Sometimes these bowls are half-empty; if you turn your back
a second they are full again.
Suits as Seldom as Spreadsheets
Calvinists Welcome but Probably as Rare as Suits
Richard Erickson's Paris Journal - Freelance Correspondent to the Paris Pages
All images copyright (c) 14 September 1995 Richard Erickson - used with permission
Paris-La Defense, Thursday, 14. September:- No Paris Pages readers
have written me to ask why the French, Parisians even, go to Apple
Expo.
Writing in a recent issue of 'Spiegel Special,' Umberto Eco
characterized Dos as 'Calvinistic' and suggested that Macintosh users
might be 'Catholics.' Nobody has ever suggested that the French might
be Calvinists; so that must be the reason nobody has asked. The
answer is clear to all.
Just the same, in the 30,000 square metres of exhibition space
located in the basement of the CNIT at La Defense, I closely observed
these particular French.
Except for Big Brother's Eye looking at you all over, there
isn't much decor, except for a few of these....things.
La Defense was created in an out-of-the-way place, a place in which
to put vertical office buildings that don't fit into the Paris that
everybody loves to visit - even though there are a couple of
'escapees' there. Right in the middle of this
zillions-of-cubic-metres of concrete, steel and glass is the CNIT
building, itself a three-footed arch of concrete; containing offices,
shops, restaurants, fnac, post office and conference center. It is
surrounded by tens of thousands of offices. Banks, insurance
companies, oil companies, and even computer companies. All full of
suits.
At four this afternoon, 'standing-room-only' was being approached in
CNIT's basement and there was hardly a suit to be seen. Ties, or
cravates as they are called here, were equally rare.
Serious crowd paying close attention to serious demo of 'art'
software; nicely conducted in 98% Californian English, 2% French.
No, these French, at this expo, both men and women, looked like
college un-graduates, aged 17 to 77. That they could get decent
threads downtown seemed not to matter a whit. Not Calvinists, I
thought; they care not - perhaps they were all unemployed or on
extra-early retirement. As I was mulling this over, I saw an elderly
man lugging an oversize box full of color-laser-printer on his way to
an escalator. A big-ticket item.
I started to notice patterns of people around the exhibitors' stands.
If the stand featured something to do with 'black-boxes' or
'home-office' software, the crowd would be from thin to single units
of people. Aha, I thought: it's Thursday and fairly nice outside;
day-off doctors in polo-shirts must be on the links whacking hard
little balls around the turf instead of looking for
'medical-practice' software that would enable them to cruise the
greens two days a week instead of one.
The only time of day you get this small of a crowd in line
for entry badges, is twenty minutes before closing time.
At the stands of exhibitors that featured 'creative' software - the
painting and drawing, the music notation, DTP, multimedia, video,
graphic database - in short, stands where software for doing creative
things was on display, the crowds were from large to huge. If the
exhibitor was running demonstrations the throngs could spill into the
passages between stands, where there was a constant murmur of
'Pardon,' 'Excusez,' as passersby bumped into standees who would give
way without taking their eyes from the demo screen.
This is well and good in these hard times of restructuring and
eternal high hopes for the next quarter, next year; heck, even
someday soon would be good enough. People want creative tools so they
can do something good for themselves. Just as individuals are going
online to get what they want instead of waiting for the conglomos to
spoon-feed it to them.
There is one curious aspect about this sort of expo. In addition to
exhibitors showing their products, there are also stands rented by
the retail dealers of these same products.
All year round they pay rent in some permanent location and conduct
their usual business with their usual price list. But gather them all
together under one roof at one time, where they pay an extra rent and
often hire extra staff, and suddenly they have some primitive urge to
compete with one another. Needless to say that these stands have
extra-eager throngs.
No matter how good and valuable creative tools are, if they cost 30
percent less, it almost pays one to go to the expo. It is even quite
catholic in a way.
So I guess the suits have jobs and somebody else buys their
spreadsheets in bulk for them. They have no need to go to this sort
of expo to choose, and buy.... their own creative tools. Maybe a
little 'restructuring' would change their minds.
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