Last night was the IBM OpenPower Project event. And what an event!

It started with a gentile gathering in the lobby of the London Planetarium just after 7.00pm with free beer, juice, and decent canapés; duck rolls, chicken teriyaki, and some vegetable thing I ignored – because I’m a carnivore, not because they weren’t good. Handouts of the OpenPower systems were available, along with the obligatory IBM pens. Particularly useful to those of us that, despite taking our own, had left them in the (free!) cloakroom by accident.

At 8.00pm we were ushered into the planetarium dome for a five minute marketing spiel about OpenPower. However, given that the talk was just five minutes long, and featured none of the superlatives usually associated with events of this type, it felt positively charitable!

After a fantastic show (“Voyage to Infinity”, IIRC) there was a short talk on the issues about rendering and projecting films onto a dome of this type. Although the connection between IBM and the films was muted, the presentation was more informative and candid than I’ve come to expect. Top marks to the speaker. As a direct consequence I was (and am) inspired to look into creating my own planetarium dome and software!

We then returned to the foyer for more drinks and food. This time the food came in the form of mash, sausages, pizza, steak and kidney pie and salmon something or other. In all cases it was very good food, and no one I spoke to felt disappointed or hungry. The ubiquitous t-shirt was distributed on exit. But like the rest of the event, it was understated, and very non-showy. I prefer having nice t-shirts that I’ll wear, as opposed to the walking advertisements I usually get given.

IBM have won many brownie points for this evening. It was under publicised, and consequently under subscribed, but I hope this doesn’t stop them from putting on similar events in the capital. This was, IMO, is how all promotions should be. If people are there for the free beer, no amount of preaching is going to win them over, so forget the hard sell. If people are there for the beer and the company, they will make themselves known during the evening and engage in a 1-to-1 discussion with the appropriate representatives. And if you haven’t been preached to all evening, the attendees can spend more time talking about nice things… which usually involves the company (in this case, IBM) and what a good evening they’ve laid on.

Some people will even blog about it…