Saturday, February 24, 2007
this started out as an email i was going to send a co-worker, but i think this should have wider exposure (and stay off the company systems). also, it's a
rant; i could very well be wrong about some or all of this. then again, i could very well be right.
anyway, i sanitized it just a bit, yet those who know will be able to put two and two together. doesn't make sense to do a corporate character assassination in public. that serves no one's interests.
direct liability ? none. pissing off people with the truth ?
priceless.
these are instructive...
that should improve (what's zero times anything ? ;-)) a bit eventually with the main blog feed renaming. still need to think about all the individual blog names, though.
note that _domain_names_ are not the driver here.
why aren't people beating a path to their door ? _because_they_have_no_reason_to_, that's why. it would be a damn shame, not to mention a waste of money, to put marketing effort into selling a content-vacuum to the masses. come to think of it, it's already a damn shame about the money already spent. it doesn't make sense to polish up the showcase, or start an advertising or online presence blitz, when the showcase holds little more than dust.
ok, it's a bit better than dust, but only marginally. hell, XXX-department doesn't even do their own magazine clippings - the use a company to do that for them ! and then there's the one stilted article per week that XXX-person posts. yep - dry as dust, and about as "relevant", their latest marketing buzzword. wasn't it "joyful" just an eyeblink ago ? how is anyone supposed to get any sense of brand, or identity ? but i digress.
i think the bottom line is that XXX, and XXX-department in particular, are not what or who they think they are. this is yet one more non-profit susceptibility, since being divorced from direct feedback means there is less reality check, affecting this important aspect of business reality. (note that those blogs are not non-profit, nor are they infrequently posted to.)
good luck to any design or marketing - or even _development_ - firm that they bring in, because they have little to work with. and hey, that's business; they're not going to tell their customer that their product / service is fantasy, they'll just take the offered money, put a bow on the website, and move on to the next sucker in line.
yeah, affects dev too. we haven't really explicitly recognized how this affects us so far, but here it is: how can we make real what isn't there ? we get no specs _because_there_aren't_any_ ! if we were allowed to ask the questions, the lid would come off the box, everyone would peer inside, and well, it's the emperor's new clothes.
so really what they are saying is that they want to have someone else create, market and run a business, create the product (content), provide someone else's services (coaches, speakers), and then they want the money for this, either skimming profits or taking them in their entirety. ! .
well, shoot. yeah, i'd like that too ;-)
but here's the way the world works. if one adds little or no value, then all they are doing is being a source for _other_ companies' revenues, making money off of other people's delusions. or not; they don't really care as long as they are getting _their_ money.
so what value does XXX-department really add ? ok, they can organize a local conference. what value can they add to, for example, their detroit or LA initiatives ? not a lot. those other people are going to have a poker faced discussion with XXX-department, and as soon as the call / meeting is over, they're going to laugh at them behind their backs. or so would be the best case. worst case is that the scam continues to propagate.
so anyway, let's give a bum a mansion and a ceo's compensation. he'll grow into it, right ?
wrong.
normally one is allowed resources etc. when they prove they can responsibly handle them. want a website ? want to pretty up your show case ? well, then, _show_me_the_money_. or the content. the value. as in, "hey, we've got good stuff, if only it was presented better". but hell, those have been the hardest teeth to pull. they want a site, _but_they_are_reluctant_to_put_anything_on_it_ ! so what's the site for, then ?
so to date, they've been claiming that the problem is not with the stuffing, but the casing (like how i keep shifting metaphors ? easy to follow, right ? wrong. and that's what XXX-department (and XXX) has been doing, shape-shifting and losing trust and continuity. like all these parenthesized comments.). and not just the casing, but the sausage makers. us. so they want someone else. the last thing they want to admit is that maybe they haven't got anything.
which is too bad, because XXX _could_ develop worthwhile offerings for the web. but one has to start from a position of acceptance of current reality, and decide on what and what is not possible from there.
as it is, XXX-department wants to go national with stuff that they really don't seem to have a clue about in terms of the infrastructure they will need. and i'm not talking technology here, i'm talking about man-hours, personnel, expertise, and cultural relevance outside of upper middle class white female east-side XXX-city.
and meanwhile, it's the folks over in XXX-other-department who _really_ should be getting our attention and services (website exposure, etc.). they are the ones who are the real heart of what XXX is and does. XXX-department is a flim-flam sideshow, catering to delusional "haves" while pissing on the have-nots because they are afraid that their lack of "joyfullness" might scare off the deep-pocketed elitist conservative snobs _who_don't_even_need_the_help_ !
yeah, it's just a way to fleece some money from the crowd with more money than sense. a tiny effort at justification is made by saying that this money goes to help fund XXX-other-department services. but it doesn't, since these things have always _lost_ money. wtf ?!?
and it's all of _this_ that i've been trying to address, to improve the business by leveraging the technical process to shed some light on the reality of the situation, and thus re-engineer something that they _can_ be proud of, that _does_ contribute value to a broad community, and that _does_ merit revenue to further expand a worthwhile service.
for this, they need to mine their own hearts, not the world's wallets.
i realize that for much of that it would help understanding to have more context, but i won't provide it. just blowing off steam, and using the energy to make a point in the process.
* * * * * *
so, how 'bout them bears ?
;-)