Windward Wrocks

The World’s Greatest Music Contest – and you just missed it

If you're in America that is. If you're in Europe you've seen it as the main story for the last week. I'm talking of the Eurovision Song Contest which was Tuesday, Thursday, & Saturday of this past week. And this year was extraordinary. For those that haven't seen Eurovision, here's what you missed – an amazing set of songs, incredibly talented performers, and the largest flashmob every (I think).

How large an event is this? 125 million people watched it making it the most watched show in Europe. How important is this? Azerbaijan has reportedly spent a million dollars both providing the singer Safura direct help like Beyonce's choreographer as well as marketing her performance. With a win would come not just a ton of free publicity for Azerbaijan but they would get to host next year.

Eurovision is sort-of a American Idol combined with the Olympics. Each of the 39 participating countries sends one group to the contest. First off, they can send anyone. That means the groups range from teenagers (Lena from Germany, who won, just graduated from High School) just getting started to experienced professionals (Niamh Kavanagh from Ireland who won the contest in '93). The only limits are that the song must be new and under 3 minutes.

The voting system is so complex it makes the U.S. Presidential primary seem simple by comparison (explained below). But each country has an identical number of votes so Cyprus counts as much as Germany. 34 countries go through a semi-final that reduces them to 20 while 5 countries go straight to the final. Each country decides how to pick their entry. Most have contests within their countries, but some use other systems. They most unusual this year was Cyprus which hired individuals, most from England, to create a group for their entry.

Ok, so why do 125 million people tune in to this. Well first off, no one knows what kind of song will win. Last year the winner was a classical trained violinist from Norway sounding a bit like Charley Daniels – and he won with the highest total votes ever. This year again a number of the expected top finishers ended up in the middle. So you watch the entire contest with no idea who will win.

Second, the level of talent is amazing. Countries are sending their best. Well, occasionally a country sends a group so bad you wonder – what were they thinking. And one person's "great" is another person's tacky stage show or overwrought rendition.

Third, it's a decent variety of music. Yes there's a lot of pop of various types, but also hard rock, ballads, folk and some that defy categorization. I have no idea how to define the song from Serbia – but it is really fun to listen to. The variety makes it a lot more entertaining, and makes it much harder to say one group is "better" than another. There were 4 performers I wanted to win – because they were all the best for the type of song they sung.

More below, but first what I think were the top four songs.

1. Romania – Paula Seling & Ovi – Playing With Fire

This is not so much a song with a stage show as it is two people flirting with each other via a song. Different, fun, and very well done.

2. Belarus – 3+2 – Butterflies

This is a beautiful song that lifts you up, and then up more, and then more. There were a number of songs that were uplifting but I thought this was the best one by far. And beautiful voices.

3. Belgium – Tom Dice – Me and My Guitar

Every other artist has accompaniment, maybe just background instruments or chorus, but something. But Tom stands up there with his guitar – and sings. And it's beautiful and moving.

4. Portugal – Filipa Azevedo – Hadias assim

There were a number of superb female vocalists. I liked Filipa the best, but they were all superb.

Voting

So on to the voting. Each country computes half their votes from calling in – and each person can vote up to 20 times. The other half comes from a professional jury of music professionals in that country. And none of them can vote for their own country. The votes are totaled up, and then the country with the most votes receives 12 votes, the next 10, and then 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, & 1. The voting is incredibly political – just take a look at where most of Russia's votes came from (ex-soviet states, that have large Russian populations). Part of that is people favoring a neighbor they know all things being equal, but part is also people finding the vote number in the country next door and calling that to vote for their own country.

34 of the countries are split into two groups of 17. Each group had a semi-final vote (one Tuesday, one Thursday) that reduced each to the top 10 in each group. This followed the above voting system – but the vote totals are not released. So you know who finished in the top 10, but not in what order or by how much (to keep all in suspense for the final). Then on Saturday those 20 are joined with 5 additional countries (England, France, Germany, & Spain always and Norway because they won last year).

