[free-sklyarov] Sat. Protest (flyers passed out)

[Greg Broiles]

At 02:23 PM 7/27/2001 -0700, roylo wrote:
>Hi, All
>I get got back from San Jose State U and De Anze
>This is basicly what happen:
>1.) Copying in Kinko's was very expansive
>2.) Most San Jose State U student aren't really interest in this
>3.) Almost over 95% of the people don't even know who is Dmitry
>     (one guy thought I was passing out "Free Donut" flyers instead "Free 
> Dmitry)
>4.) De Anze is closed today
>
>Anyway, I got around 500 flyers left; anyone want to help me to pass them 
>out in Stanford???
>I will be taking off to Stanford in an hour. So if you live in Bay and 
>want to help me out. (And happen to see this e-mail before 3:30pm PST)

I don't know what your flyer-passing methodology is - but when I was in 
school (especially the years I was at a big public university), I learned 
very quickly that the easiest way to escape the attention-spam of flyer 
distributors was to avoid *any* engagement with them - no eye contact, no 
response to anything they said - and they'd move on to someone else quickly.

I would occasionally stop and look at interesting displays ( = posters, 
exhibits) and then take flyers if I wanted to learn more about whatever it 
was that piqued my interest.

It's better (and cheaper) to give flyers only to the 5-10% of passers-by 
who are interested, than to hand them out to everyone in hopes that the 
others will later magically develop interest in the topic.

So, if you're focusing on quantity of flyers distributed, rather than 
quality of your contacts with individuals, I think that's an unrewarding 
direction - but if you are making a few, strong, contacts - you're doing as 
well as can be expected. People won't shift from clueless about the DMCA to 
strong "Free Dmitry!" backers in 15 seconds - they'll probably have to 
think about this and read about it for awhile, and hear their friends 
thinking and talking about it, too.

So, don't despair, and don't think you're a failure if you don't give a 
flyer to everyone you see.


--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles at well.com
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids