Sorry Ed but you are not a Scoble!
Ed Brill has one of the few blogs that evangelize what IBM is doing in the collaboration space, and it really bugs me that there are so few and that they rarely show much passion for the great products that IBM has in this area. Ed recently compared his blog to Robert Scoble’s and I am afraid this comparison doesn’t work for me for many reasons, for example:
- Robert was often brutally critical of Microsoft’s products
- Robert often invited controversy by talking about areas where Microsoft was weak and needed to improve as a company
- Robert truly evangelized new technologies, ways of working and cultural change not just within Microsoft but across the industry
- Robert pushed hard to make Microsoft more open and transparent
- Robert blogged on his own time and followed his own, not Microsoft’s agenda
- Robert’s blog was very comment rich, in fact many people – including me – read his blog as much for the varied opinion and discussion in the comments as his own content
Ed I don’t see any of these characteristics in your blog, for me your focus is on debunking Microsoft marketing, and I readily admit that you have some valid points to make there, I no for sure that most people would prefer you and your peers to blog about your great products and processes, to encourage a whole host of passionate developers, users and consultants working with your technologies to share their passion and expertise. Ed I want more blogs like Alan Lepofsky’s, but please Alan not more posts like this one!
Don’t get me wrong though Ed, thanks for writing, you are one of my best sources of info on all things IBM collaboration!
Steve, thank you for the compliment on my blog, but can you please explain your objection to the TechEd related posting? I’ve gotten dozens of emails thanking me for that post. I certainly plan on posting about the others days as well, I’ve just been too busy so far.
Hi Alan, I look to your blog for information about Lotus/IBM products and I think its a good resourse, but there are way too few like it. I don’t personally need another blog that makes superficial comparisons with Microsoft stuff. Whilst I had nothing much against your post, I just don’t want to see your positive information blog turn into a Microsoft bashing blog like Ed Brill’s.
That said it’s a bit worrying that your post got so much attention, it seems that Lotus fans are looking for something to make them feel valued and comments like “I swear I was in a Sametime session held in 1998” seem to be just the sort of thing they are looking for. I think you would find it interesting to dig into a product like LCS and its client Office Communicator and do a comparison of the shipping capabilities compared to Sametime, and aside from web conferencing I think your would be suprised at how much Microsoft have actually shipped.
It’s also pretty important when you make comments like
“The presenter was actually demoing how you can change your status from “Available” to “I am away”. As anger crept up in me, I decided to take a deep breath and calm myself, accepting the fact that these real-time features are new to many companies”
To remember that just because a feature is being demonstrated doesn’t mean it’s new in fact like Sametime it has been shipping for many years. Sametime also suffers from the fact that in my experience around 50% of Lotus customers have yet to deploy it.
Nice to see he responded to you – even though he ignored me
Ed made a considered reply to my comments which you can find here if you are interested http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/steve-richards-sorry-ed-but-you-are-not-a-scoble, it’s a useful balence piece and points out some mis reading on my part, but there is definately some value emerging from the debate
Steve, I think you will see, as I have seen, that most companies do not have a problem with Sametime as much they do with instant messaging themselves. I have heard countless companies worry about productivity of their employees than they complain about Sametime.
LCS will be no different.
Good point David, it was my loose wording, I didn’t mean to imply that this was actually as a result of problems with Sametime, just that lots of companies have yet to implement any form of enterprise IM product.
Not a problem, Robert. Completely understandable in the loose-wording scenario. Just wanted to make sure the connection was with IM products in general and not just Sametime.
David, who’s “Robert”? ;o)
I think after all the posts that David has made coaching me on this discussion, I can forgive him one little slip. For Robert read Steve đŸ™‚
I’ve engaged Graham via e-mail. My blog on this applies reasonably well to Graham as well — I do agree that I need to get some topics more front-and-center.
I find it somewhat amazing but yet not surprising the perception of his impact on Microsoft Scoble has appeared to convey on the blogging community. Scoble wrote his perception of his own world. In actuality Scoble was a low-level MS employee that chose to blog about his perceptions of Microsoft. Sure his Channel 9 duties enabled him to make connections with many within Microsoft that were producing technology. But in that role he was no different than that dude that used to do those technology reports on airlines. He just showed up and filmed people. To think that he had any impact within Microsoft from a change perspective is not reality. He would like all of us to believe that, but the truth of that matter is is that not even 1/3rd of Microsoft employees knew who he was. His leaving is a non-event within the company. No one will miss him from a strategic or setting direction perspective. In fact, I would submit that his team won’t miss him. He is just as replaceable as a tester or a support engineer. So please, let’s stop with that idea that Scoble had any impact on much of anything of strategic value within the walls of Microsoft. As the saying goes: “He’s a legend in his own mind”