1^st Place – Germany – Lena – Satellite

Results

Place	Country	Performer	Song	Points
1	Germany	Lena	Satellite	246
2	Turkey	maNga	We Could Be The Same	170
3	Romania	Paula Seling & Ovi	Playing With Fire	162
4	Denmark	Chanée & N'evergreen	In A Moment Like This	149
5	Azerbaijan	Safura	Drip Drop	145
6	Belgium	Tom Dice	Me And My Guitar	143
7	Armenia	Eva Rivas	Apricot Stone	141
8	Greece	Giorgos Alkaios & Friends	OPA	140
9	Georgia	Sofia Nizharadze	Shine	136
10	Ukraine	Alyosha	Sweet People	108
11	Russia	Peter Nalitch & Friends	Lost And Forgotten	90
12	France	Jessy Matador	Allez Olla Olé	82
13	Serbia	Milan Stankovic	Ovo Je Balkan	72
14	Israel	Harel Skaat	Milim	71
15	Spain	Daniel Diges	Algo Pequeñito (Something Tiny)	68
16	Albania	Juliana Pasha	It's All About You	62
17	Bosnia & Herzegovina	Vukašin Brajic	Thunder And Lightning	51
18	Portugal	Filipa Azevedo	Há Dias Assim	43
19	Iceland	Hera Björk	Je Ne Sais Quoi	41
20	Norway	Didrik Solli-Tangen	My Heart Is Yours	35
21	Cyprus	Jon Lilygreen & The Islanders	Life Looks Better In Spring	27
22	Moldova	Sunstroke Project & Olia Tira	Run Away	27
23	Ireland	Niamh Kavanagh	It's For You	25
24	Belarus	3+2	Butterflies	18
25	United Kingdom	Josh	That Sounds Good To Me	10

Oh, and can anyone tell me why something that has all of Europe glued to their TV, that clearly would appeal to a large cross-section of the audience in America – is not shown on TV here?

How Google is going to own the cloud

I had the opportunity to interview Jonathan Rochelle today. Jonathan is the group product manager for Google Docs. We talked about Google Docs, collaboration, the cloud, and of course Microsoft. Google Docs is the primary alternative to SharePoint/Office and takes a different tack to this world – and Jonathan did a superb job of laying all that out.

Jonathan is a programmer by background (which automatically makes him cool). His background is financial software, with a lot of it aimed at Wall St. This included a start-up that had a spreadsheet product that was then purchased by Google. This became the start of the Google Docs project at Google in 2006 – so Jonathan was working on Google Docs before there was a Google Docs project.

My first question is what is the reason for Google Docs existence? Jonathan took this through a couple of steps. The initial impetus for Docs was a desire to enable collaboration. So it was more a file sharing and desire to access the docs through the browser that was the first goal for Docs. We then dove in to what is the payoff of Docs for Google now.

First Jonathan talked about consumer (free) use. He said Google's goal with this is to get people to use the web more. It's not to run ads, it's not to make money, it is merely to make people more comfortable using the web. Google views this as a key strategic goal – to enable people to do more on the web. Secondarily there is the business version that has additional functionality added to make it a strong solution for businesses.

I then asked if Docs impacting Microsoft's revenue from Office was a motivator. Jonathan said that "is not a goal… and has never actually been a driver." He was pretty adamant on this saying that Google "has fallen into a competitive space with Microsoft" as opposed to it being a purposeful challenge to Office.

My $0.02: Docs costs Google a lot of time and money. Yes there's value to them in having people do more on the web. And yes there is significant value down the road in having people use Google for their business apps. But the fact that they are not trying to monetize the consumer version at all sure makes it look like this is focused on owning this segment.

My next question was the limited functionality compared to Office. His first answer was that Docs presently provides what 80 – 90% of business users need. But he later followed up saying that they are continuing to add functionality to try to add in everything most people need.

I followed up by asking about the Docs UI compared to the ribbon in Office. Jonathan was very gracious in talking about the really good work Microsoft put in to designing the ribbon concept. He then discussed how Docs is much more intuitive for someone sitting down who has no training and that there is great value in this. Jonathan did say that in the future they will probably look at the UI approach and look for improvements there, but the way he said it this is a long way off.

I then asked about the issues surrounding depending on an internet connection to access your documents. I brought up my case where we have Qwest as a provider and so the connection is down for a bit every couple of weeks. Jonathan replied that people are dependent on their Internet connection for so many things that they don't find this an issue. They see the future with the cloud will have people are comfortable assuming that their Internet connection will always be up.

But he says the required connectivity is an issue for people when they take a plane flight and want to work on their documents. They are in the process of providing the functionality to cache documents for airplane flights, etc. And he points out there are a couple of 3^rd party apps that already do a good job of providing this functionality.

My next question was the key one – how does Google Docs compare to SharePoint/Office 2010? Jonathan started with a spot-on observation, that the new Microsoft release is really a giant swing toward the cloud. He is very happy to see this because Microsoft's move in this direction is a big vote of confidence in putting apps up on the cloud, and that validates Docs.

