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Platform Evangelism
An anonymous submitter writes "James Plamondon, a former Microsoft employee is writing a book on Technological Evangelism at Microsoft. He's posted the first chapter, "Evangelism is War."
Robert Scoble, a current Microsoft Evangelist doesn't like the metaphor, but Micah Alpern is concerned Microsoft could use similar strategies against Macromedia Flash."
If MS were to use such strategies, would anyone be surprised?
MS has destroyed company after company that tried to work with them or cooperate with them. Adding MacroMedia to the list would be no surprise. In fact, if you can name a company that depends on MS to any significant extent, then I would add them to my list of "endangered companies". It takes them longer to get around to some than to others is all.
MS only thinks of technical evangelism as war if you idea of war is scorched earth that nobody can live on.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Consider for a moment that Wired article on the downfall of SUN Microsystems. One recurring theme in the personality of McNealy, SUN's CEO, is his inability to cooperate with the competition and instead his insistence on turning competitors into enemies and market competition into war.
If MS does this (and they may indeed), this is merely business as usual among many of these corporations. Corporate America is not a day-care facility; companies can and do play hardball. The question is not "does MS want to help or hurt the competition" but rather "did MS engage in illegal anti-competitive practices which are bad for the consumer and bad for the market." I don't see you answering that question.
Wal-Mart destroyed the competition. And, yes, some say Wal-Mart is evil. But all they did is healthy, normal competition, no?
I wonder if Microsoft understands how motivating it is when people to learn it regards them as pawns? In the last couple years Microsoft has succeeded in motivating me to develop software for the Palm OS, and now for OS X...
Agreed, same with Norton's and McAffee now that MS wants their share of the pie. Since, they own the browser, they can simply bundle Flash out of existence. It won't happen overnight (see Real for example) but it will happen. The only life line available for these companies is to focus and push Linux adoption. If and when Linux gets 25% of the desktop market, the monopoly will break. The sad truth is that most companies in this situation do not adopt an offensive stance but rather adopt a defensive posture aimed at maintaining their piece of the pie. That defensive posture served Corel and Borland well in any case. When you strike a deal with the devil you should know that payback will eventually come around.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I worked as an evangelist for Novell, and, while I think Mr. Plamondon makes some good points, I agree with Micah Alpern that war analogies aren't necessarily the right ones. Also, I would think Mr. Plamondon would be more marketing-savvy than to refer to people that are helping him as "pawns". Chess analogy or not, it's not exactly a postitive signal to be sending out to people doing your work for you. :)
One very good point he makes is the idea of empowering other people to create materials about the technology you are evangelizing. It was amazing to me that I could get a lot of high quality help out of people for just a little public recognition, or some free software, or a nice gadget. People like to feel like they are helping with things that they feel passionately about. Heck, that's one of the reasons why the Linux movement has done so well, since just about anyone can dive in and start contributing in some way.
The problem I always experienced was from internal groups who were afraid of losing control of the corporate image. For example, we talked a lot about providing open forums and community sites for end users and consultants to share their solutions. This ended up being a series of communities we called CoolSolutions. But the actual code and solutions that people wrote went through a gauntlet of legal and marketing people, and it really wasn't an "open" community, it was all carefully screened.
The book "The Cluetrain Manifesto" talks a lot about these issues with large companies afraid to give up control. I think the right thing to do is for companies to loosly try to encourage an "ecosystem" around their technologies that then becomes self supporting. In this sense, they are practicing biomimicry in the form of crop diversity. You could think of internal PR and marketing departments as monocrops that are very susceptible to a single bad link, such as a sucky chief marketing officer. Diversity is good, and a product evangelism is one role that can encourage corporate "crop" diversity.
As an aside, I'm currently looking for a job. So if anyone in management read this and said, "product evangelists? I've gotta get me one of those!", then you can get to my resume here. or e-mail me at twid @ projectjellybean.com. I don't smell, I brush my teeth several times a day, I have no open oozing wounds, and I'm great fun at parties.
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
I don't get it. The sole reason Macromedia is the size it is, is simply because Windows has no option to permanently refuse a web download.
In the old days, when you hit a site that has flash content, and you don't have it installed, it would try to install Flash. The dialog box has no option to permanently refuse Flash, so sooner or later everybody just gives in.
