From: ggr@corowa.acci.com.au (Greg Rose)
Subject: Re: Are we all April Fools?
Keywords: auug, name, president's report
Organization: Australian Computing and Communications Institute
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 10:42:45 GMT

Hi there. I'm baacckkk...

And I'm depressed to hear the tone of Pat's president's letter in the
recent AUUGN, as much as the tone of Bernd's reply to it.

Unfortunately, I don't know what led up to these words (not being the
sort of thing the New York Times prints, you know). (On second
thoughts, maybe I am fortunate that I don't know the lead up...)
Anyway, both of the aforementioned tomes read a lot like the contents
of a standard flame war in any newsgroup.

So reading this gives me an opportunity to make completely unwarranted
assumptions about what people have been doing and thinking while I've
been away, and to use that as a vehicle to give my own thoughts on
whatever the subject is that we've been talking about...

In article <1992Apr12.133451.12877@metapro.DIALix.oz.au> bernie@metapro.DIALix.oz.au (Bernd Felsche) writes:
>... expounded the virtues ...
>... defending an "attack" ...
>The President's wording ...

These are fighting words, and I like to think that Bernd and Pat are
on the same side. The problem with carrying on discussions like that
via written words (especially public ones) is that the bandwidth is
not nearly high enough to carry the non-vocal part, and so meaning can
be lost.

What I'm trying to say is, let's calm down and solve the problem,
rather than yelling at each other.

>Although we all appreciate the past efforts of the
>President, I'm sure that I'm not alone in believing that
>some of these efforts have to say the least been misguided.

Am I alone in saying that I think most of the efforts have not been
misguided? Probably. However, the real question which is begged by the
word "misguided" is: "What were these efforts intended to acheive?"

Now I get to state my position. I believe that there are two distinct
communities being served by AUUG, namely the predominantly technical
one, and the less technical, more marketing oriented one. There is
also one group not really being served by AUUG at all, namely the
blissfully ignorant ones who outnumber both of the other classes by a
large factor, and who are commonly called USERS, for whom the group
nominally exists; neither technocrats nor vendors.

One problem is that these communities *should not be distinct*, at least
not to the extent that they currently are.

Another problem is that the first community had a monopoly on the
group for a long time. Having a monopoly and deserving one are not the
same thing at all.

A third problem is that the *real* users of Unix out there are not
being served by AUUG at all. But let me hasten to add that in my
opinion they shouldn't be! If the operating system becomes visible
enough to them that they need to have a user's group, it has failed.
By this metric, though, most operating systems fail, and some versions
of Unix more than others. So I don't actually consider this to be a
problem.

There are at least three potential solutions to the community-split
problem. 
  1. Continue to service the founding community
  2. Change to servicing the newer community
  3. Attempt to get the communities to work together

1 and 2 each lead rapidly to a second AUUG-like body forming, vis. the
USENIX/UniForum split in the states. This is viewed by many, including
most of the participants of both of those organisations, to be
counterproductive, but now irreconcilable.  (Actually, if the truth be
known, I don't think option 2 leads to two organisations, because I
think the technocrats are collectively too unmotivated, whereas the
money-oriented people have a fairly obvious motivation.) 

In particular, when I preceded Pat in her current role, I felt that a
split in the group was unacceptable. I still think so. Some of the
current directions of AUUG are my doing. 

>The President is apparently not au fait with how marketing
>works, ...

I'm sorry to break my own rules, but I had to laugh at this. Pat is
Asia Pacific Marketing Director for Amdahl. Before that for Pyramid.

>       ... otherwise the correlation between vendor influence
>(however subtle that may be) and the image of the "unbiased"
>associations which are supported by the vendors would have
>been apparent.

>When a notionally independent, respected user group gains a
>high profile, the vendors associated with it are illuminated
>by the light, and they can claim association/support of the
>particular group. This is not a bad thing for the user
>group, or for the vendor, but the user group must be aware
>that it adds to the vendor's marketing leverage, and must
>take care not to increase this leverage beyond its real
>significance.