He then talked about the power of applications that provide collaboration via the cloud. This was interesting for a couple of reasons. First Jonathan focused on the new paradigm of placing all of these apps on the cloud, not about Google vs. Microsoft. He's a strong believer in this (aren't most of us?) and clearly what he finds cool is that Microsoft has validated this approach big time.

Even more interesting was his discussion about why this approach was so powerful. Nothing about eliminating the overhead of installing your own apps, nothing about the savings, nothing even about ease of use. His discussion about the giant advantage of the cloud is collaboration. That the increases in productivity due to collaboration provided by the cloud are incredible. And they are seeing that internally at Google as well as with their customers.

My $0.02: With every smart person in our industry saying the cloud is the future, I always wonder if they're right. Usually they are, but remember pen computing? I do think the cloud will drive a lot, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

He had a very insightful comparison of the two – Google started in the cloud with collaboration and has been adding productivity applications. Microsoft has started with individual productivity applications and has now added collaboration over the cloud.

I then pointed out that this does put Docs and Office in the same spot, so what are the differences. Jonathan discussed how Docs is a lot easier to just sit down and use. And that collaboration is baked in to it from the beginning. He sees that Microsoft has not gotten rid of some of the issues it has with working smoothly on the cloud because this version Office is the first to go this way. And he finished up with the simplicity of the Google pricing model compared to Microsoft's incredibly complex pricing (very true).

I next asked about the internal social media provided by SharePoint where they can be very specific about what access is allowed by what people on each blog, wiki, etc. Jonathan dove into the policy controls they provide across the apps giving companies very detailed granular control. The specifics of what they can do on mail sounds amazing. They are also in the process of adding this level of control for blogger, Google Sites, etc.

My $0.02: I think Jonathan laid out a very fair differentiation between the two offerings. Each comes in with strengths and weaknesses. I do think this is the main battleground for which company will own the cloud, and both have very compelling offerings. And the coming access control on blogger, etc. will be a major improvement.

I then asked about support for 3^rd party apps providing hooks into the apps for those apps. Jonathan discussed several approaches that can be taken but the bottom line was that they think they now have a very powerful API to support 3^rd party apps. My company tried to use the API over a year ago and it was not robust enough for us, but with what he was describing it sounds like it now is.

So that led to the question of what would he suggest ISVs looking at 3^rd party apps for Docs. He said there remains a very large number of opportunities, especially for vertical apps. He pointed out that this is all so new that there are large holes in what is offered to companies. He called out cases where a product will empower remote workers as being gigantic. He also suggested a payroll system (good idea – ADP's online system sucks).

I next asked him what advice he would give to a start-up company, but not one of the standard 5 – 10 everyone says. His first suggestion was leverage work other companies have done as much as possible. He then followed up with write it to use the open standards and architect it to scale and respond quickly from the start.

My $0.02: Superb technical advice. The less you have to do, the sooner you can deliver – be lazy and leverage every way you can. And the architect it right to start – ignore that advice at your peril.

I followed up asking how do ISVs become a top Google strategic partner. Jonathan said that the key component is to provide something that customers find very useful. When customers say they have to have it, then Google finds it very interesting.

I also asked if Google will have content directories. Jonathan said this was an interesting question, but he thinks search is getting good enough that there is no longer a need for content directories. (I think this is spot-on, search is better, and more up to date, than any human edited directory can match.)

My final question was asking what the industry media landscape will be like in 5 – 10 years. Jonathan thinks there will be some consolidation of credible sources. He also thinks we'll see more rating of sources like the Apple iStore has ratings of the apps it provides. Note he's not talking Digg which rates a post, he's talking rating of sites based on the type of content they provide.

My $0.02: This is a really interesting idea. Most people already do this for the type of info they want regularly, selecting the sites they hit. But a site rating system would let people find similar sites that might be better. And finding the best sites to hit on topics they are interested in occasionally. (If you create the killer rating site that implements this – you owe Jonathan some stock for the idea.)

I closed out asking Jonathan if he wanted to add anything. He then did a good job of selling me that my company needs to look at porting our application to Google Docs. He was also very gracious in the nice things he said about Windward.

My $0.02: It speaks very well of his desire to see more 3^rd party apps for Google Docs that he took advantage of this to sell me. And it was a very compelling argument, we will seriously consider porting AutoTag to Docs in 2 – 4 months.

