CeBIT 2009: 5th day - The Morning

Okay … it was a wise decision to make an bahn.comfort reserveration yesterday evening for the train today. The train is really full. Only a few places free …. people travelling for weekend trips meet long distance commuters meets CeBIT travel. So people are standing everywhere …. the restaurant car was filled with people unable to find seats elsewhere. I just got a coffee from there because the coffee guy won´t make it through such masses of people. In my typology of CeBIT visitors at my booth, i want to write about an additional class after the “Rampants” (those trying to explain, that ZFS is a bad idea, because it´s a rampant layering violation) and the “Gadget Opposums” (collecting everything not nailed or glued to the booth, i assume they would put a coffee mug with still hot coffee in it in their bags when you don´t look at it for a few seconds). Today i want to talk about a really annoying appearance on the CeBIT: I call this class of people “Divertors”. You have people at the booth you try to explain parts of the system. As they know not so much about Solaris, you have to proceed with a didactic concept, as you can´t tell them “ZFS is a self-validating Merkle-Tree with a redirect-on-write to ensure data validity and allocated space on a least loaded strategy. The cache is self-optimizing in regard of MRU and MFU”. You have to do it differently. It´s like teaching. The problem: You have just a few minutes to make your point. And then there comes the Divertor. He stands by, waits a moment and ask a question. The Type 1 divertor is just impolite and con´t wait until you closed the discussion with the other guests. The Type 2 divertor is a guy just wants to show how much he or she (mostly he, i didn´t saw a female type 2 divertor so gar) knows and ask you question, it matches to the topic but it´s like discussing about airline meals and then someone asks you questions about the Auto-Throttle function of Flight Management System and why the 737 uses only the left radio altimeter for the throttle control. It completely destroys the didactic concept, as you have to jump on a different level, your first guest understand nothing. Such questions doesn´t help anyone: Not the first guest, as he understand just “Train Station”, the divertor just get a precise, short and answer and the presentor at the pod just thinks “Man, you just had to wait an additional minute, and i would have a little more time to answer your question….” or “Yeah, i´m know you are sooooo coool”. By the way: There are two additional subclasses: The super divertor. This is someone from the competition using questions at the booth about the system he learnt from their competitive beat sheet (seldom, as this can lead to a mutual assurred destruction situation and is just bad style in any case). And even worse is the “Divertor with Girlfriend”, asking questions just show his girlfriend that he is better than the people at the booth. This is my fourth CeBIT at Sun and twice i was a inch away of saying “Okay, let´s stop this dick length competition. I know that you are soooooo cool. “. Just to make it clear …. Divertors are seldom … almost all visitors are polite, really interested and don´t have a dick length complex ;) It is just a promille of a promille. But you remember them because of their behaviour and the fact that they are seldom ;) Okay …. We just passed the Autobahn 2 … so just a few minutes to the train station of the Hannover fairground. As usual: See you at CeBIT 2009.