Judy,
I have begun to believe the dilemma that Revolution (and many other
great products) face is the "cult software" phenomenon. I am starting
to think software becomes "cultish" and loses its appeal to people
who are not part of the "cult" because of a corruption of the
creative process whereby:
1. the developers of the software lose their "faith" and "vision" and
start believing in "features"
2. as a result, the software becomes something less appealing to new
users (non-cult members)
Many feedback sessions, however well-intentioned, end up being ego
battles whereby the technical types with less assertive social skill
lose faith in their product, their company and themselves. In short,
they start urinating in the punch bowl during breaks. (NOTE: this has
actually happened.)
If I were Kevin and Mark, I would avoid reading this list at every
opportunity. I believe the over-all effect of this list tends to be
debilitating for them and might even neuter them creatively speaking.
It would be like watching the Catholic channel right before having
sex. Oops...I actually like that. Well, you know what I'm trying to say.
Jerry
Buy Constellation from Runtime Revolution!
http://revstudio.runrev.com/section/revselect/constellation/
On Apr 12, 2006, at 12:05 PM, Judy Perry wrote:
It almost sounds like RevConWest...
Almost.
Just to play Devil's Advocate, how do you know that your participating
end-users are not hand-picked to ensure a certain outcome?
Not that I'm accusing you of doing that, but I participated in an
external
evaluator session for our first online master's degree. The fur was
positively flying (and most improbably, not on my particular
account), but
when I later voiced some of my concerns to the program head, she
seemed
most blissful in her ignorance. Later, when the program made its
self-assessment to a national conference, what I had witnessed had
been
entirely sugar-coated.
I love the process you describe. I guess it all depends upon the
willingness of the company to actually listen to what is being said as
opposed to hearing what they would like to hear. Your customers
are most
fortunate that your company is of the former rather than the latter.
Rev clearly has the opportunity to be of the former as well.
Judy
On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I fully agree with this approach. It makes for a win/win situation
for
both the company as well as the established customer base. As a
matter of
fact, our company utilizes a certain high-end system that is
internationally respected in the industry. Each year, a group of
end-users
and management attends an event which allows us direct access to the
developers of our chosen system. The users sit down and voice their
concerns, problems, bugs, feature requests, etc. to the entire
group of
developers and leaders of this company. We even vote on what is most
important, and user opinion actually carries more weight than
anything
else. After all, the customer is always right. It's like bugzilla,
but
without the clunky interface, and you leave the event knowing that
your
votes and input have made a real difference in the direction of the
product.
_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
[email protected]
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
subscription preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
[email protected]
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
