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Watching a few video podcasts I found on iTunes advocating Linux and Drupal use, I cannot help thinking that if I did not already know about open source, I would not be convinced by some of the presentations.

At the risk of offending a few open source advocates, I believe some of them are hurting the cause more than helping it.

One of the videos I watched featured a teacher who talked about her use of Linux in the classroom. It seemed every time she tried to praise a feature of Linux, she ended up adding something that would make the unitiated raise an eyebrow. She mentioned cost savings over Microsoft proprietary software, but then she stated that her organization paid for Suse. She failed to mention how much, so the audience could not really gauge the amount of savings as an acquisition variable.

Then, as she presented some common software titles used on Linux, she immediately ruined the wow factor by describing the problems she had, jumping around to various web sites and forums that would help. So now the impression was that Linux still cost money but had more problems than Windows, and on top of that, users had to find their own solutions.

She mentioned a few Windows equivalent titles, but she did not appear confident enough, and even concluded by revealing that her laptop was dual Linux/WinXP boot. There was a chance to praise the ease of installation of Linux, but now she made it seem like it was too hard for her to figure it out, so someone else had to have done it for her.

To be fair, some may call this presentation fair and balanced, showing the pros and cons of Linux, but someone with just a bit more Linux knowledge could have easily blown the audiences away. Most of the problems the presenter mentioned were easily solvable, it would would have taken just a little more preparation before the presentation.

She did do an excellent plug for OpenOffice, though.

Another video introduced the installation and use of Drupal from an educational perspective. The presenter seemed condescendingly techie-cocky, and threw all kinds of terminology at the audience that was trying to keep up by taking notes on what even PHP meant. This knowledgeable gentleman told the audience to ask their web administrator about the whole PHP thing, and if the webmin did not know, then there were some serious problems. Hmm. Very encouraging. Not. Why even introduce techie requirements, instead of just focusing on the capabilities of Drupal?

The intention of the presentation was good, but it should have been more positive and user friendly. The presenter ended up "on the spot" Googling some of the answers to the audience's questions. On screen. Talking about being unprepared.

When the subject came to classroom management, he did mention Moodle, but it only confused the audience, who thought the reason Drupal was presented there was that it did have something to do with classroom management. There is an excellent book on the subject, Drupal for Education and E-learning by Bill Fitzgerald, detailing how Drupal can be used for education. There are also initiatives in integrating Drupal with Moodle, a logical choice, as Moodle already has all the functionality for a professional, scalable classroom management solution.

A lady asked about blogging, which the presenter confirmed Drupal could do, but all he really demonstrated in the entire video was how to create pages. So now all the audience knew was Drupal could do pages and blogging, and it needed PHP. Oh yeah, you did not need to do HTML, either. Basically, any portal/blogging site taht offers personal pages can do that. What is the incentive to use Drupal?

One of the most powerful features of Drupal, of course, is its expandability with modules. It was mentioned, but without wow factor examples.

Naturally, it would be unfair of me to expect all open source users to be cheerleaders for the "movement", and I have no intentions sitting on a high horse declaring that all open source users should be crafty salesmen. I am simply describing my observation that preparation, communication with the community for presentation (and yes, sales) pointers, and knowing and connecting with your audience will score you more wins whe speaking for the "cause".

While we are on the subject of speaking for the cause: Some of you videographers documenting DrupalCon, being tech-savvy enough, could you not have used a direct audio feed of the presenter's microphone from the mixer console, and a direct video feed or a screen recorder from the laptop? The in-camera microphone and videotaping (especially handheld) the projection screen solutions seem rather low-tech at a tech conference.