links for 2007-09-16

Review: Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers

An important film. Watch it. Share it.

Sep 12, 2007 by Aaron Fulkerson photo of 'Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers'

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers

★★★★☆ Private contractors are getting rich while everybody else is suffering: This is the point director Robert Greenwald makes — passionately — in this 2006 documentary. Using whistleblower testimony, firsthand accounts, financial records and classified documents, Greenwald levels charges of greed, corruption and incompetence against private contractors and shows the subsequent devastating effect on Americans and Iraqis.

I love my girls and SDSIC "Bullseye"

Tara and Ashby

 

Ashby and me

 

I found these photos on Tara’s blog. While posting these Tara suggested I should also mention the fabulous dinner she made tonight. Curried lentils. Fantastic.

 

I got home late this evening after presenting at the San Diego Industry Software Council’s “Bullseye” event. The organizer was shocked to learn that my scruffy looking ass was the presenter for the event. The reaction when he learned this was priceless. Dude, I had pants on! He proceeded to go out of his way to convince me that this was a serious event and the panelists were serious “C-level” executives for large corporations. By the end of my presentation he was sufficiently pleased 🙂

 

This was one of those events where you’re to pitch to the panel and audience and have them shred you afterwards. It wasn’t much of a shredding. I did get some good advice about providing more specific examples. It’s a difficult place to be in when you have no idea who the audience is and we don’t “pitch” to sell our software. The customers come to us. Anyway my presentation was super generic and diluted to suit a wide audience, which made it less satisfying than it could have been. The concept of open source was lost on two of the panelists. “But you’re leaving money on the table!” “I can understand seat licenses, but this makes no sense.” The other two panelist were insightful and very interested in what we’re doing. The audience was pretty receptive too and offered some positive feedback.

 

A final note about today, we had 780 downloads. Wow. We’re growing. We didn’t even get any press. Some of the folks at this event asked how we’re growing so rapidly and doing so well with no advertising or PR budget. After joking about having no clue I asserted we’re doing this by:

 

  1. having a great product
  2. having an open and honest conversation with anyone interested
  3. building an authentic community for our users

What else could it be?