Smalltalk hosting ...
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Ralph Johnson johnson@cs.uiuc.edu wrote:
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 6:02 AM, Geert Claes geert.wl.claes@gmail.com
wrote:
laurent laffont wrote:
...
The big problem with Pier is the terrible lack of documentation,
recipes,
how-to's...... no marketing, no communication with user.
...
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.
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.
- 10
Laurent.
-Ralph Johnson
Esug-list mailing list
Esug-list@lists.esug.org
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Hi,
I absolutely agree with Ralph, one of the main problems with Smalltalk over
the last twenty years
has been the lack of marketing of its strengths (the arrival of Java was
another one!).
Steve Edwards
(Frustrated ex-Smalltalker, ex-The-Object-People, now doing Java and Ruby.)
On 17 March 2011 11:16, Ralph Johnson johnson@cs.uiuc.edu wrote:
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 6:02 AM, Geert Claes geert.wl.claes@gmail.com
wrote:
laurent laffont wrote:
...
The big problem with Pier is the terrible lack of documentation,
recipes,
how-to's...... no marketing, no communication with user.
...
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.
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.
-Ralph Johnson
Esug-list mailing list
Esug-list@lists.esug.org
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org
--
Steve Edwards
Escala Ltd.
steve@escala.co.uk
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 :)
--
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Dear Steve, Geert and Ralph,
I hope you will be coming to ESUG in Edinburgh:
http://www.esug.org/Conferences/2011
-
The department in Edinburgh that are hosting us do research in CMS.
This topic would be a natural one to workshop there. Can we turn this
thread into a plan to progress this - maybe both in the preceeding
weekend's Camp Smalltalk and in the conference? -
Yes. I have used and ported Pier, and presented it to
non-Smalltalkers, and I have noticed that very small how-to or
clarification things could delay me and would undoubtedly affect a
non-Smalltalk user. (Some of it was just order of presentation - the
how-to's that a non-Smalltalker wants first are not too hard to find -
if you're a Smalltalker and so can guess where to look.) It would be
good to watch people starting to use Smalltalk's 'best-practice' web
suite and see what's slowing them.Yours faithfully Niall Ross
Hi,
I absolutely agree with Ralph, one of the main problems with Smalltalk
over the last twenty years
has been the lack of marketing of its strengths (the arrival of Java
was another one!).
Steve Edwards
(Frustrated ex-Smalltalker, ex-The-Object-People, now doing Java and
Ruby.)
On 17 March 2011 11:16, Ralph Johnson <johnson@cs.uiuc.edu
mailto:johnson@cs.uiuc.edu> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 6:02 AM, Geert Claes
<geert.wl.claes@gmail.com <mailto:geert.wl.claes@gmail.com>> wrote:
laurent laffont wrote:
...
The big problem with Pier is the terrible lack of
documentation, recipes,
how-to's...... no marketing, no communication with user.
...
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.
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.
-Ralph Johnson
_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
Esug-list@lists.esug.org <mailto:Esug-list@lists.esug.org>
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org
--
Steve Edwards
Escala Ltd.
steve@escala.co.uk mailto:steve@escala.co.uk
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Hi guys
Where were you?
Where are your bogs, books, videos, and cool Smalltalk open source projects?
I mean that this is easy to get frustrated but it is possible to do things:
- I wrote Squeak by Example not for me but for newcomers
- We are writing Pharo by example two for the same.
- I wrote the Seaside book because it was important for other people (and because avi was not writing one)
- we are pushing pharo because we want to create a good open-source smalltalk.
I came to smalltalk in 1996 when everybody left and I decided to do something. Now this is not enough but I'm not frustrated
and we are creating good energy. If people really want they can join and help or get frustrated.
Stef
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:47 PM, Geert Claes geert.wl.claes@gmail.comwrote:
Ralph Johnson wrote:
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.
Not sure about this. Documentation, exposure and advertising attracts
people. And among these people some will want to use what you have to offer.
I've just played a little with PharoCasts:
- Claire made a skin so the site looks better
- I've started a campain with google adwords (google offered me 80€ to try)
results: more visits, more Flattr and several mails from newcommers in my
inbox.
This is just a little experiment but it seems it works.
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 :)
I agree. world.st is nice. We need to have more people writing blogs, tweet,
screencasts .... it's not hard, it's not a lot of time. If people want
Smalltalk to succeed, do a small thing every day.