What Does This All Mean?

Google Docs vs. SharePoint/Office is where the fight for ownership of the cloud will occur. Both Google and Microsoft have very distinctive offerings, each with strengths and weaknesses. For some companies one will be clearly superior for their needs. For many it will be a close decision.

But the big issue is not Google vs. Microsoft, it's the change we are going to see as we move to the cloud. And I think Jonathan nailed it where he sees the big change coming from the revolutionary improvements in collaboration. Over the last 15 years we have seen a significant transformation in the work environment from what was fundamentally a group of individuals each doing their part (toward a common goal) to an integrated team that works as a unit. Collaborative efforts are much more productive. Even more important, they can accomplish goals that a group of individuals would find difficult or impossible.

Google is clearly focused on the central advantage of placing all of the business apps on the cloud. And they know this world well, that's where they've been from the start. This gives them a gigantic advantage in providing this functionality. Plus they are on generation N of a cloud based collaborative system. And it's a really cool system – that counts.

For those of you that do not have a collaboration system in place yet, you should check out Google Docs. And if you would like to see Windward AutoTag (enterprise reporting, docgen, & dashboards using business applications as the designer) ported to Google Docs, please drop us a line.

Podcast: Jonathan Rochell Interview

Questions for Google’s Jonathan Rochelle

I am interviewing Jonathan tomorrow about all things Google Docs. This will be similar to my interview of Microsoft's Jeff Teper on SharePoint/Office. Any suggested questions much appreciated.

Please post suggested questions below as a comment.

How Microsoft is going to own the cloud

I had the opportunity to interview Microsoft Vice President Jeff Teper today. He has been managing the development effort for SharePoint from when it was just a gleam in Bills' eye. And next week SharePoint 2010 is officially released. He graciously took the time for an interview with me today, and gave a really interesting picture of SharePoint, as well as some other subjects.

The conclusion I took away from this interview? That through Office & SharePoint, Microsoft has a very good shot at owning the cloud.

I opened by telling him that we had done a company-wide demo of SharePoint today and that the reaction was that people wanted us to upgrade today. Jeff's response was to ask "what did they react most positively to?" (This response shows that Jeff is truly a developer at heart.) I responded that what appeared to be the big improvements was the reduced number of clicks and how fast it now is.

So for my first question, I said that the expectations of everyone is that 2010 is going to be wonderful and if it's not, you're going to break our hearts. So I asked, are you going to break our hearts or is it going to be wonderful? His response was great – "SharePoint 2010 is going to be the best software product anybody's ever used, but it's not perfect." He then talked about the trade-offs that go into creating a software product, but that no one was telling them that they needed more features. He summed it up saying that in 6 months everyone will still be in love with SharePoint 2010. He then added that in 6 months people will still be discovering cool new features.

My $0.02: The fact that Jeff spoke directly to the fact that software is imperfect and feature lists are the result of trade-offs shows speaks well of his veracity. His answer that we will love it is to be expected from the proud father of the app, but I think in this case it's a fair conclusion based on the product.

My next question was in 2014, when we're getting close to the release of SharePoint 2015, what will people see as the major changes 2010 brought to the table. Jeff's answer was that "we'll be amazed how many people moved to the cloud and how quickly it went." He went on to discuss about how a lot of people are talking about it, but the minority are doing it.

I followed up asking "Is SharePoint 2010 and Office Microsoft's nefarious plan to take over and own the cloud?" Jeff's response, after laughing, was "I would never say it that way." He then talked about how like Office, SharePoint is a game changer by taking what up to now has only been available as a disparate set of apps and offering them as a fully integrated suite. And the cloud makes it possible for Microsoft to reach a lot more people a lot more quickly with the latest version of the software. He then added "the cloud will be the next engine of Microsoft's customer growth." He also added that Gartner has now ranked SharePoint ahead of Documentum.

My $0.02: Microsoft is extremely good at figuring out how to crack a market and then dominate it. The approach they are taking here is similar to Office where combining Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. – and making them work and act as a single app, took the business application market away from Word Perfect, Lotus 123, etc. They are taking this same approach with SharePoint where 2010 provides virtually everything a company wants in the cloud and does so as a single comprehensive app. Also Jeff said "the cloud will be…" not "SharePoint will be…" – this shows a mindset that the cloud will be SharePoint.

