Engineering Driven vs. Community Driven (was Re: Ugliness)

Tue Apr 29 18:10:38 CEST 2008

Ok.. I'm severely jet lagged but I will try to throw some closure on this
and hope it is coherent.   Steve has been very cordial and enlightening in
his mails to me.  The last I have yet to digest and respond to but overall
it is good, constructive stuff. After reading the diaglogue that has ensued,
I totally understand why he wanted to take the conversation private.  We'll
has some things and go from there.  Sorry for starting a firestorm.

I want to let everyone know I don't intend to be negative and that was why I
sent that last message.  If I see problems, I want to offer solutions.  I
also want to thank Stroller for his phenomenal job for capturing (and
translating) what I was trying to say.

There was one statement made that I want to comment on...

>I mean marketing is really just "how to sell"....<SNIP>

That statement could not be farther from the truth, IMHO.  I think any Tech
CEO worth his salt would tell you the same.   That very statement and belief
is why so many startups in Silicon Valley (and probably worldwide) with very
amazing products have gone bankrupt. I have friends that lived through that
nightmare.  That mindset is the very essence of the problem my original
e-mail was trying to address.  I couldn't have summed it better myself.  It
makes it sound like engineering comes up with a product all on it's own,
throws it over a wall and to Marketing and says "here, sell it". Kind of
like a hot potato. That was the case once... in the 60's, I believe.

Today, any company that had that mindset would not last long unless they had
very deep pockets. Yes, I have a specific company in mind.  My thought is
let's roll that marketing effort over to this project from a community
perspective.  A lot of Open Source projects already do it.. Open Office is
the first one that comes to mind.  One of the thing I want to do with Steve
is draw some boundaries... What is in Openmoko's court, and what is in the
community's court regarding marketing... etc.

In the meantime, let's roll out the FreeRunner and once it's out, well
attack the next project publicly.  Ok.. I'm going to sleep now. :)  Cheers!

Lowell

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 6:58 PM, steve <steve at openmoko.com> wrote:

>  thanks for explaining that to folks
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org
> [mailto:community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org] On Behalf Of Stroller
> Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 2:01 PM
> To: List for Openmoko community discussion
> Subject: Re: Engineering Driven vs. Community Driven (was Re: Ugliness)
>
>
> On 28 Apr 2008, at 17:54, hank williams wrote:
>
> > I have to say my unvoiced thoughts were the same as Ryan's. I was
> > not at all clear why a call for the community to help figure
> > marketing stuff out would be met by a request to take the
> > discussion off list as though it was somehow inappropriate for
> > public discussion. It seemed like a very strange response. Now
> > reading the responses to Ryan's comments seem even more strange. I
> > feel like I am missing something because the responses to Ryan's
> > comments seem on the surface, inappropriate as well.
>
>
> If you read further back in this thread you'll see that the subject
> changed in reply to my message, "Re: Ugliness"  (26 April 2008
> 13:58:04 BST).
>
> If you read back you'll see that before that someone was complaining
> "the Freerunner will never sell in the mass-market because me & my
> friends think it's ugly", and my counterpoint was, "heck, I'm sure
> FIC have done some market research (focus groups &c)".
>
> Lowell Higley obviously knows his stuff regarding selling tech
> products, and he raises some interesting points. I immediately wanted
> to reply to them, but I could have spent hours doing so. Not to argue
> with him, just to purse interesting avenues of discussion.
>
> But Lowell's insights are far more in depth than your average Xbox vs
> Playstation, who's-winning-the-format-war, fanbois' forum thread. As
> Lowell says:
>
>   Marketing is much more than holding focus groups and creating sales
>   copy.  There is competitive analysis, business cases, marketing
>   requirements, "negotiating" with engineering over the final product,
>   schedule.. and the list goes on.  My point is, as I look at things
>   and put the picture together, I see no strong marketing presence
>   in the FreeRunner.  Where's the MRD?  Where's the focus group?
>   Where's the business case?
>
> In case you don't speak the business jargon, "competitive analysis"
> means "how much does the competition sell for, how much will it cost
> us to make a similar product and how much profit can we make?".
>
> "Business cases" and the results of focus groups, say FIC stating
> that "you & your friends may think it's ugly, but we reckon we can
> sell XX thousand units and make $yyyyyyy profit" aren't really any of
> our business.
>
> In his second message (27 April 2008 18:16:11 BST) Lowell raises the
> "goal" of the OpenMoko project, which is ostensibly "the best
> possible mobile phone software stack" that can be installed over a
> wide range of phones. But underlying that is the fact that the goal
> of FIC, in sponsoring OpenMoko, is to sell more phones and (like any
> business) make more profit.
>
> For any company this sort of information - the anticipated number of
> units sold, market breakdown &c - is a trade secret, and I don't see
> why OpenMoko should be any different. In many cases this sort of
> information may be available to someone with experience in the
> industry (or reasonably estimable by them), but it may not be the
> sort of information that any company will publish casually.
>
> Whilst OpenMoko may be interested in public discussion of what we
> consumers want (colours, features &c), whilst they may be interested
> in open discussion of ideas and whilst they're obviously prepared to
> give fuller and more dynamic feedback to us, how much money they're
> making on each phone is none of our business. I'm sure that Apple
> don't even tell their shareholders how much each iPod costs to build.
>
> When we buy FIC's OpenMoko products we're buying hardware that is
> guaranteed open-source, so that we can fix it ourselves. We're buying
> FIC's sponsorship of the programmers contributing to the OpenMoko
> codebase and we're buying a promise of warranty & support in the
> future (we obviously hope that FIC will continue to sponsor updated
> firmware for our phones in the future, and we're pretty confident
> they're going to do so longer - and provider better feature updates -
> than Sony Ericson). Just as, in polite company, one doesn't ask one's
> friends or acquaintances how much they earn, it is likewise none of
> our business how much FIC makes out of each phone sake, and it seems
> to me that that's pretty much what the "secrecy" whiners on this
> thread are asking for (although they may not have actually realised
> that),
>
> Any company will provide "inside information" to the trade press -
> perhaps if you're able to demonstrate such informed questions as
> Lowell has then FIC'll invite you, too, to their opening
> presentations. You'll maybe have to sign an NDA, but you'll still be
> able to make oblique tips to your readers based on your improved
> vision of the mobile phone market place. What you have to do first is
> demonstrate that you're not a whining fanboi, but that your unique
> insight can add value to the discussion of the product.
>
> I found Lowell's remarks interesting because he seems to be looking
> at Freerunner's place in the market from the old closed-development
> point of view. It seems likely to me that FIC don't need to sell as
> many phones as Nokia in order to make a profit, at least not all at
> once - the developing state of OpenMoko will ensure a longer
> production life-span for the Freerunner than the 6 months or so of
> the typical mobile phone in the high street store. As the first
> generation of OpenMoko phone, the whole production span of Freerunner
> may be a loss-leader to FIC - one might expect the buzz and blogging
> generated over the course of two years to increase massively the
> demand for OpenMoko's 2010 (say) product.
>
> Stroller.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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