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I provided this feedback to a small software / consulting company.  I've eliminated the company and product names.

1. Marketing events I attended
2. Developer event impressions
3. Web seminar impressions
4. Selling the open source philosophy
5. General impressions

1.  The Company's marketing events I have attended:

• Developer Event: February, 2001

• Web Seminars: 3 in February and March, 2001

2. Developer event impression

• Preaching the choir. On the other hand I think you need to preach to the choir. I think you need to give The Product developers extra care.

• There could have been 100 folks in the room invited via contacts with open source fanatics, web developers, independent developers, and college folks.  The message is very appealing.  More people need to hear it.

• I think the presenters could have managed a whole roomful of cranky, cynical, and skeptical developers.

3. Webex seminars impression

• Works pretty well.

• It is strange not to have a chance to speak. The best Webex event I've attended was with a salesman and 2 other folks. The salesman demonstrated his product while we had a conversation. Even then, one other person couldn't get Webex through his company's firewall.

• I am used to Gartner and Meta conference calls: They send you the presentation beforehand, talk fast for an hour and then poll for verbal questions for 30 minutes.

• I like the question breaks.

• It seemed efficient but impersonal.

• I like getting links and Q&A via email but having the slides would be nice too.

• I like the low-key presentation but there is a charisma gap.

• Seems like they are reaching a very small audience.

• I don't know how you are publicizing these other than through the The Company's site and email alerts.

4. Selling the open source philosophy

Explaining open source philosophy, GNU and GPL licenses seems like a chore. It's counterintuitive to most business folks. The Company folks seem to understand it much better than the average corporate guy. For example, you can't define it as an "opportunity to fork" and be well understood. Seems like a fork would divide the developer community. Seems like you have to answer these questions again and again.

• Do I own the software you code for me? Do I have to give it all away? Do I have to give some of it away?  Will you give it away?

• Will the code you develop for me benefit my competitors?

• How much will I save on licenses over The Company's competitors?

• Can you give me some examples of The Product's enhancements contributed by the community and by companies like mine?

• How dependant am I on the developer community: like Open source Developer A or Open source Developer B?   Is the community growing?  If they fork, am I over a barrel?

• How much open source am I using now? (The Company's seminars did give some examples of this but we might have already standardized on IIS.)

• Comparing open source to the American Way (see the  ZDNet article) - I think it's natural for most business folks to agree with Microsoft. "We'll give you the code," works better.

5. General impressions

• I don't think The Company is selling its most valuable asset, the engineers.  Your engineers are attracted by The Founder's vision, expertise, reputation, and respect for great engineering. They are given rigorous training.  These engineers could produce great systems in any technical environment, open or closed.

• The engineers seem young and idealistic (this is good) but seem more credible on tech issues than on business issues.  I don't mean that they are not credible it's just that technology is more "their thing."

• Making money via services: License costs are significant but customization and integration costs may be 4 times the license costs. It's frustrating that this issue keeps popping up. The Company is just a custom software house that uses great open source tools and industry standard proprietary products.

• When someone calls Gartner or Meta Group what do they say about The Company?

• When the contracting folks who manage the RFX process perform a vendor search and a financial viability check, do they find The Company and if so, what do they find?

• How ready is The Company to scale? That is, how much should you market beyond word of mouth?

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