[Events] Fwd: MS Nerd room reservation request for the Boston Python Workshop

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2011, Jessica McKellar wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> Here's Leah's initial response. It's cool that they'd like to integrate 
> this workshop into their women in technology program. No word yet on 
> availability for March 4th and 5th, but she proposed the week of 
> February 15th to discuss the whole concept further. That's later than 
> we'd like for nailing down our room situation, so I'll try to get an 
> answer on that sooner.

I thought about this a lot, and honestly, I am at least "weirded out" by 
Leah Brunson, a marketing manager at Microsoft, using our event to promote 
the Microsoft brand. Honestly, I feel more like "grossed out".

There's a slippery slope that we can embark upon, in terms of companies' 
brands being involved in these events. I end up frowning noticeably when I 
imagine us doing a co-branded event, "In collaboration with Microsoft", 
and then we're effectively just volunteering for Microsoft's marketing 
department. I don't want to be volunteering my time as free promotional 
work for a massive company with a reputation for promising to stomp out 
bottom-up creativity.

(Late last year, they promised to try to sic "law enforcement" against 
people who wrote their own software to work with Microsoft-branded harware 
they had purchased. See also 
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20021836-52.html . That earns some 
mega-frownies from me.)

I'm glad that Microsoft is trying to do some nice things for the tech 
community. I just find myself extremely anti-enthused about doing 
something co-branded. I can't quite tell if this is what we would do with 
Leah, but it feels that way.

I feel pretty unenthusiastic about Microsoft going around, handing out 
flyers about the "awesome ways they're making the tech world more diverse" 
and our event being listed there, when we put in oodles of hard work and 
what they did was lend us a room. That's what I mean by our work becoming 
a labor donation to Microsoft. If they say, "We lent a room to this cool 
project", that would be fine. I frankly don't trust Microsoft Marketing to 
be clear about the difference; I imagine that Microsoft Marketing will do 
their best to be not-very-truthful to make it look like they did more work 
than they did.

Also, did she answer the question about the room reservation? We do have 
to nail that down soon.

That's my feelings. I wonder what you all think. I don't want to be 
obtuse, or to dominate the conversation, so I definitely want to hear how 
you all feel!

There's other work to do on this cool event we're going to run. I'll 
discuss that in a separate thread.

-- Asheesh.

-- 
Q:	Why did the WASP cross the road?
A:	To get to the middle.