OSCON Lowlights: greenplum Keynote
The sponsored keynote must always present a quandary for conference organizers: how much should a conference organizer charge to give a vendor the opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot while on stage?
Take the greenplum keynote that was just presented at OSCON 2006: greenplum probably forked over a large chunk of change to get that prime spot. Their cost of giving that keynote wasn't just limited to their sponsor fee, it included the costs of travel, time, preparation, etc. All told, it probably cost in the order of tens of thousands of dollars and what did they get for their trouble? Perhaps the very worst keynote I have seen in the last few years - the presentation was like blunt trauma to the head. It featured trite calls to "keep Open Source real" and to "keep Open Source dangerous", standard value-less vendor self-promotion, photos of scantily-clad siliconsilicone-enhanced women, humorlessly vulgar movie clips and so on. In short, empty calories - sugar water.
Don't get me wrong. I don't mind presentations that don't fit my value system - at least I have something to think about. I don't mind presentations that are even relatively incompetent (heck, I give enough of these myself). However, I do despise presentations that have absolutely no value.
Greenplum, don't offer platitudes or pitches. Figure out something that has real value before the next time you get on stage.
Anyone else sitting in the audience have similar concerns or a different view. I am rather angry right now - another view might be useful. :)
Update
The post generated a few interesting comments from other OSCON attendees - in particular, attendees from one sponsor's marketing team had never been to a Free Software/Open Source event before. The sponsor was mortified that the first thing that these people saw was the greenplum keynote.
Related posts
Posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 9:07
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.12 Responses to “OSCON Lowlights: greenplum Keynote”
Leave a Reply
Comments are moderated. I delete obvious SEO attempts and other content-free comments.
July 26th, 2006 at 9:44
Yeah, it sucked, as did the "making web 2.0 suck less" keynote. Maybe try "making keynotes suck less" next year?
July 26th, 2006 at 10:12
"Figure out something that has real value before the next time you get on stage."
This is good advice, Zak… that was a lot of why I tried to focus on the huge amounts of open code we're making available that helps solve scaling issues.
Tony — is there anything specific that sucked about my presentation? My goal was to try to be entertaining while talking about some important, but fairly prosaic, technologies that we're putting out there for free. I'm definitely open to suggestions.
July 26th, 2006 at 10:26
Zak, I'm very sorry that my speech offended you. My speech was genuine, and in fact tried to communicate aspects of the industry that I think are important, rather than spend time giving a pitch on our company.
The photo of the woman was meant to illustrate what lows the traditional IT industry sink to in getting peopel to attend. As opposed to shows like OSCON to attract people who really have passion for what they do. Apparently that passion resulted in a negative reaction from you. Again, my apologies that was not the intent.
July 26th, 2006 at 13:13
Hey Scott,
Thanks for stepping up to address my feedback.
The concern is that the session didn't offer compelling value to the audience (in my opinion) - the message is redundant to many of us at the conference, and wass likely to give people who aren't a part of the community a completely wrong impression about the Free Software and Open Source.
The presentation seemed like a poorly constructed attempt to gain the approval with the community by pretending to hold stereotypical community values.
If you were expressing your genuine enthusiasm for the community process, my sincere apologies. I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm.
I'll make you a deal - an Open Source type deal of no criticism without an offer to help improve the issue being discussed. You tell me what you want to say and I can round up help to refine the message, and an audience to test it on.
July 26th, 2006 at 15:05
Hi Anil,
My gripe has more to do with OSCON selecting your presentation as a keynote than the presentation itself. I thought the presentation was very well done from a stylistic point of view, but I felt the content was more suited for something at one of the exhibit hall presentations or perhaps one of the sessions in the business track.
The Six Apart platform you're pitching obviously has value to the open source community, but not everyone who's interested in open source is interested in Web 2.0, and I think keynotes should be things with a wider appeal. That's all.
July 26th, 2006 at 15:30
Zak, I'll definitely take you up on that offer. I'm glad we had the chance to talk face to face today. Thanks for finding me at the show. I have to fly back to the bay area today, but let's try to talk next week if you have some time.
July 26th, 2006 at 16:47
My main gripe with Scott's keynote was the concept of rock music as a clean, distruptive, dangerous force in society. It stopped being that probably when Elvis started wearing studded outfits, if you discount a couple years during the punk era.
July 27th, 2006 at 1:13
"not everyone who’s interested in open source is interested in Web 2.0, and I think keynotes should be things with a wider appeal. That’s all."
Totally fair, and hell, there's probably folks doing enterprise scaling stuff on the platform that are saying "why did you focus on web 2.0 crap when we're using this stuff to solve real problems?" I'll definitely take it under advisement — it's hard to squeeze a lot of ideas into 15 minutes!
July 27th, 2006 at 8:16
Web 2.0 is pretty relevant for OSCON (IMHO). However, I admit that I was busy grumpily writing this post, instead of paying close attention to Anil's presentation. :)
July 27th, 2006 at 8:26
Scott: Drop me a note at zak - @t - greant.com. I will be back in my office early next week.
July 28th, 2006 at 9:59
Zak,
Typo I think: silicone, not silicon.
Freudian slip?
Take care,
terry
July 28th, 2006 at 11:51
Hrm - quite right, fixed.
Silicone enhancements do lead to a very silicon-like look. ;)