Do we need a new Ed?

It’s calm, very calm out there. Kinda strange if you think that Gini Rometty said that IBM Notes is a flagship.
What is certainly missing is Ed. He is still blogging, unfortunately not about things that are important to the yellow bubble.
His successor – who ever that is right now – has yet to get the hang of blogging.

11 Gedanken zu „Do we need a new Ed?“

  2. One could make the case that, now that Ed’s focus is mobile, the topics of his blog posts are of greater importance to the Domino community than ever before — or, that they should be. One of the key obstacles to an increase in Domino’s market share is the lingering perception that Domino (and, of course, Notes) is not modern. End user perception of what is modern is now driven almost entirely by the mobile ecosystem. Those of us who earn our living providing Domino-based solutions to our customers are either keenly in tune with this direct link between mobile user experience and end user perception of enterprise solutions, and are diligently molding our Domino-based offerings to keep pace with what is perceived to be modern… or we are ensuring that the portions of the Domino market upon which we have a direct impact will be motivated to ignore or abandon the platform. So, while I agree that it would be beneficial to have someone else from inside IBM continue to champion Domino with the same zeal that Ed did for so long, I would strongly urge all Domino professionals to keep a close eye on what Ed continues to post, and pursue continual awareness of the concepts to which he calls our attention.

  5. Blogs are only as good as there followers. Kramer, in my opinion is much more customer centric/focused than Ed was. At MWLUG, he made it an effort to meet all the sponsors/exibors and see how they were doing, and asking good questions about their relationship with IBM.

    So Bloging is good, but you need a good mesage behind it. My money is on Kramer to push the brand forward.

  6. I’m not sure Ed’s blogging was hugely successful in growing Notes/Domino market share, this isn’t a poke at Ed, I’m sure Ed’s blog kept some customers onboard, but the reality is a blog with a few hundred daily unique users, won’t compete with a serious marketing effort.

    Should IBM be visible with blogs around Notes/Domino? Yes.
    Will an Ed replacement be enough? No.

  8. The answer is a definite YES. As somebody who formally led OpenNTF (the IBM Notes/Domino/Connections Open Source Community) and runs an extremely successful ISV I have had no contact whatsoever with any of the new „Eds“. NONE – zip. I am not hearing or seeing a „strategy for the brand“ from my corner of the world. Believe me – I wish there was one as I am still a HUGE fan of the technology.

    As I have stated before on Twitter „there is no more rudder“.

    I wish I could have said something different.

    Bruce

  9. Well Bruce if you are an „extremely successful ISV“ where is the problem?
    While I always (and still do) appreciated what Ed Brill has done in the Collaboration space nowadays it would smell a lot like cheap stealth marketing for a dying product line.
    First IBM would have to completely rethink its Collaboration Business, then they would have to play offense with a new Marketing approach and real investments in the product line (one that goes much further than recycling some old stuff and not fixing what is broken). It would have to be radical and fresh. If that happens they could start putting someone upfront starting to spread the good news. Currently anybody on the front would be the emperor without clothes.
    The last period of Ed Brill’s reign has been quite depressive for me. Too many times he had to play defense, the news in many cases were not good and while he always tried to do his best (and really made a difference in many ways) simply many business decisions seemed to be out of his range of influence. The last months he even seemed to be a bit tired about the never-ending discussions around the Notes and Domino platform. It is a discussion you cannot win anyway imho.
    For sure he had not chosen the easy way for a career path inside IBM.
    Financially for IBM it made sense. Fighting a platform war would have been a cost intensive strategy with an uncertain end.
    So while I always appreciate what Ed Brill has done for the community I doubt it would still work in 2013. As for Tim’s comment around mobile. I still read Ed Brill’s blog with interest (although he is blogging much less nowadays) but mobile and IBM just does not work for me. The trust is gone and there is competition in this space that gives me choice.
    Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me!

  10. Henning,

    The key to Elguji is that we shifted to a cloud strategy and it worked. Our cloud customers know nothing about the underlying tech and frankly they don’t care. Do we still support our Notes/Domino base – you bet. Did I mention that IBM is one of our biggest cloud customers?

    Is Notes/Domino a growth market? No. Can IBM fix this? In my opinion, no it cannot.

    Again – great technology but the world has moved on, especially corporate IT.

  11. I am still catholic enough to believe that any non-sarcastic use of Gardner magic fourth quadrant in one sentence will cost those guys at least 7 days in one of this hell circles Dante mentioned in Divina Comedia.

    For me edbrill.com in the 2006 until 2009 period was bizare. „We know that we have the ‚best‘ technology. We just have to spread the message“. You may see it as professional marketing. For me it was propaganda with only partly having skin in the game. I am totally fascinated by this stuff. Generating pseudo rationale arguments to sell something without any kind of holistic view. And aplause from the crowd.

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