Thursday, April 16, 2009

On Elephant Shoes...

Do you remember playing that game when you were young? You'd mouth the words "elephant shoes" to someone and it would look like you were saying "I love you". It was great, because if the boy or girl objected, you could say "What? All I said was 'elephant shoes'!". Apparently, a movie has even been made about it...

A few weeks ago, at EclipseCon, the elephant in the room was that Ed wasn't there, and more specifically, the reason why. The absence of people like this (and others whose presence isn't as noticeable but whose contributions are just as important) is what I was referring to, in part, by "recent events" a couple of posts ago. Ultimately, a large part of what helps me keep my game face is the people - after all, its the contributions of good people that make or break a community of interest.

That was also a common refrain at Enterprise Data World last week - "it's not just about the data, it's about the people". We certainly saw evidence of that at our booth in the exhibit hall. They had a "bingo" game, for a chance to win a free book, with cards where you had to visit each vendor listed on the card and get them to cross of their square (each with a unique color). We were surprised by the number of attendees who asked us to cross off our competitors' squares because they didn't want to have to talk to them. We also saw a number of cards where one of our competitors had scratched our square out with a big "X". Ah well, it takes all kinds...

The ER/Studio community of interest held its annual special interest group (SIG) session last Wednesday, and it went really well. It used to be that a member of the user community had to organize a SIG as part of the official program, but apparently the rules must have changed because one of our competitors was allowed to organize a last-minute SIG themselves. Too bad they forgot to mention when it was...



We also held a cocktail party for about thirty of our closest friends (customers) last Wednesday evening, and it was a raving success. You really get a sense for how much your customers love your products when they're still hanging around long after the event is supposed to end (and the free beer is gone). One of the things we kept hearing was how much our customers appreciate how responsive we are to their needs... for the most part. Things got a little out of hand when some of our customers started placing bets on whether/when EA/Studio models would ever be supported by the ER/Studio Repository and Enterprise Portal. Patience, grasshoppers.



We wrapped up the week on Thursday afternoon by meeting with some members of our Product Advisory Council (PAC). We listened to their needs, presented our plans for this year and next, and gave them a sneak peak of what's in store for our September release of ER/Studio. We received a lot of really good feedback and, overall, folks were really pleased with our road map. All we have to do now is deliver on it!

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