Years and years and years ago (OK, I’m feeling Boomer today), I was involved in the sale of a GUI-based application to the phone company. They resisted and resisted, despite our (and, unsurprisingly, Microsoft’s) ever-more-urgent importuning. We kept telling the executives that this was the future, it was the way they had to go and, damn it, you really need to get into the mid-1980s. They wanted to stay with character-based apps, but as the phone company used to regularly do (at least when I was with IBM), they did what we told them to do.
Such were the GUI wars.
But I didn’t realize that the war had ended…that we had “won”…until one Sunday in the early 1990s. I was, as I was wont to do, red-faced and furious on a Sunday afternoon at the amazing ineptness of the New England Patriots, who if I remember correctly, were losing 5000 to 0 to the Dolphins, when a Dodge Ram commercial interrupted the carnage. That commercial’s visual metaphor was a GUI. I realized that what was once “never going to happen” had now happened so completely, so permanently, that people didn’t even remember when they didn’t use and understand GUIs. It had crossed from a technological feature to a cultural idiom.
I’m not talking about Crossing the Chasm-style adoption. Instead, I am talking about how resistant everyone seems to be to something after which they are not only passive to it, they have amnesia about what life, or technology, or sports, or anything was like before they adopted whatever it is they’ve adopted en masse. It’s like we’re dogs: we live only in the moment.
So it is with podcasting. Nobody believes podcasting will ever be a mass medium. Nobody believes it can change the world. Pshaw! Phooey! Feh! All podcasting can be is a niche thing for techies.
Well, they didn’t spend Sunday afternoon with my college-age daughter and me. Returning from dropping my other kid off at summer camp, Sarah whipped out her iPod, plugged it into the car and said, “Dad, wanna hear my nursing podcasts?”
“Nursing podcasts? I didn’t know you were into podcasts!”
“Sure, Dad. [You helplessly out-of-tune old fart]. I listen to a bunch of ‘em.”
It was an instant replay of the Dodge Ram commercial. This new medium, which software company clients as recently as 2006 were insisting was irrelevant, to which nobody paid any attention, had reached its final destination: a fait accompli. And nobody remembers a time when they thought podcasting was a waste of electrons, spent for the enjoyment of social misfits.
Instead, podcasting, is, and always was, an excellent way to reach specific audiences. It’s part of every nutritionally well-balanced software company’s marketing strategy. Podcasts are the best way to reach your audiences….and they always have been.
The way people seem to be acting about this — without any connection to the previous reality — is gonna put a whole bunch of singing fat ladies out of business. After all, if nothing’s changed, who needs ‘em to signal a transition?
3DMojo » Blog Archive » Technology Asset Yard Sale 11:04 pm on June 5, 2008 Permalink |
[...] that is a sarcastic stretch… but for a really good rant on Right Hemisphere you should read this blog post by our former head of marketing). Regardless, it sounds to me like they are prepping to be bought [...]
Todd Allen 8:11 pm on June 7, 2008 Permalink |
I’m surprised that you couldn’t come up with a better commentary than this, especially being unemployed. I love the internet and all it offers, until I read something like this and realize: anyone with some time on their hands, a new dictionary and a chemical imbalance can write a blog.
I am not a decision maker, just a grunt on an evaluation team that is looking at both Right Hemisphere and Seemage. Both have great stories and good products, but biased rants with no substance do not help me and the rest of our team evaluate software. You seem like a somewhat intelligent person, and can’t help but think you could come up with some concrete pros and cons for the public to digest.
My summation of this article….boring, bitter and angry. You must be struggling on those unemployment checks…whoever you are.
Alex Neihaus 8:56 pm on June 7, 2008 Permalink |
Hi, Todd.
Thanks for worrying about my employment status, which is just fine. (-:
I didn’t set out to help you (or anyone else) evaluate RH vs. 3DVIA Composer. I don’t have a dog in that hunt.
I am expressing my opinion — on my blog — about a company that is both derivative and drifting. You don’t have to read it…you don’t have to consider it.
You want Right Hemisphere? Help yourself. No skin off my back. But there’s one thing you should consider: what I say about imitation is a valuable clue about what using their software might be like.
All software is intangible (though I suspect you are trying to make it less so in your evaluation). How often do evaluators get an inside look at the competitive dynamics between alternatives? That’s a more reliable metric than feature checklists, IMHO.
For the record, I am not “bitter and angry.” I just think their blog is terrible. And if they don’t like the feedback, then they don’t belong in the blogosphere.
Good luck to you.
Todd Allen 11:22 pm on June 7, 2008 Permalink |
Your right, I am going to go re-read the Right Hemisphere and Seemage blogs…hang on. Yes, I see your point, and actually both Right Hemisphere AND Seemage’s blogs are lacking. They lost credibility with me the minute I noticed that they don’t have a picture of a little toy “phone-car” on their blog like you do. Do you have matching pajamas?
Winning with blogging: real authenticity | Thinking aloud 4:28 pm on May 6, 2009 Permalink |
[...] fact that we used community to start a discussion about those ideas simply blew competitors away. Right Hemisphere is still trying to figure out what happened to them, long after Seemage went onto greater glory in [...]