This policy allowed Macr to reach critical mass. Now brosers ship with Flash. Now you're telling me Microsoft is against Macr?
From the article: An unconscious decision is ideal, from the platform vendorâ(TM)s perspective. When ISVs support a Microsoft platform without even realizing that they have made a decision, and rejected any alternatives, then we have truly won that platform battle.
The truth - the almost sinister truth - of that statement grips me at my soul.
The trick is that folks think they're making a choice to purchase a merely single item, be it a CD, and DVD, a software package, a computer, a vehicle, or a politician (with a vote or literally with a breifcase of money). The reson this is a trick is that by making that choice, the purchaser endorses the entire chain of policies and events that bring that product to the shelf. You're literally saying, "whatever happened to get this product in my hot little hands, it's okay by me because the price is right.
Until I read that line above, I hadn't thought of the entire hegemony that lurked behind a price sticker with the kind of laser precision that the author used to word it. And I always thought I was a reasonably self-aware guy. HOLY SHIT. His side won, and I didn't even realize I was in a battle.
I'm making that line my sig. Nothing woke me up with quite the same jolt that it did. Maybe I'm just dumber than I thought I am. Is it just me?
GMFTatsujin
yes, windows outshines Linux in that it supports more commercial hardware and that most companies only make drivers for windows.
By commercial hardware, I assume you mean components and peripherals which are compatible with what we know as the "IBM PC". In terms of platforms supported, I think you will find that Linux runs on a far greater variety than does Microsoft Windows. Think SPARC, Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS...
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
did MS engage in illegal anti-competitive practices which are bad for the consumer and bad for the market." I don't see you answering that question.
They have been convicted of doing just that. Everybody knows that.
SVG has one huge glaring problem :
No authoring environment.
Without a well designed, functional UI, how can SVG hope to compete against things like Flash? It's all well and good for the programming types to go : "Wow! SVG is great! I can write a few dozen lines of code and make a circle go from point a to point b!" but the bald fact of the matter is that programming types are not responsible, and will not be responsible, for doing the graphic design and animation. And for good reason : they usually suck at it (people like Maeda and the like aside). Designers are used to, and require, professional class UI and organizational tools (things like timelines, text tools, visual hierarchies, etc.) to do what they do in an efficient manner. Having a good GUI would help things, but Flash already does tons of things that SVG MIGHT do in a year or more.
And Flash is perfectly capable of handling XML and database-driven content, thank you. The fact of the matter is that as of today, SVG is an esoteric curiosity, nothing more... which may well change, as Adobe and Microsoft both are getting mighty anxious about Flash and it's capabilities.
Now, I'm all for Open Source, but come on -- I'm not going to get on the "If it's proprietary, it's EVIL" bandwagon. Macromedia has spent tons to develop Flash to the point where it is now, and has done so in a fundamentally benign manner, especially when compared to things like the GIF fiasco and the other various predatory business practices out there. They have a right to make money off their product, the Flash application itself.
First: Remember that the best defence is a good offense..
.net stuff - it's still m$ 0wned)
Developer-specific:
Open Source should make sure to set de-facto standards - release early, release often.
Define your data formats in something well-known like csv, sexp or xml so other open source programs can make use of them. Better yet, use a relational database backend with a public schema of views. It'll make most development easier, and all MS's best products do that, anyway. It's great (very convenient) for business use, and easy given the existence of postgres,mysql, sapdb sqllite, etc, etc.
At the same time, don't get too hung up on data format standards - MS has shown that so long as your next version reads them, that's good enough, your next version doesn't have to use the same data format as its native format, so long as it can read the old format.
