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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Microsoft Office 12: new user interface
From:       Alan Horkan <horkana () maths ! tcd ! ie>
Date:       2005-09-24 12:30:41
Message-ID: Pine.BSF.4.58L0.0509241310120.19967 () salmon ! maths ! tcd ! ie
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On Fri, 23 Sep 2005, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:

> i think there is more to learn here marketing wise than there is
> technologically: the actual things they are showing off are interesting at
> best, but the false humanist approach is amazingly cunning.

Microsoft read the cluetrain manifesto.
Channel 9 is straight out of the cluetrain manifesto.

I wrote about it before after reading the KDE Marketing Presentation
http://www.advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/diary.html?start=265#cluetrian
In particular you should all read the short guidelines Microsoft provides
for all Channel 9 users (again straight out of the Cluetrain manifesto):
http://channel9.msdn.com/about.aspx#cluetrain

They haven't quite got the hang of speaking in an honest voice and
breaking through their corporate jargon.  I recently saw microsoft use the
phrase UX in the advertising material without explaining it and felt a
little sick. (UX is usability jargon for User Experience, although a few
years back Microsoft was telling use that was what XP stood for.)

There is a "debating tactic" which essentially involves shouting down your
opponent (it is fairly crude and to be used to with restraint or else it
backfires).  There are so many people interested in Open Source every user
is a potential evangelist and Microsoft would kill to have a fraction of
the positive word of mouth adversting most open source projects get.
(Conversely if you act like a condescending developer and piss off you
users you get flames instead of free advertising.

You do not have to write much but if every KOffice developer wrote one
paragraph a week saying something nice about KOffice it would add up to a
whole lot of advertising.  Every word we say in public is potential
advertising (and these lists are very much public, archived on the web for
all to see).

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape http://inkscape.org
Abiword http://www.abisource.com
Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/
Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
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