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> Also, SME's are usually more than willing to talk about their designs. Its
> merely a matter of approaching them properly and manipulating them into giving
> you what you want. Handing out chocolate and dancing around their offices might
> be fine to warm them up. But eventually, they need to see that you're giving
> them more than just chocolate.
Personally, I avoid the chocolate-bearing approach. If you bring food
in, you risk establishing a relation in which SMEs expect to be
placated, and this isn't the sort of relation I want to establish with
the geeks. To me, it either implies that you are there to cater to their
whims, or that you regard them as children with an oral fixation that
allows them to be easily manipulated. Either way, I don't think it
builds mutual respect.
Anyway, at the average office, enough people bring in goodies for
everyone that it isn't likely to have the desired effect. I've done it
myself - but as a reciprocal gesture rather than as an effort to curry
favor.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com
"Ordinary people...are nothing without the ordinary truth, nothing at
all. They die without it: without innocence or candour. Indeed the very
great majority kill themselves long long before their time. Live as
children; grow pale as adolescents; show a flash of life in love; die in
their twenties and join the poor creatures that creep angry and restless
about the earth."
-Patrick O'Brian, "H.M.S. Surprise"
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