If RedMonk was Gartner Group

we would refuse to attend AR events that were covered by blanket NDAs.

we would also refuse to attend AR events where analyst firm sales people are allowed to attend (the growing trend to have sales people at analyst events is distasteful. you can’t talk to me without a salesperson present…. please tell me AR departments of the world… why do you put up with that?)

I just had yet another email exchange with a woman at a major software company that insists on having an “everything is NDA at our annual event” policy. We’re supposed to ask for permission to write about anything we have learned at the conference. 

So I have to ask before I can blog about something, just in case its not public information, even if you might actually have made it public six months ago? Why not just tag secrets with the tag secret? If you can’t say what your valuable secrets are, how are we supposed to know what they are?

The blanket NDA policy doesn’t make sense in today’s information economy. Approaches predicated on control of coverage are doomed to failure, whatever some AR people claim. Perhaps ironically the company in question has suffered its fair share of negative coverage.

By all means NDA your trade secrets and futures. But please work out what they are before, not after the event.

So why don’t we just say no, now, already? Because we still want to cover these firms, and know about corporate strategy, product and so on, and to not attend would be self-defeating, and would do a disservice to our readers and clients.

As I have said before though, keeping secrets has a cost. Managing NDAs and embargos incurs a management cost. Can I speak to this? Let me just go check. You are thus consuming my most valuable asset – time.

This turns trade secrets into externalities, like pollution or public safety. I don’t mind keeping secrets for clients, or even just with people we talk to, people we already have a trust relationship with. But its important those secrets are identified. If I ask you “would you stand by that in public” then chances are I want to use that information.

Quite simply I am a lot happier about keeping secrets for people I know personally, or for clients that pay us money. If you’re paying us we can amortise the cost of keeping your secrets.

If you don’t pay us but we do cover you these are sunk costs which really can’t be recovered.

If we end up beholden to your permissions in a way that leads to an inevitable conclusion- you are far less likely to be part of our conversation with the market.

Blanket NDAs are like blanket DRM- they function as lard that prevents the efficient flowing of information from one party to another. Blanket NDAs limit information arbitrage.

Another of the biggest companies in the software world has an element inside it that likes to claim RedMonk intentionally breaks NDAs. Not true. We couldn’t do the work we do with the clients we have if we couldnt keep secrets. But assuming everything is a secret in every conversation until someone asks permission to use the material is just asking for trouble.

I can’t offer comprehensive buy-side advice if everything sellside is a secret.

Maintain your own secrets. Know the value of your own IP. Don’t waste time protecting secrets that actually aren’t secrets. If RedMonk was Gartner Group we could push that understanding though. But then again, Gartner perhaps benefits from secrecy in a way RedMonk doesn’t. Maybe that’s why it makes the big bucks while we’re just the upstarts.