HP to revive training broadcasts via Web

Stachnik returns to 3000 training mission with regular programs

One of the most popular spokesmen for the HP e3000 is returning to the MPE community this year, as George Stachnik works on training sessions to highlight new and little-known features of the venerable business server.

As the e3000 steps into its 29th year of service to commercial customers, the server’s prospects are dogged by a lack of awareness about its recent enhancements. Technical improvements surrounding Internet capabilities, Java, and network connectivity still aren’t common knowledge among customers, Stachnik said. He hopes the new Web-based broadcasts will change perceptions while increasing the value of the 3000 to the installed base.

“We have to own up to the fact that everybody these days is way too busy,” he said. “In a situation like that, people can’t always take the time to seek out the information they need — to take the best advantage of the equipment they already own.”

George Stachnik in 1995 on HP's TV shows

As an example, Stachnik pointed to the relatively new Apache Web server capability for the 3000. Few people think of anything other than NT servers when considering where to host Web sites, he said.

“The two go together like ham and eggs,” Stachnik said, “Web server, PC. Customers who already own 3000s should be aware things like Web services are an option they’ve got to work with. Not just for a Web server, but a data server, application server, running Java applications. That stuff is just not going to turn up on the front page of Computerworld.”

Stachnik returned to the Commercial Systems Division (CSY) e3000 group in November, and has begun work on a series of Web-based broadcasts which will air this year. The mission is similar to the one he performed for almost five years beginning in 1993, when Stachnik hosted the Technology CloseUp satellite TV broadcasts from HP’s studios in California.

Those broadcasts educated technical managers on techniques and processes unique to the HP 3000, evolving from internal training broadcasts being aired only for HP’s service engineers. Stachnik broke down complex topics such as TCP/IP services into better-understood allegories in the shows, pressing his own children into posing as packets and a router in one episode. At other times he was a showman of circus calibre, throwing an HP 3000 off a roof then rebooting the machine afterward to demonstrate its durability.

Former CSY general manager Glenn Osaka had made the decision in 1992 to retarget the TV briefings to the 3000 customer base, a move which had CSY breaking ground in communicating with HP customers. Hundreds travelled to HP offices to watch the shows, while others ordered tapes afterward.

“He was frustrated that he’d talk to customers about all the new things on the platform and they’d look astonished. He realized that we had to go direct to customers,” Stachnik said.

The new training Webcasts hope to exploit the increasing bandwidth of the Internet, a resource that wasn’t available when Stachnik left CSY to work for HP’s Netserver division in 1998. Broadcasting slides and audiovisuals over the Web helps CSY reduce one of the biggest limitations the satellite shows faced: the cost of airtime.

“One of the problems with the TV shows was that they cost so much,” Stachnik said. “With the Internet, we can get stuff out far more cheaply.”

Breakthroughs in bandwidth and technology have paved the way for the transition from TV to the Web. Stachnik said that during his two years working with the Netserver division, he learned “it is possible to talk with customers for a whole lot less money than we had been spending during the years of the TV show. Doing a Webcast to customers three years ago would have been a real brow-beater for our customers. Most of them didn’t have the technology in place to receive the Webcasts.”

A matter of months after arriving at the Netserver division, “the fact that we were targeting an internal HP audience meant I could make a lot more assumptions about what was on the desktops on my audience’s desk.” HP probably won’t be able to serve more than 1,000 live viewers at once with this year’s shows. The satellite broadcasts reached a peak of about 1,800 viewers at once.

The content available for this year’s Webcasts will include audio files and slide presentations which will be served up live and archived for later download. Stachnik wants to use a wide array of servers, including the 3kworld.com site and HP’s own, to store the materials. The programs will begin in North America, but the content will be adjusted for overseas cultural differences before it’s released to Asia-Pacific and European e3000 customers.