One of the things that I thought might be interesting, perhaps even useful, to the readers would be to present various views on virtualization, cloud computing, etc., from industry executives. My first foray into this sort of thing was the recent e-mail interview with Surgient CTO, Dave Malcolm.
While I might think it is interesting or cool or useful, there are about 5,000 of you out there that may have a very different view. So, in the interest of trying to make this site as useful and informative as it can be, I’d like to know what you think. Is this idea a good idea? Do you find it interesting, informative? Or was it too “salesy”? I don’t want my site being turned into a platform for executives to just stand up and plug their products. Is there a better way I could do this, perhaps a different format? Should we require that people not plug their own products at all?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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No. Please keep the content technical - executive talk doesn’t make the cut. It is okay to “plug” products though - through product reviews.
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Hi Scott,
I think its a great idea but with the caveat ,as you alluded to, not to ’salesy’. My opinion, to balance that, would be to get adequate representation from the free open source crowd. I’d be very interested in to hear from the project lead on projects like Eucalyptus and libvirt . It would have the added benefit of contrasting the two perspectives in the v12n and cloud space.
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I really enjoy reading your posts and don’t mind reading interviews from industry leaders on virtualisation related topics. If anything, the interviews do give an insight into the minds of the CEO’s and an idea of where they’d like to take their company and products.
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Scott - I think its a great idea. I always value your perspective and expertise and every little bit of extra effort is appreciated. As long as you keep your opinion and view clear and distinct from those you are interviewing you can maintain integrity.
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Scott,
It’s your site you do what you want. I appreciate you asking the readers but if they don’t like the topic then don’t read it. Keep up the great work.
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Keep the content technical and informative. If you must push a product, push it but push it on merit and technical superiority.
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IF you can get a technical person from company XYZ to give you technical answers to questions without trying to sell their product, great. The last excerpt I found a complete waste of time. People reading directly from a marketing handbook isn’t helpful to anyone, and quite frankly, I can go direct to the vendors website if I want to hear why their widget 5.0 is the greatest thing ever created.
One of the reasons I come here is so I can get a (somewhat) unbiased technical discussion of topics. We see enough “my company is the greatest” in your comments section (not by you, by vendor employees), I’d prefer not to see entire posts about it.
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Thanks for everyone’s feedback. I’m going to give this another shot, but this time I’ve specifically instructed the vendor to remove any and all references to their own products. This should help the tone be less “salesy”. Hopefully, I can strike the right balance for this sort of thing. Please bear with me as I fine-tune. Thanks!
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Scott,
Technical information is always useful, of course, but often executives and marketing oriented folks are talking about the “big picture” (the good ones are at least), which I find to be more interesting anyway.Getting out of the technical weeds and looking at things from a high level can be enlightening and thought provoking.
If letting the vendor make a few plugs for their product so that they are more inclined to have an enlightening discussion with you… whats wrong with that?
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I don’t think interviewing CTOs would be that much of a departure as Duncan’s tangent post last month: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/03/22/you-dont-need-any-brains-to-listen-to-music/ But like Matthew said above, it is your blog so do what floats your boat. I personally would enjoy CTO discussions as long as the FUD stayed home.
You might consider an “executive zone” side of your site to keep that content separate from the technical stuff if you do enough of it. Looking forward to your new content.
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My eyes glaze over as soon as I detect management-speak. Please keep it technical. If the CTO wants to talk about trends, it would be super if they could keep it grounded without buzz words and ITIL rhetoric.
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I have another of these in the works; we’ll give it one more try and see how it is received. I’ve instructed the interviewee to specifically avoid plugging their own product or their own company, and instead talk about the technologies and challenges in more broad terms. Please let me know your thoughts after the next one goes live.
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>>>I’ve instructed the interviewee to specifically avoid plugging their own product<<>>>
The Surgient Virtual Automation Platform™ is the leading IT Service-based solution for optimizing the IT Service Delivery process through dynamic resource provisioning and heterogeneous infrastructure management.
<<<<What the heck does that mean? Really? So it’s not just vmotion and resource pools?
I’m all for spending money if it’s the appropriate product that resolves a business need and or pain point. I just don’t get what pain point the CTO is trying to fix for me if I buy his product.
As it sits, the previous interviewee, the statements were so innocuous that it’s mostly a smile and nod interview. I agree with most of his generalizations, but that’s all they are. Any PFY in datacenter dujour can come up with the same sentiment.
By getting rid of the products, we’re going Ivory Tower. I don’t really want to sit in on CompSci 101, I want to know about real products, in the trenches and how they’re used to solve legitimate business needs. Preferably with dollar signs, so I can know ahead of time if I should even bother.
Oh btw, thanks for the blog, I always look forward to reading the content here.
Thanks,
Doug
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Ugh I should know better than to use lt and gt signs. The rest of the comment.
… specifically avoid plugging their own product [endqoute]
I disagree with this.
I don’t mind the pitch, heck, I want the pitch. I preferably want real solid technical details with the pitch though. CXO’s tend to be pie in the sky and have the barest minimum concept of the product their pushing, figureheads mostly. Interview a sales engineer, the good ones are far more informed about their product line and have enough charisma to keep the PR jockeys happy. Product, foo, used with products bar, baz allowed customer to obtain business goal(s).
What does foo do that I can’t find from VendorB and why would I entertain using product foo at all?
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Hi Scott. I think interviewing technical people on the front line is an excellent idea. At Cisco, we’ve just launched our Innovations blog, and given your real-world experience, I would love to do an interview with you on our blog http://blogs.cisco.com/innovation. Does that interest you? If so please let me know by re-posting and I can contact you offline. I think our Cisco community would be most definitely interested in your thoughts about virtualization. I look forward to reading more of your posts, your interviews, and, of course, hearing back from you.
All the best, Jennifer Geisler, Manager of Network Systems Networking and Switching for Cisco.
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