (depending on whatever the project believes
is beneficial), does not get misused/exploited and does represent
OpenOffice.org correctly. It's like saying Sun, IBM, HP and Microsoft
are partners (BTW, I'm not referring to any real person or company
here) when in fact, "your" company only knows some people at those
companies. It's not the best analogy, but I just think whoever
decides to represent OpenOffice.org has to follow some guidelines,
otherwise they should have a booth for their company or product
XYZ.
All the best,
Erwin
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