I’m on the way back home, to Austin, from Chicago, having attended the first day of the Eclipse Marketing Symposium.

Developer Marketing – Do’s and Don’t’s

Eclipse asked me up to give a talk, Developer Marketing: Do’s and Don’t’s:

PDF download also available.

Having been a developer of late, it was fun giving the room some guidelines for successful marketing. I think I managed to wedge in “don’t make me fill out a registration form” twice ;>

A special thanks goes out to those of you who answered my pestering questions of late along these lines. Special mention goes to Tony who has two nice email-cum-blog entries on his hands.

If you’re curious about the prattle behind the slides above, I’d be happy to talk about them more.

Briefings

This morning, I had a series of blitz briefings with Eclipse related companies in town:

• Webtide – like myself, you may not be familiar with Webtide, but you probably know Jetty. In my mind, Jetty had long been a sort of “embedded” web container, or, at the very least, an extremely light-weight one. From our conversation, it sounds like Webtide is doing all right providing support and services around Jetty, in addition to some interesting bus-like uses in the mobile and other worlds.
• Actuate – I had the chance to meet again with Virgil Dodson of Actuate and catch up on BIRT and other concerns. We filmed a video on the topic — it’s always nice to check-in with past guests — so I’ll save the skinny for that.
• OpenMethods – I hadn’t heard of OpenMethods before this morning, so it was interesting dipping my toe in the “IVR” (Interactive Voice Response) world. OpenMethods provides a tool (built on Eclipse) for doing VoiceXML flows which are fed to IVR systems. You know: “press 3 to check your balance, 4 to talk to a representative.” As in most “established” industries, there seems to be plenty of room for innovation in the IVR world. For example, one of the demos showed the deliver of video weather reports to phones. My immediate thought here was that my mobile-game wizard friend, Josh Knowles, could surely cook up some interesting uses for tools like OpenMethod’s offerings.
• OpenMake – you may recall OpenMake from earlier this year, esp. when it comes to their integration with CMDBs. In addition to performing builds for you (with all the “paperwork” that goes with that) OpenMake uses the software asset information they have to integrate and fill out entries in CMDBs. As an IT management wonk, this idea is an interesting, somewhat missing piece from a lot of the CMDB talk I hear. Namely, a detailed look into the custom software deployed into IT.
• Innoopract – the Innoopract folks work on the Eclipse Ajax-y project, RAP. The idea of RAP is provide a web-front end for RCP applications. They were kind enough to shoot a video for RedMonkTV with me as well, so I’ll save it for the podcast ;>
• Ingres – finally, I talked with Ingres who’s recently become involved with Eclipse. From what they told me, they’ve found much use and utility for their customers with the Eclipse DTP project. The Ingres database, of course, has been around quite some time — long enough to have spawned the name Postges. They have a large existing customer base and, from the conversation I had, have been moving into service and support whole-hog.
• Genuitec – while not on the official schedule, the Flower Mound folks and I managed to get together for a nice update. As with any client, it was great to sieze the opportunistic moment to catch-up. The interesting thing about Genuitec (and their MyEclipse offering) is that they seem to filling a sort of third party Java developer tool vacuum. That’s not the exact phrasing, but they fill a roll similar to “independent” IT management companies: being about one thing without allegiance to an “in-house” stack. The hope here is that these vacuum fillers — be it developer tools or IT management folks — can focus on the core workflow — developing software or making IT a money printer rather than a cash-bleeder — rather than as a support offering for the larger vendor stack.

“Know me!” Panel

In addition to the presentation and briefings above, I sat in on a panel about getting attention and “ink” from press and analysts. Eclipse’s Ian Skerrett moderated, and got the ball rolling by asking, how can I get you guys to talk about my offerings?

The answers from the three of us were essentially the same: have something interesting. This of course, begged the question, what’s “interesting” mean? Between the two press folks and I, the answer was (only) slightly different. The press folks were interested in genuinely new and different things, as was I.

A few questions later, I realized that I actually spend a fair amount of attention on things that may not actually be “new and fresh,” as it were. In addition to those “new and fresh” things, I’m always looking to update myself on the current state and offerings of organizations and technology ecosystems I’m interested in. For example, I often ask people for a “what’s been going on since last we talked?” briefing just to catch up. Put another way, I’m looking to have an answer to the question, “so what’s up with company/project XYZ?”

At the end there was a great question from the audience about the value, esp. for smaller companies, of hiring PR/AR firms. All of us agreed that the value is the relationship the PR people have with press and analysts. Interesting — and I hadn’t thought this through until today — I value the PR/AR people way above the actual firms they work for. This has been made clear when PR/AR people I know move to other firms and our working relationship continues.

The conclusion there, then, is that when it comes to the question of getting press and analyst attention, PR/AR firms are valuable for the people and the relationships with press and analyst that they have. I learned early on that a “good” (friendly and laid-back, for me)

PR/AR person is worth their weight in gold. Once you develop of (working) friendship with a PR/AR person, you can pretty much be sure that most things they bring you will be of interest to you and in your “area.” …not to mention the cookies they send ;>

Disclaimer: Eclipse is a client and paid for my participation/presentation. Genuitec and Actuate are clients as well, in addition to Sun.

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