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

[Jessica McKellar]

Hi Asheesh,

Thanks for your thoughts on this!

Respectfully, I think you are jumping to a lot of conclusions. I'd prefer to
meet with Leah, hear about the program, what other events will be going on,
and how it's going to be marketed before deciding that it's a bad idea.

Additionally, if you don't trust Microsoft marketing to advertise our using
their rooms in a way we're okay with, then we shouldn't be using their rooms
at all (to be clear: I do trust them about this and would still like to use
MS Nerd space for the event, but if we're not all on board then we should
stop pursuing this resource now).

I haven't heard back about rooms for the 4th and 5th.

Other thoughts?

-Jessica

On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 9:58 PM, Asheesh Laroia <asheesh at asheesh.org> wrote:

> 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.
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