DRG Summit-January 16, 1996
"Power Evangelism" and "Relationship Evangelism"
Presented by James Plamondon and Marshall Goldberg
Tape3(VT#33l3.O3)
[transcript of JAMES PLAMONDON speaking]
"Schmoozing is a very important part of an evangelist's job, and the
better you are at it. the better, because everybody who meets you
should think - you know. OK, I hate Microsoft like everybody else, I'm
a good member of the Computing Society, I hate Microsoft, that's what
you have to do to get in"
"I, for example, was once a Macintosh developer .. Well, I left the
Macintosh world and started doing Windows stuff and became this
notorious heretic, OK. But on the other hand, I was just such a hell
of a nice guy-you know, you guys know that's not true, but they
didn't"
"At enemy conferences you gather intelligence. You go to the enemy
sessions, see what they're saying, talk to people, be nice. Just be
super nice. You never say anything rude; never, never, never. Stand up
at the microphone at an enemy conference and say, "Excuse me, you're
full of shit," you know"
"it's better to get somebody.. .some shill to go up and ask the
question for you .. So at independent conferences, or rather those
controlled by the enemy vendor, just gather information. At
independent conferences, subvert them"
'But nonetheless, I mean, Windows 95 programming for Mac developers on
the conference agenda at the Macworld Expo-I mean, you couldn't pay
enough to get that. And all it cost me was some free software, and her
husband had had a stroke and I sent her some articles about recent
therapy and research in strokes .. I was about to fax it to her, and I
said, "Wait a minute. This is, like, totally scummy. I know I'm doing
this for a purpose!"'
'DIFFERENT SPEAKER: I go back to my former question. How do your-sleep
at night?'
"I mean, what can I say? I'm just too nice of...OK. So you want to
love those conferences to death. i've killed at least two Mac
conferences .. I managed to make it.their last conference .. Oh, well.
One less channel of communication that Apple can use to reach its
developers .. . I'm working on two other Mac conferences now"
"There's lot's of independent programming journals. You want to
infiltrate those .. The ones that we control, you use"
"
So that's how you use journals that we control. The ones that third
parties control, like the WinTech Journal, you want to infiltate ..
and then make sure that things go your way"
"Channels of information. There's Lots of them. There's online forums,
the Usenet groups .. There was a session going on across the hail here
about how to be a good spokes-creature for Microsoft on the Internet"
"and don't sound arrogant. Microsoft people have this.. .It is going
to be presumed that you're an arrogant asshole until you prove
otherwise. So be nice and polite on email"
"consultants are really important. Consultants are independent
evangelists. They're people who are out there doing our job for us, or
doing somebody else's job against us, without even being paid for it.
We don't even have to pay 'em
"ll. Sucking up to consultants pays off very well"
"They also have the patina of objectivity: this very thin layer, they
can say, I don't work for Microsoft, I'm not just spouting the
Microsoft party line, but...here's the Microsoft party line, OK? So, a
very thin appearance of objectivity"
"Email is discoverable .. you might as well send a stamped, self-
addressed copy to the Justice Department every time you send an email"
"I have, still, on. ..in recorded, every email that was ever sent to
me. Not to groups that I'm a member of, but that was actually
addressed to me, and every email that I've ever sent out"
[switches to MARSHALL GOLDBERG:]
"when a company is really not doing right by Microsoft, I make certain
that everyone in Microsoft feels the same way. For example, I'm having
a problem-I'll mention the company, we're all DRG - with Peoplesoft.
Peoplesoft continually flips what we call NT sales to UNIX .. And
somehow the field doesn't get it, and they keep on introducing
Peoplesoft to accounts .. Well, I'll tell you, Peoplesoft doesn't feel
very loved by me"
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