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

[ramsesoriginal]

Ok, my experience in the marketing field is very specific, and my
experience as an engineer is practically non-existant (i'm still
studying), so i wil lsimply step back and listen to you guys on this
discussion. I just wanted to point out a really cool
idea/product/service (call it like you want):
http://zooppa.com/
I'ts a really cool idea of making advertisement social.. in some sort
of way. I really like this idea and would liek to point it to you guys
:D

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 10:12 PM, Lowell Higley <higleylh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Matt..
>
> I think I get a sense of where you are coming from.  As an engineer, one
> thinks "oh no, here comes these marketing people with their unrealistic
> requirements again."  Been there.  Even been on the giving end. :(  On the
> flip side, as a marketer one sometimes thinks, "Man, will these guys ever
> get a clue, no one wants that feature set."  In a *perfect* world, engineers
> and marketers would be equal partners.. I don't think I've actually seen
> this work perfectly yet but I know the relationship I built with the
> engineering at Unisys was hard earned and it was built on trust (both ways.)
> It was a pretty good relationship and took me a few years to build. You have
> to treat the other side as part of the team, not the enemy as we have
> instincts to do.  I've done it, I know.
>
> Here's how I see the roles working in an open environment...
>
> The marketing team creates a list of features that the product needs to
> have.  There is a lot that goes into this I want to keep it simple for now.
> They sit down with the engineering team and create a list of agreed upon
> features (even suggested features engineering brings to the table) that go
> into the next product, prioritized of course.  That list of features is
> created based on priority and feasibility of hitting the target completion
> date (agreed upon by everyone.. sort of.)  Engineering then makes the magic
> happen... when a feature or requirement turns out it can't be met (through
> bug or other technical issue) both teams work out either a revised feature
> list or target date.  Depends on how important that feature is.  I've been
> in situations where I was told 5 days before the target date "oh by the way,
> we dumped that must have feature x."
>
> While the engineering team is building the marketing team is working out the
> future of the next product and creating the collateral and campaign for the
> product in development.  All publicly of course, with the aid of anyone
> (including the techie folks) that wants to help.  I have a lot of ideas.  I
> was thinking the bug database would be a good place to keep feature
> suggestions/submissions... but I couldn't find a bug database in the wiki.
> I must be blind.  From that point, it's a big cycle.  Once you get it
> going... it's easy to keep on it.  The hard part is building the
> collaborative tools/process to do all this in.
>
> I think as an after thought, maybe we don't want to split into teams, just
> create a logical process...  Not sure how that would work, though.  People
> have definite skills in one are or the other.  Anyways, that's my hair
> brained idea... I guess I should talk this out with Steve before I go too
> much further down this road.  Thanks for the feedback.  I think I understand
> your perspective now.
>
> Lowell
>
> PS - regarding Open Marketing, I'm a fan.  I've been attempting to load the
> framework on my Motorola E680i but not had too much success.  Damn QVGA.
> The people in my LUG know I am very interested in this project so I get
> questions once a week via IRC on Openmoko.  Far from an expert but they seem
> to like my answer.  I know if I had one to show off at a meeting, it would
> be a hit.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Crane, Matthew <mcrane03 at harris.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I understand what you're saying about engineers tossing a product over the
> wall being a throw back.  *Of course* there's back and forth and both
> marketing and rnd contributing to each other..
> >
> > But I think it is typical for engineers to yearn for a larger role in
> marketing decisions and, less so, marketing to overstate their role in
> product engineering.   Both groups have strong investments in the product
> dev process in different ways.   I think engineering tends to be more of a
> group development effort, where marketing relies more on the strength of
> individuals, all with very good reasons.
> >
> >
> > If the concerns are too overlapped, or if there is no seperation and
> specialization, I don't think that works well generally.  I think there's
> very high value wrt role seperation and specialization.   I don't think it
> was suggested that there was some kind of wall in the middle, that's
> ridiculous.  But the best products come from a respect for the others roles
> and intense focus on what people are good at.
> >
> > Matt
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
>  From: community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org
> [mailto:community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org] On Behalf Of Lowell Higley
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 12:11 PM
> >
> >
> >
> > To: List for Openmoko community discussion
> > Subject: Re: Engineering Driven vs. Community Driven (was Re: Ugliness)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 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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> > > community at lists.openmoko.org
> > > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
> > >
> > >
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> >
> >
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