[c-nsp] [j-nsp] Network Liberation Movement???

[Omachonu Ogali]

How much is "buzz" worth? About the same as YouTube views. (In South Park
speak, "theoretical dollars").

If you can't convert *positive* buzz into revenue, your marketing efforts
will serve as nothing more than "brand awareness" campaigns.

By this point in the conversation, it should be obvious the buzz is turning
negative:
a) overtones of disinterest due to dubious marketing,
b) people biting the bait on what seems to be a month long viral campaign
that *still* has 15 more days to go before phase 2,
c) conversation shift from the mystery product, to debating whether the
marketing works -- and we still don't know what's being marketed other than
common sense ("You hate vendor lock-in, I hate vendor lock-in, let's be
friends")

For as to who...

As far as the campaign, any large, established networking vendor, would need
to undertake a dramatic shift in culture to promote a dual-vendor strategy
for customers to undertake while not angering their shareholders, and I
can't see that happening. (Cisco: haha, no; Foundry/Brocade: too busy
looking for a buyer of *existing assets* to risk a large change in
direction; Extreme: what?)

Next up are smaller networking vendors, who would benefit from a dual-vendor
strategy, because they're probably not in the door of large
enterprise/service provider networks to begin with. For them, I'd imagine
vendor lock-in is the holy grail, and an open strategy only works enough to
get them in the door, but shoots them in the foot because it makes them more
vulnerable to smaller, agile networking startups and migration utilities
from larger vendors (for the telecom heads amongst you, think about CLEC
in-fighting).

This leaves a network management software vendor. They would certain profit
from an open standard, which allows them access to manage formerly
"proprietary" networks, and manage different vendors' equipment. The hurdle
is to get manufacturers to adopt this standard... how do you do this
cheaply, other than work the end-user up into a frenzy?

So, what network management startup do we know, that's based out of Texas?

For some more fun:
$ curl
http://networkliberationmovement.net/wp-content/themes/nlm-micro/style.css
/*
Theme Name: Network Liberation Movement
Description: Microsite
Version: 1.0
Author: Michael Gilbert for RAPP
Author URI: http://www.rapp.com/
*/

oo

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 1:13 PM, christian koch <ck at sandcastl.es> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 10:35 AM, Chris Grundemann <cgrundemann at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 15:15, christian koch <ck at sandcastl.es> wrote:
>> > looks as if its working based on the activity in this thread...
>>
>> I think someone has to actually buy something, because of the chatter,
>> for it to be working...
>>
>
> what if there is nothing to buy? its clearly not a direct marketing
> initiative, they're trying to create some interest as to what this
> "movement" is going to be about
>
> my point is that it is successful because they are getting a response,
> people are talking about it, the initial poster alone exposed the site,
> which caused feedback... and is creating a buzz, that is the point...IMO
>
>
> -christian
>