Hi Matt..<br><br>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.<br>
<br>Here's how I see the roles working in an open environment...<br><br>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."<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>Lowell<br><br>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.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Crane, Matthew <<a href="mailto:mcrane03@harris.com">mcrane03@harris.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">I understand what you're saying about engineers tossing a
product over the wall being a throw back. </font></span><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">*Of course*
there's back and forth and both marketing and rnd contributing to each
other.. <span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"></font></span></font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"></font></span></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">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.
</font></span></font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"><span>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">If the concerns are too overlapped, or if there is no
seperation and specialization, I don't think that works well generally.
</font></span></div></span></font></span><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">I think there's very high value wrt role
seperation and specialization. </font></span><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">I don't think it
was suggested that there was some kind of wall in the middle, that's
ridiculous. But t<span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">he best products come from a respect for the others roles
and intense focus on what people are good
at.</font></span></font></span></div></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"><span></span></font></span><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"><span></span></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">Matt</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span></span><span></span><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left" lang="en-us">
<hr>
<font face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:community-bounces@lists.openmoko.org" target="_blank">community-bounces@lists.openmoko.org</a>
[mailto:<a href="mailto:community-bounces@lists.openmoko.org" target="_blank">community-bounces@lists.openmoko.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Lowell
Higley<br><b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, April 29, 2008 12:11 PM<div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br><b>To:</b> List for
Openmoko community discussion<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: Engineering Driven vs.
Community Driven (was Re: Ugliness)<br></div></div></font><br></div><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">
<div></div>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>There was one
statement made that I want to comment on...<br><br>><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">I mean marketing is really just "how to
sell"....<SNIP></font></span><br><br>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. <br><br>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.<br><br>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!<br><br>Lowell<br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 6:58 PM, steve <<a href="mailto:steve@openmoko.com" target="_blank">steve@openmoko.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> thanks
for explaining that to folks<br>
<div><br><br>-----Original Message-----<br>From: <a href="mailto:community-bounces@lists.openmoko.org" target="_blank">community-bounces@lists.openmoko.org</a><br></div>
<div>[mailto:<a href="mailto:community-bounces@lists.openmoko.org" target="_blank">community-bounces@lists.openmoko.org</a>]
On Behalf Of Stroller<br>Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 2:01 PM<br>To: List for
Openmoko community discussion<br>Subject: Re: Engineering Driven vs. Community
Driven (was Re: Ugliness)<br><br><br></div>
<div>
<div></div>
<div>On 28 Apr 2008, at 17:54, hank williams wrote:<br><br>> I
have to say my unvoiced thoughts were the same as Ryan's. I was<br>> not at
all clear why a call for the community to help figure<br>> marketing stuff
out would be met by a request to take the<br>> discussion off list as
though it was somehow inappropriate for<br>> public discussion. It seemed
like a very strange response. Now<br>> reading the responses to Ryan's
comments seem even more strange. I<br>> feel like I am missing something
because the responses to Ryan's<br>> comments seem on the surface,
inappropriate as well.<br><br><br>If you read further back in this thread
you'll see that the subject<br>changed in reply to my message, "Re: Ugliness"
(26 April 2008<br>13:58:04 BST).<br><br>If you read back you'll see that
before that someone was complaining<br>"the Freerunner will never sell in the
mass-market because me & my<br>friends think it's ugly", and my
counterpoint was, "heck, I'm sure<br>FIC have done some market research (focus
groups &c)".<br><br>Lowell Higley obviously knows his stuff regarding
selling tech<br>products, and he raises some interesting points. I immediately
wanted<br>to reply to them, but I could have spent hours doing so. Not to
argue<br>with him, just to purse interesting avenues of discussion.<br><br>But
Lowell's insights are far more in depth than your average Xbox
vs<br>Playstation, who's-winning-the-format-war, fanbois' forum thread.
As<br>Lowell says:<br><br> Marketing is much more than holding focus
groups and creating sales<br> copy. There is competitive analysis,
business cases, marketing<br> requirements, "negotiating" with
engineering over the final product,<br> schedule.. and the list goes on.
My point is, as I look at things<br> and put the picture together,
I see no strong marketing presence<br> in the FreeRunner. Where's
the MRD? Where's the focus group?<br> Where's the business
case?<br><br>In case you don't speak the business jargon, "competitive
analysis"<br>means "how much does the competition sell for, how much will it
cost<br>us to make a similar product and how much profit can we
make?".<br><br>"Business cases" and the results of focus groups, say FIC
stating<br>that "you & your friends may think it's ugly, but we reckon we
can<br>sell XX thousand units and make $yyyyyyy profit" aren't really any
of<br>our business.<br><br>In his second message (27 April 2008 18:16:11 BST)
Lowell raises the<br>"goal" of the OpenMoko project, which is ostensibly "the
best<br>possible mobile phone software stack" that can be installed over
a<br>wide range of phones. But underlying that is the fact that the goal<br>of
FIC, in sponsoring OpenMoko, is to sell more phones and (like any<br>business)
make more profit.<br><br>For any company this sort of information - the
anticipated number of<br>units sold, market breakdown &c - is a trade
secret, and I don't see<br>why OpenMoko should be any different. In many cases
this sort of<br>information may be available to someone with experience in
the<br>industry (or reasonably estimable by them), but it may not be
the<br>sort of information that any company will publish
casually.<br><br>Whilst OpenMoko may be interested in public discussion of
what we<br>consumers want (colours, features &c), whilst they may be
interested<br>in open discussion of ideas and whilst they're obviously
prepared to<br>give fuller and more dynamic feedback to us, how much money
they're<br>making on each phone is none of our business. I'm sure that
Apple<br>don't even tell their shareholders how much each iPod costs to
build.<br><br>When we buy FIC's OpenMoko products we're buying hardware that
is<br>guaranteed open-source, so that we can fix it ourselves. We're
buying<br>FIC's sponsorship of the programmers contributing to the
OpenMoko<br>codebase and we're buying a promise of warranty & support in
the<br>future (we obviously hope that FIC will continue to sponsor
updated<br>firmware for our phones in the future, and we're pretty
confident<br>they're going to do so longer - and provider better feature
updates -<br>than Sony Ericson). Just as, in polite company, one doesn't ask
one's<br>friends or acquaintances how much they earn, it is likewise none
of<br>our business how much FIC makes out of each phone sake, and it
seems<br>to me that that's pretty much what the "secrecy" whiners on
this<br>thread are asking for (although they may not have actually
realised<br>that),<br><br>Any company will provide "inside information" to the
trade press -<br>perhaps if you're able to demonstrate such informed questions
as<br>Lowell has then FIC'll invite you, too, to their
opening<br>presentations. You'll maybe have to sign an NDA, but you'll still
be<br>able to make oblique tips to your readers based on your
improved<br>vision of the mobile phone market place. What you have to do first
is<br>demonstrate that you're not a whining fanboi, but that your
unique<br>insight can add value to the discussion of the product.<br><br>I
found Lowell's remarks interesting because he seems to be looking<br>at
Freerunner's place in the market from the old closed-development<br>point of
view. It seems likely to me that FIC don't need to sell as<br>many phones as
Nokia in order to make a profit, at least not all at<br>once - the developing
state of OpenMoko will ensure a longer<br>production life-span for the
Freerunner than the 6 months or so of<br>the typical mobile phone in the high
street store. As the first<br>generation of OpenMoko phone, the whole
production span of Freerunner<br>may be a loss-leader to FIC - one might
expect the buzz and blogging<br>generated over the course of two years to
increase massively the<br>demand for OpenMoko's 2010 (say)
product.<br><br>Stroller.<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Openmoko
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