To dive a little further in I asked why Office & SharePoint were combined into one business unit. His reply was that they wanted it to be a useful product out of the box rather than just some infrastructure that can be used. He then discussed about how the combination gives a lot more functionality for collaboration within a group. Microsoft now talks to businesses solely about Office & SharePoint together because the combination provides such a productivity enhancement to business.

He added that for consumers that Office is still a stand-alone app. But that with OfficeLive and SkyDrive, they think consumers will start to use the cloud some. (I think consumers, especially younger ones, will start to put their documents up on the cloud because that's what they're familiar with.)

I then asked about how this will compete with Google Docs. Jeff's answer was interesting because he dove into the bigger question of Microsoft competing with free. He feels very comfortable that when companies weigh out the full costs of various approaches, that the combination of Office and SharePoint will easily be selected.

I next asked about the social computing functionality in 2010, and especially the fact that social media functionality is fundamentally subversive in a company, even when access is restricted to specific groups within a company. Jeff had a really interesting response to this. He talked about how when email first came out you saw email that misused the medium from 20 page emails to flame wars. But that over time people learned how to appropriately use email – to keep it short, to keep it direct, and to not engage in flame wars. I hadn't thought of that but this is a very good point. He believes people are learning the same thing on the social media front, what is appropriate within the company, what is appropriate outside that relates to the company, etc.

Jeff says that companies are finding the security on the social media aspects of SharePoint very powerful right now. Because even within a company they need to restrict who has access to different blogs, wikis, document lists, etc. He talked about how different companies can dial the empowerment vs. governance to different levels. (I think even within a company this will be handled differently for different groups/subjects.) He thinks the combination of people learning the social contract and companies setting the accessibility from a single control that governs all of the social media components.

My $0.02: This will be major for companies. Internal social media is incredibly valuable if used properly – they have to have it. But at the same time, access has to be controlled. And having a single system with central control that administers the entire system is really the only workable approach. It also doesn't hurt that each piece in SharePoint is as good or better than the alternatives out there.

My next question was "what will be in SharePoint 2015?" Jeff replied that while he can't speak specifically yet (clearly they haven't decided yet), there will be two big things. The first is the cloud will be the primary form of delivery by then. The second is that SharePoint is the only product that brings together Business Intelligence and search, but what they have is still in its infancy. Microsoft will create a lot more functionality in this area. Jeff referenced both FAST search (which is damn good) and the Excel PowerPivot where you can have million row spreadsheets (which is absolutely incredible). One example Jeff cited is he thinks this will significantly help cross-disciplinary research with the combination of search tied to B.I along with the social media.

I next asked Jeff what he saw as the best opportunity for SharePoint ISVs. His first point was it is very hard to do something horizontal because you will then generally be competing with Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc. Jeff thinks the best opportunity is to look for a vertical opportunity where you can provide a high value solution. And vertical does not mean small, he called out healthcare as a vertical – but it does mean staying out of where the big boys play.

I then told him his answer was a little disconcerting because my company's AddOn Windward Arrow is about as horizontal an AddOn as you can imagine (an enterprise level reporting, docgen, and dashboard system). Jeff replied that he hesitated to discuss horizontal opportunities because those are a lot more complicated. I asked him if he thought our Arrow product had a shot and he was very gracious and said "it looked very cool … and quite compelling."

My $0.02: Speaking as someone who's company went the horizontal route, his advice is spot on. Go vertical if you can. Horizontal is a much tougher fight and more expensive as you have to market to everyone.

I then asked when will SharePoint Online accept 3^rd party apps. He said that they are not ready to be specific on that yet, but they are working hard on it. He said "there's some work to do" to get this ready. I followed up asking if ISVs will be brought in at the same time as other Microsoft products that are directly competitive (a situation my company faces). Jeff replied that Microsoft tries very hard to give ISVs as fair a treatment as possible. But he also spoke directly to the issue that they have to first work with a few ISVs as they first work this out, and other Microsoft products will be in the first small group. One very interesting comment was they generally have it open to everyone "6 – 12 months before release." So it's probably a reasonable assumption that 3^rd party AddOns on SharePoint Online are at least 6 months off.

He then followed up saying they want a healthy vibrant ISV community that trusts them. He also said that over the next year the 3^rd party SharePoint ISV market is a 6 Billion dollar market. So there's some good money to be made by SharePoint ISVs.