MS has shown that what matters is to get a product out there, capturing mindshare - once a user has psychologically committed to your product, they'll probably stick with it, even if your next version is a ground-up rewrite so that it actually works. And if you release for windows, code to libSDL+OpenGL for games, and use cygwin, qt or gtk for utilities. NEVER use the Win32/.net directly API for new applications, even via WINE or Mono - that's one of the "proprietary standards" the chapter excerpt talks about (don't beleive the ECMA-standardisation
For general evangelism to non-technical audiences
Make sure that your desktop runs a window manager with a really snazzy theme and some flashy applications (xmms...) when anyone drops by. Current Linux WMs can outclass WinXP in flashiness stakes. Contrary to popular opinions, consistency doesn't seem to matter a great deal - if the program is flashy enough, it might be a consistency nightmare, but will impress the yokels (don't call them yokels). It doesn't hurt to have a speech synthesis program e.g. festival going to read the subject lines of incoming mails, or some other geek-gimmick. Appearance is everything to the non-geek (and geekiness is domain-specific, a DIY geek who sees straight through gimmicky power tools won't necessarily see through flashy computer GUI gimmicks)
Try not to get all philisophical on I.P. issues. Stick to "you have the right to change it or ask/pay someone other than the original manufacturer to change it for you. Like taking your car to a garage.". Anything more complex doesn't work for MS, it won't work for you. Yes, you may think I.P. is an absurdity. But most people are keyword-scanners. The message they'll get is that you're "anti-property". Yes, information is non-scarce and therefore you should't mindlessly apply scarcity-based property laws to it, yes, the very idea of information as property runs counter to the scientific method, but boring them by droning on about it won't help (I just droned on about it, and you damn-near switched-off, didn't you?)
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Like i said, when Linux is set up by someone who knows what they're doing it will outshine. What you've said is indicative of wanting the product to suit you, when you should be adapting to your tool. Learn to code, it's really quite simple. Write the drivers you need, and don't expect others to do it for you or expect a piece of software or hardware to just miraculously adapt to your needs. Using a computer isn't like just turning on a television. Really sometimes I wonder, and think people should be licensed to own a computer before complaining.
Like I said, when your television is set up by someone who knows what they're doing it will outshine. What you've said is indicative of wanting your television to turn on when you hit the power button, and somehow display shows that you enjoy, when you should be adapting to your tool. Learn a little electrical engineering, it's really quite simple. Build a VCR out of parts, don't just expect to buy one and have it miraculously work. Using a television isn't like using a hammer. Really, sometimes I think people should be licensed to view a television before complaining.
Yeah, mod me down. I've got a useless comment quota to meet.
* Independent software vendors (ISVs[4]) assume the presence of Windows on the consumerâ(TM)s PC.
vs.An electric toaster supports the American electricity standard if
* Its plug can fit into the American-standard electrical outlet, and...
How can anybody seriously compare this kind of free-to-implement, non-trade-secret, properly documented standard with what MS does?
Standards organisations define standards, companies implement them. That way you get this thing called competition that's quite popular with economists.
The web is about content, not design. The web should be available to all browsers, including Opera, Links, Mozilla, w3m, Internet Explorer, netrik, Konqueror and so on.
It's not the box that should meet sepcs, it's the webpage. It's about seperating content from presentation.
Flash is a great medium, but has nothing to do on the web.
Micah Alpern raises some good points about MS's attention to vector based ui's. I think though that he's completely offbase when saying that Macromedia's announcement of Royal will ilicit any response from Redmond.
Flash won't be a threat to Microsoft as a "full platform". The primary reason is that Macromedia is great at marketing their products - but architecutally their product line lacks consistancy of vision and execution. Flash for example has, over the past three versions proved time and time again that it lacks a reliable, and easy to use programming environment, an absolute necessity for building truly sophisticated ui's and functionality.
Don't get me wrong - there is some amazing flash work out there. Kudo's to the design/developers that were able to produce such things. The road to such accomplishments however is frought with errors, head scratching and mysteries.
This is primarily because Macromedia seems to think that it's OK to produce API level functions that don't behave as expected so long as they are documented. See Macromedia 'Technotes' for further ammo er info. I think somewhere along the way someone at Macromedia misread "Test and Deploy" as "Deploy and Test". Most have to do with I/O such as load movie, getUrl, and loadVariables. Solid multi source I/O is an absolute necessity for building fully featured "rich client" applications. JavaScript is also not an acceptable language for building real applications. Especailly Macromedia's implementation which has a very loose object based approach to dealing with items in the movie. Flash is also slow. On machines who are not as "swift" as their high speed grand children - high complexity movies are sluggish and don't respond well.
What this all comes down to is the fact that from a technology perspective, Macromedia lacks a coherent architecture for accomplishing complex tasks that will be required to build "Royale" and there is a good chance that developers first taste of Royale will be a bitter one.
It hasn't been that for years. The web is anything a person with server space wants it to be.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.