I don't understand the comment without context, but I really don't
think that it is *possible* for a vendor to increase the leverage
beyond its real significance. If they contribute, they contribute. The
more they contribute, the better for them, if everything is done
right. *Bias* on the part of AUUG is unacceptable, but I have seen
neither evidence nor accusations to that effect. If a vendor tries to
say things that aren't true, there are mechanisms for stopping them
saying that. Not the least of which is negative market reaction. Phone
your local vendor salesperson and tell them that you didn't like them
making false statements, and since the hardware and operating system are
now commodity items, you'll buy your next one somewhere else. Hang up
loudly.

>I'm not saying that any of the vendors who support AUUG are
>"exploiting" it.

A pity really; we don't appear to have a valid target.

>Let's take a trip back in time and look at AUUG say 5 years back:
>
>AUUG was an independent (ok Softway(?) and Labtam were
>around, but didn't push AUUG to the forefront) user group
>which drew respect from around the globe. The "problem", as
>the vendors probably saw it, was that AUUG was "only"
>respected by the technocracy, and was largely unheard of by
>the people spending money. Needless to say, those were the
>times when suits had to be in bad taste to be "in".
>
>Enough nostalgia.

Again, I don't get what you are trying to say here. Softway and Labtam
were involved because they wanted to be, and I for one never wore a
suit that was in bad taste. Softway never tried to push its own barrow
(very much anyway), but don't mistake that for a lack of marketing
intent. It was a very direct statement of how Softway wanted to be
perceived. Of course I can't speak for Labtam, but would Softway have
a bunch of Labtam X terminals if we didn't know the people involved
through AUUG?

>If I recall the infamous posting from which the President
>quotes selectively, it drew attention to the change in focus
>of the group. The trend is now for non-technical people to
>join (have we run out of geeks already?) the group for
>technical advice which is probably beyond their grasp.

Yes, we have run out of geeks. They just aren't being born anymore.
Unix (qua Unix) is boring.

The non-techs also have a habit of being prepared to pay for advice
given in any quantity. Do you want to be appreciated, or paid? (I vote
for *both*.)

>AUUG provides a channel by which the vendors can efficiently
>feed "information" to prospective clients. Hence AUUG
>becomes an extension of the marketing arm of the vendor.

There is information, and there is information. If the information is
useful, then it should be fed through to the prospective clients,
often known as "members". This is the correct behaviour. If the
occasional piece of virtual information slips through, it is a pity.
If more than an occasional piece slips through, then I believe it is a
direct result of the fact that the submission or whatever was not
adequately vetted.

[The term "virtual information" is Copyright C 1992 Greg Rose.]

This IS a REAL PROBLEM. AUUG simply (Hah!) needs more people to put the
effort into making it work right, by filtering out this stuff.

>I'm sure that we'd all like for AUUG to maintain its
>credibility, but as I see it, we're trading credibility for
>size. Bigger is not necessarily better.

The market, er, sorry, the number of technocrats and businesspeople
interested in things related to Unix other than Unix itself
is increasing dramatically. If AUUG doesn't grow apace I think it is
trivial to demonstrate that it is not doing what its constitution says
it should be. Once, it was. Therefore, not bigger implies not better,
and better implies bigger. I don't enjoy this logic personally, as I
too miss the old days of sleeping in residential colleges vacated for
the holidays.

>I think it's preferable for AUUG to go back to discussing
>things nobody else understands and shrink in size, than to
>grow into a marketing front for vendors which provides very
>little useful information to the users.

I am quite sure that we can't go back. Anyway, the summer meeting
program is starting to cater to just these atavistic tendencies I find
in myself. And we can go to more than one each year! Or we can take a
leaf from the USENIX book and start to specialise the subjects a bit
more and try out specialised meetings.

I don't know about last year, but in other times past we often had
trouble filling the technical program with technical papers. Lowering
the standards allows virtual information to slip in. Again, submit
more papers, and the standard goes up. I'm writing three abstracts
now, and I didn't touch the Unix kernel for a whole 14 months.
I didn't touch the AIX kernel either :-)

                          -- ** --

There is also the possibility that AUUG has outlived its usefulness
entirely, and may as well give up now. I know who would lose from such
a course of action.

Anyway, enough from me. It's nice to be back in Oz, and I look forward
to seeing many of you at AUUG'92 (including the Good Witch from the
North :-)

regards,
Greg.
--
Greg Rose                 Australian Computing and Communications Institute
ggr@acci.com.au                                              +61 3 282 2517