I then moved away from SharePoint with the next question. I asked what advice would you give a start-up company, different from the suggestions that everyone gives. Jeff's reply was "hire very smart people, don't be afraid to make mistakes, be intensely customer focused, but don't do everything customers tell you to do." He then discussed the pressure on start-ups to do the next great thing in 6 months or disappear. But reality in most cases is that being a success takes a lot of time and effort. He referenced Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers (great book) which says that talent is great, but hard work really really matters. He finished by saying that it's important not to run out of cash.

My $0.02: Excellent advice.

I next asked what a Microsoft partner should do to take better advantage of the partnership and become a stronger Microsoft partner. Jeff replied that there are three things, first is "have good people." He added a great line – "there is a lot of talent in this industry, but it's not evenly distributed" (boy is that right). Second is have some way to step out, something that draws attention to what you do. And third is win business – when Microsoft sees customers getting excited about an ISV's app, then Microsoft gets excited. Jeff called out Case Studies that show the savings a product can bring to an industry as a very powerful tool for this third part. (We're going to be writing some new Case Studies at my company ASAP!)

Moving even further afield, I asked Jeff where he thinks the industry media will be in another 5 years as traditional media gets even smaller and there's a million individuals, each with an unknown impact doing social posting. His reply was that "the more things change, the more they stay the same." That 15 years ago there were CompuServe forums, and those had an impact. He then went on to say there are lots of new sites, and that requires Microsoft to stay agile in how they reach out to the media. And the diversity and rapid change in which blogs have traction means there is a lot more trial and error involved.

I then closed out asking if there was anything he wanted to add. Jeff started with "this is the biggest release of SharePoint and Office Microsoft has ever done and SharePoint is a game changer." And he then discussed the cloud and what it brings to the table for Microsoft and for customers. He then also talked about the collaboration that the combination of Office and SharePoint will bring to the office. He did a fast mention of SharePoint Workspace which is Groove rebranded and integrated into SharePoint.

What Does This All Mean?

I worked at Microsoft for 3½ years in the Windows group (a long time ago). One thing Microsoft is very good at is figuring out what piece of the market is key to controlling the computer and then gaining that piece. At first that was the Operating System and Microsoft delivered DOS and then Windows. Next was the business desktop and Microsoft delivered Office. Then came the Internet and Microsoft delivered Internet Explorer. Next was the enterprise stack and for that Microsoft developed C#, .NET, IIS, etc as a single, fully integrated comprehensive stack.

In all of these cases Microsoft did not just waltz in and immediately gain dominance. In many of the cases they had false starts, etc. But they kept retrying and refiguring what would work. And Microsoft is very good at determining what part of the system will deliver ownership of the system, and go after that part, leveraging everything to gain control of that part.

I think Office/SharePoint 2010 gives Microsoft a way to own the cloud. Not every bit of it, but to own the stack for the majority of business use. And they are doing so by delivering a product that absolutely rocks. Office 2010 on SharePoint 2010 is incredibly compelling – world's beyond Office by itself. And SharePoint 2010 itself is a very useful system that nothing else I am aware of can come close to matching for breadth of functionality.

Office/SharePoint will be a major game changer for the business world. The improvements in collaboration, availability, and functionality provided by the combination will increase productivity most everywhere. Even more important, it will provide for new ways for knowledge workers to approach problems and that will lead to major breakthroughs. The Internet is continuing to bring major paradigm changes in what we can do and how we do it. Office/SharePoint 2010 is another major shift.

For those of you that are not taking a look at SharePoint – you need to be checking it out ASAP. For those of you that are using SharePoint, please take a look at Windward Arrow – it rocks.

Podcast: Jeff Teper Interview

Sad News – The Music is Gone

When I created the start-up help/splash screen for AutoTag, I wanted to make it fun. Business software is so boring. Business reporting software even more so. And we have the great music from Enemy Nations. So I set the program to play this music while the Start Here screen is up. It's a really upbeat, let's go get it done kind of track. And the music could easily be turned off.

But… We had complaints. Some people didn't like the track. I respect that criticism – everyone has different taste. But we also had people tell us that it made the program seem cheap and unprofessional. The final nail in the coffin was when we hired a new intern, and in her review of the software, her first comment was "Music? Really?"

So the music is gone. Not a big deal. But I think business software would be better if more companies did things like this that were a little different. What do you think? Was I totally off-base?

Questions for Microsoft Vice President Jeff Teper

Hi all;

I'm interviewing Microsoft V.P. Jeff Teper on May 5. Jeff is Mr. SharePoint at MS and has been heading up the development effort on it from the start.

