Janet was nicknamed "Team Godmother", but everyone in IBM, especially Whittle, was wary of trying to direct volunteers or make Team OS/2 too structured or formal, in order to avoid "breaking something that works". IBM had established the Grass Roots Marketing department proposed earlier, and had even tapped Vicci Conway and Janet Gobeille to provide support and guidance for Team OS/2 with Whittle voluntarily stepping aside from his previous day-to-day focus on supporting and monitoring Team OS/2 activities. What little funding IBM provided went to provide the shirts, "trinkets and trash", and an onsite headquarters for Teamers to coordinate their efforts and collect items to give to vendors. Many Team OS/2 volunteers had traveled to the convention on their own, including some from overseas so their independence and grass-roots enthusiasm attracted significant attention in the media and amongst exhibitors. Wearing the salmon-colored shirts which were to become associated with Team OS/2, the group's members, led by Doug Azzarito, Keith Wood, Mike Kogan, IBM User Group Manager Gene Barlow, and others wandered the convention floors, promoting OS/2 and providing demo discs to vendors and offering to install the distributed version of OS/2 on display computers. COMDEX was, at that time, the most important computer and electronics trade show, held in Las Vegas. The "Teamer Invasion" of COMDEX in the Fall of 1993 was perhaps the high water mark for Team OS/2. Whittle established multiple localized forums within IBM, such as TEAMNY, TEAMDC, TEAMFL, TEAMTX, and TEAMCA, which attracted new supporters and enabled enthusiastic followers to share ideas and success stories, plan events, and creatively apply what they were learning from one another. OS/2 enthusiasts spread the word to computer user groups across the United States, then eventually worldwide, independently of IBM marketing efforts. : 227Īfter that, word about the Team OS/2 phenomenon spread even more quickly, both within IBM and without. One IBM executive in attendance said it was the first IBM event that had given him goosebumps. Even the lead singer in the band Chicago that had provided music for the event asked if they could have a T-shirt for each member of the band. At the end, all attendees received the first TEAM OS/2 T-shirt, which includes the first Team OS/2 logo on the front and the distinctive IBM blue-stripe logo on the back - except with lower-case letters: "ibm/2" to represent the new IBM. Prizes included limousine rides that evening. Attendees were asked to nominate their favorite "Teamer" for the "Team OS/2 Hall of Fame", and those whose names were drawn came forward to tell the story of their nominee - what sacrifice they had made to promote OS/2 and why they were deserving of recognition. Tickets were limited to those who had requested them on one of the online discussion groups. Microsoft reacted when Steve Ballmer roamed the floor with an application on diskette that had been specially programmed to crash OS/2 and OS/2 enthusiasts gathered for an evening of excitement at the first Team OS/2 party. The IBM Marketing Office in Chicago created a huge banner visible from the streets. Team OS/2 went external that spring, when the first Team OS/2 Party was held in Chicago. He also made a proposal to IBM executives, which they eventually implemented when IBM Personal Software Products moved to Austin, Texas, that they form a "Grass Roots Marketing Department". Whittle began to extend the Team OS/2 effort outside of IBM with various posts on CompuServe, Prodigy, bulletin boards, newsgroups, and other venues. Both the OS/2 Ambassador Program and Team OS/2 were effective in evangelizing OS/2 within IBM, but only Team OS/2 was effective in generating support for the promotion of OS/2 outside of IBM. IBM's official program for generating word-of-mouth enthusiasm was called the "OS/2 Ambassador Program", where OS/2 enthusiasts company-wide could win Gold, Silver, and Bronze Ambassador pins and corporate recognition with various levels of structured achievement. TEAMOS2 FORUM quickly caught the attention of some IBM executives, including Lee Reiswig and Lucy Baney, who after initial scepticism, offered moral and financial support for Whittle's grass roots and online marketing efforts. Within a short time, thousands of IBM employees had added the words TEAMOS2 to their internet phone directory listing, which enabled anyone within IBM to find like-minded OS/2 enthusiasts within the company and work together to overcome the challenges posed by IBM's size, insularity, and top-down marketing style. The forum went viral as increasing numbers of IBMers worldwide began to contribute a wide variety of ideas as to how IBM could effectively compete with Microsoft to establish OS/2 as the industry standard desktop operating system.
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