I keep a batch of pdfs on my personal laptop for reading when I'm disconnected or avoiding other things. I just added Seth Godin's "What Should Google Do" to the list (just so you understand the juxtaposition, the previous entry was chromatic and Michael Schwern's Automated Perl Testing tutorial).

I've only gone a few pages in, but a quick riff on Godin. He states that he wore his Google T-shirt out in public recently, and conversations were opened. A couple weeks ago when AZ and I were travelling, I had a similar experience. I was wearing a TShirt of the helixcommunity.org site, and first a coffee-server in Columbus asked me what it was "because he'd seen it somewhere". Then after we returned a canvasser at the grocery said "Hey, I know that! It pops up on my RealOne Player regularly.

Each time it opened a quick conversation about Open Source, what 'free' is rather than what "no cost" is, and so forth. And it reminded me that I need a better 'elevator pitch' to explain the difference.

Posted by esinclai at August 22, 2003 07:05 AM |