IMHO everyone and everyday is actually more important than big
project/application. Big project is the consequence.
Laurent.
ps. I have actually read a couple of Malcolm's books ... Chris Anderson's
Free is a good one too :)
--
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On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 2:28 PM, Alexandre Bergel abergel@dcc.uchile.clwrote:
- Yes. I have used and ported Pier, and presented it to
non-Smalltalkers, and I have noticed that very small how-to or clarification
things could delay me and would undoubtedly affect a non-Smalltalk user.
(Some of it was just order of presentation - the how-to's that a
non-Smalltalker wants first are not too hard to find - if you're a
Smalltalker and so can guess where to look.) It would be good to watch
people starting to use Smalltalk's 'best-practice' web suite and see what's
slowing them.
There is no need of how-to's for Pier for basic usage (e.g., editing pages,
adding menus, doing internal links, adding users).
I started to use Pier after watching Damien's screencast. I've tried before
but could not understand how to do => no courage to go further. May be I'm
stupid, but I need them.
Laurent.
It is wrong to think this is necessary. I have never read the documentation
of SimpleCMS, simply there isn't and there is no need to.
Alexandre
Hi,
I absolutely agree with Ralph, one of the main problems with Smalltalk
over the last twenty years
has been the lack of marketing of its strengths (the arrival of Java was
another one!).
Steve Edwards
(Frustrated ex-Smalltalker, ex-The-Object-People, now doing Java and
Ruby.)
On 17 March 2011 11:16, Ralph Johnson <johnson@cs.uiuc.edu <mailto:
johnson@cs.uiuc.edu>> wrote:
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 6:02 AM, Geert Claes
<geert.wl.claes@gmail.com <mailto:geert.wl.claes@gmail.com>> wrote:
laurent laffont wrote:
...
The big problem with Pier is the terrible lack of
documentation, recipes,
how-to's...... no marketing, no communication with user.
...
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.
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.
-Ralph Johnson
_______________________________________________
Esug-list mailing list
Esug-list@lists.esug.org <mailto:Esug-list@lists.esug.org>
http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org
--
Steve Edwards
Escala Ltd.
steve@escala.co.uk mailto:steve@escala.co.uk
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,.;:~^~:;.,.;:~^~:;.,.;:~^~:;.,.;:~^~:;.,.;:
Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu
^~:;.,.;:~^~:;.,.;:~^~:;.,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.
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laurent laffont wrote:
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:47 PM, Geert Claes wrote:
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.
Not sure about this. Documentation, exposure and advertising attracts
people. And among these people some will want to use what you have to
offer.
Yes, absolutely but again: only if you have an application people "want" to
use so that's the first priority.
laurent laffont wrote:
I've just played a little with PharoCasts:
- Claire made a skin so the site looks better
- I've started a campain with google adwords (google offered me 80€ to
try)
results: more visits, more Flattr and several mails from newcommers in my
inbox.
This is just a little experiment but it seems it works.
Nice, just one remark, the PharoCasts logo doesn't seem to work very well
against the dark grey background.
laurent laffont wrote:
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:47 PM, Geert Claes wrote:
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 :)
I agree. world.st is nice. We need to have more people writing blogs,
tweet, screencasts .... it's not hard, it's not a lot of time. If people
want Smalltalk to succeed, do a small thing every day.
IMHO everyone and everyday is actually more important than big
project/application. Big project is the consequence.
Thanks and absofreakinlutely :) I actually wrote this post about CMS
because world.st is currently a Google Sites website
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Alexandre Bergel-5 wrote:
I started to use Pier after watching Damien's screencast. I've tried
before but could not understand how
to do => no courage to go further. May be I'm stupid, but I need them.
I am not sure you need a better external documentation for Pier basic
usage. But you surely need a better and more intuitive GUI. Just better
marketing as Ralph would say.
Exactly, a UI that's intuitive needs no or minimal documentation
--
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On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Geert Claes geert.wl.claes@gmail.comwrote:
Alexandre Bergel-5 wrote:
I started to use Pier after watching Damien's screencast. I've tried
before but could not understand how
to do => no courage to go further. May be I'm stupid, but I need them.
I am not sure you need a better external documentation for Pier basic
usage. But you surely need a better and more intuitive GUI. Just better
marketing as Ralph would say.
Exactly, a UI that's intuitive needs no or minimal documentation
OK. Pier people, could you make an intuitive GUI please ? ;)
Laurent.
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