If you have any suggested questions for the interview, please post them in a comment below. I won't use every suggestion but I generally do use a lot of them (not counting the snarky ones), at least in part.

Note: I've done a lot of interviews of elected officials, but this is my first one in the tech sphere. So with this I'll learn if I can do as well with these. This interview will go up on HuffingtonPost (and a couple of other locations).

The Real Nerds of Silicon Valley

Reality shows have taken us to see the real lives of housewives across the country. We've followed businesspeople in New York. We've seen doctors and police in action. But until now, we have never had the opportunity to see what really goes on at software companies.

Finally, thanks to the sponsorship of Windward Reports and the production team at Barats and Bereta, we can bring you the a typical day in the life of a software developer at work. Presenting The Real Nerds of Silicon Valley - Dirk & Brent.

Cubicle War – Part I

Cubicle War – Part II

Want more? Check out What's your metaphor?

And if you have any suggestions for the next Cubicle War video, please suggest them in a comment below.

Cubicle Wars – Part I & II

We're a small software company with an incredibly boring product (reporting & document generation software). And we compete against Microsoft, Oracle, & SAP. Yet one week in 2006 – we had over 1 million unique visitors to our web site. And in this process we moved from no brand awareness to over 60% with our target audience.

How? By trying something different. Any company, no matter how small, can find a way to break through all the clutter out there and get noticed. There are a million ways to do it. This is one that worked. Here's the story.

Back in 2006 I saw a video on YouTube named Mother's Day that I thought was very clever. So I emailed Joe & Luke and asked if they would create one for us (for a fee). My only requirements was make it very funny to programmers, and mention our company. They came up with Cubicle Wars (part I).

When I first received it, I was really nervous. I had spent a lot (by our standards) and didn't know what I would get. So very nervous, I played it. And I was laughing so hard that I couldn't breathe. Ok step 1 was good – it was funny. Or at least I thought it was.

So we pushed it up to YouTube. And we crossed our fingers. It was a gigantic hit. It made the front page of Digg and YouTube. It made the opening paragraph of the MSDN newsletter (sent to every Windows developer). It was forwarded and referenced and copied everywhere. Ok step 2 was good – it went viral.

But that still left the question, did it help us. The old Joe Isuzu ads were hilarious, but they didn't sell any more cars. So what did we get? Well over the next couple of year we found:

1. Our name recognition went through the roof. When you're competing with the big guys, having prospective customers know you exist is gigantic.
2. People would stop at our booth at trade shows just to congratulate us on the video. (One professor told us he shows it the first day of each semester in his classes.)
3. Starting that week, and still going strong 3 years later, one of our top 5 sources of demo downloads almost every week come via YouTube.
4. Business Week did an article about the video. That article gave us the legit 3^rd party cite we needed to have a Windward Reports Wikipedia page. This then got us on the Reporting Software Wikipedia page.
5. And for Joe & Luke, they won an Addy and NBC asked them to do a pilot based on Cubicle Wars. (NBC did not pick it up – but they should have.)

So earlier this year we asked Joe & Luke to do a sequel. Once again make it funny and mention Windward. And once again they came through. Every bit as funny as the first.

There's a lot more competition for attention today. A lot lot LOT more. We didn't get the front page of Digg (yet), but we did get the front page of FunnyOrDie. We weren't on the front page of YouTube 100% of the time, because nothing gets 100% today – but we were there at times. So we were not front and center everywhere as we were in 2006, but I don't think that is even possible anymore. We are in a lot more places this time, because there are a lot more sites today (there was no HuffPo back then).

Every day getting attention is harder. Every day all kinds of marketing is harder. The trick is to keep trying new things. And when repeating efforts that were previously successful, learn how to use them better. You also need to realize that it's impossible to predict what will resonate best with people, and in what way.

So how did it work out? Our biggest worry when we first did this was would a successful video lead to more sales. That turned out to be an easy yes. If you make developers laugh, it turns out quite a few will look at your product. Our biggest issue this second time has been getting it in front of people – we were spoiled by how easy it was the first time. I think this is just the state of the Internet today – even more sites, even more content, even more competition for attention. So we've had to work a lot hard to get equivilent attention.

This second time we also had Joe & Luke create a 30 second ad. The idea behind it was that people who saw the video would want more, and would then watch the ad (not labeled as an ad). So it would be a mention of Windward Reports followed by a clear sell of Windward Reports. And again, the requirement was the ad had to be funny.

