Ralph Johnson wrote:
When you say marketing what do you mean exactly because an application users want to use does its own marketing and than there is no need to do a hard sell :)
Marketing is NOT "hard sell". Marketing is figuring out what customers want and removing the things preventing them from getting it. it is finding the people who ought to use a product and letting them know about it. Marketing often means fixing the documentation, the license, or something else non-technical.
No product can succeed without marketing. None ever has. Sometimes the marketing was not done by the inventor. Sometimes it is hard to tell who is doing the marketing and just what they did. But marketing is crucial.
Don't get me wrong Ralph, that's exactly what I meant when I said when you have "an application users want to use" ... because this IS your market. If you miss this ball on this one you can have all the documentation, exposure, advertising and whatever in the world, it still wont make people want your application. Ralph Johnson wrote:
One of the problems with Smalltalk now is that the good marketeers have left it. When I heard that Dave Thomas was retiring I stood up on the bus, which was full of Smalltalkers, and said that this was the passing of an era, and that someone else needed to step up or Smalltalk would falter. More Smalltalkers need to read marketing books like "The Tipping Point" and "Crossing the Chasm".
This is a very important thread. Please don't say that marketing is unimportant. Marketing is crucial, and a weakness in the Smalltalk community.
I agree and this is where I am trying to help as well. It is extremely important but please beware that "marketing" is not something only "marketeers" do, everyone involved is participating in marketing, starting from application's requirements/features, look-and-feel, usability, quality, cost/license, documentation, support etc ... the whole shebang :) ps. I have actually read a couple of Malcolm's books ... Chris Anderson's Free is a good one too :) -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Smalltalk-hosting-tp3384077p3384270.html Sent from the ESUG mailing list archive at Nabble.com.