Fanboys, a better Microsoft and Channel9 revisited
I got exactly what I expected when I called Channel9 stupid. Heck, it even got Scoble to notice. So now that someone is listening, let me go deeper. (Also... a shout to G. Andrew Duthie for mistakingly identifying him a 'Softie. My bad! For some reason I thought you were part of the team, but then I get a lot of people confused because a lot of authors, ASPInsiders and such have pretty good access to what's going on.)
First off, let me say I used “stupid” intentionally get actual discussion started. It's a strong word, but people react strongly to strong words. I'm not out to poo-poo someone's idea just for the sake of doing so, but all of the me-too's were, well, I guess kind of annoying. Contrary to what Colin Ramsay says, I'm not shortsighted and it has nothing to do with my testicular fortitude or comfort level with the community at large. Come on... I'm only 30, and not ready to be set in my ways.
I'm pleased to say that some people see what I'm getting at, and furthermore got me thinking about additional things. There were also a great deal of fanboyisms that don't really help, like, “Nobody is forcing you to visit Channel9.”
No one responded to my initial point that the kingdom fragments around Microsoft lack cohesive vision, and that's a problem. Demonizing “marketing” and repackaging it as “communication” or “evangelism” seems kind of silly to me, yet that's what the “Channel9 Doctrine” essentially is.
Developers are notoriously poor at marketing. Maybe there's some psychological nonsense or personality typing that explains this, but if you've ever had to interview IT people, you know what I'm talking about. It's not a flattering stereotype, but these otherwise brilliant professionals suck at selling themselves. They suck at selling their best ideas to managers, and thus, managers make bad decisions that don't make sense that the developers then have to implement. If you've worked in any corporate environment, you know this to be true.
Getting beyond this in the corporate environment requires people who are brilliant developers and brilliant marketers. They're a rare breed, and I don't think I qualify for the title either. I've worked for them before, and they've convinced CTO's, COO's and CEO's to take a path that makes the most sense from our keyboards, not what some quasi-tech savvy manager thinks.
The division between marketing and developers isn't a surprise at all. We've all had to meet impossible expectations sold by sales and marketing people. We live at separate ends of the hall or in entirely different buildings. Half the time they end up making more than us. No wonder people think marketing is a dirty word. (You might also chalk it up to the brilliant folks who slapped “.NET“ on every other product a few years ago.)
Getting back now to my last post, there eventually has to be some kind of overseeing direction to guide the ship. Google seems to be pretty good at this. They have all kinds of entrepreneurial efforts, some of them public, but at the end of the day they have to tie into the big picture to be viable. That's why Gmail will generate revenue on ads, just like their search results, news and Usenet access.
Channel9 is another effort that isn't part of the big picture because there isn't a clear big picture.
As an aside, the content strategy is kind of poor as well (as Jerry Pisk mentions). That's something I'm not shy about agreeing with because my background is broadcast video, from long before the Internet lured me away with dollar signs (and unemployment checks). If I excuse for a moment the horrible sound and lighting, the medium is not well suited for a development community. I don't watch the other streaming programs onilne (MSDN, Rocks!, etc.) either because, as Jerry put it, “You can't consume the information at your own pace, you can't search it, you can't quickly find what you need, you can't link to a specific piece of information in it.” Maybe some day we'll get to a point that has changed, but we're a long way from it.
The most useful applications of online video, news and porn, are mostly pay services now, because they're valuable to their respective audiences, enough so that people will pay for them. I can't think of any other video I'm interested in seeing online (not that I'm looking at porn ;)).
In the roller coaster enthusiast community, Cedar Point reigns supreme as the most popular roller coaster-oriented park in the world. People like me are accused of being fanboys all of the time when we stick up for the park and justify its popularity. However, its biggest fans are also its biggest critics, myself included. I'm a Microsoft fanboy. The difference is that I'm not going to let something I care about just go through the motions of being great when it's not. The Java community has been doing this for years, and it's not helping them. If you've lived with the crap that is the Visual Studio ASP.NET designer for two years and not said anything, you're part of the problem.
Do your fanboy duty and think about it before you say, “Me too.”