These guys are geniuses. I think it is one of the best ads for any product I have seen. It sells the fundamental concept of our system, and does so in a way that has you laughing. So good in fact that we are putting the ad out on websites as a click ad. It is pulling people in by itself. The combination of the ad along with the video makes up for the more challenging marketing environment of today.

If you are trying to get word out about your product, and you are drowning in the sea of noise that is the Internet, look for a different way to break out. It could be a video (Joe & Luke are available). It could be a free computer game. It could be a free quirky iPhone app. But I think the key point to focus on is you have to create something that gets the widespread attention. You then want it to link back to what you are selling – but that can be a light touch. The key challenge is getting people's attention. Because if 1 million people watch your video, 1% looking at your product is 10,000 potential customers.

Good luck.

Can we please get a Time-Zone: in the http request header?

If you look at an http request header, one of the lines in it is Accept-Language: de,en;q=0.7,en-us;q=0.3[CRLF]. This is telling the web server that the requester's first language preference is German (DE) and their fallback is English (EN). And if it's English, preferably the US dialect (EN-US). This info allows a website to automatically, if it supports the requested language, to present webpages in your preferred language – without the user having to do anything.

And with this language preference is handled automatically and invisibly to the user.

But when it comes to the timezone the user is in, no such luck. (For more on timezones please read What every developer should know about time).This is why you see news articles time stamped with the timezone of the server rather than your time. This is why many sites require that you select your timezone when registering. The list goes on…

I think it is way past time to add to the standard request header a line like: Time-Zone: MountainStandardTime[CRLF]. This would allow the web server to return pages with times set to the local time of the requesting browser. (The time zones can be abbreviated, but it must be done in a way to keep each unique as MST can be MountainStandardTime or MexicoStandardTime.)

Let's list out the objections to doing this, and answer them.

1. You can get the local time using GetDate() in a javascript call on the client page and returning the result. Yes you can (if the client has javascript enabled). But Arizona does not use daylight savings time so during standard time Arizona and MountainStandardTime are identical while during daylight savings time Arizona and PacificStandardTime are identical. There are other cases like this. So GetDate() does not provide a complete solution.
2. You can ask the user to set their timezone. Yes you can (and that is how most sites presently work). But news flash – people travel, and do so to different timezones. If you're like me, when you're on a trip, you leave your settings to your home timezone and do the conversion in your head. But isn't the purpose of software to make things easier for us rather than require that we adapt to the software?
3. We can't add a million new items to the http header. No we can't. But we can add a few that make sense. Bandwidth has increased substantially over the last 10 years. Adding even 10 new elements like this to the header would be immeasurably small in terms of bandwidth usage.

Now let's look at the advantages we gain from adding this functionality:

1. It will give sites that list time (news sites being the #1 case) the ability to list all times in your local time. Not just the time a news article was posted, but the times listed in the articles. When you are in Tokyo and want to watch the State of the Union address, you don't have to convert from EST – it's just listed in your local time in the article.
   This is in one respect a small thing. But I think it is important when we write code to always endeavor to make the software require as little as possible from the user and provide as much as possible. Implementing one little item like this is a small improvement. But implementing 100 little items like this, in sum, is significant. One of our jobs as developers is to find these small things and implement them.
2. Calendar programs, and not just our own but 3^rd party ones like eVite, GoToMeeting, etc., will be able to present times in the user's timezone. Where this becomes extremely useful is when appointments are set for a trip to another timezone – you can have those appointments set for that timezone and when you arrive there, you will see them in the correct local time. Without this functionality handling this gets very screwy.
3. To give a very specific example, our Arrow product (enterprise reporting & docgen system) would find this very useful when scheduling reports and displaying when reports last ran. The system runs on a server, but most of our customers have employees world-wide using it. And multiple people, many times in different timezones, are hitting the same reports. This would allow each to set events and read when reports ran in their local time – without ever having to set their timezone.

So how about it? Microsoft, Firefox, Apple, Google, Opera – it would be a piece of cake to install. Every significant operating system has the user set their local timezone. Implementing this would be a piece of cake. And it would get used – a lot.

Top 12 Nerd Movies of all Time

This is sort-of movies about nerds, but it's more what movies all nerds should watch. We were discussing this at lunch the other day and there was quite a bit of concensus over the first couple on the list.

Real Genius The Princess Bride Can't Buy me Love The Matrix Monty Python – any of them Blade Runner Star Trek Rushmore South Park Superbad Weird Science Revenge of the Nerds (I disagree but everyone else insisted)