Tim Buntel Really Cares About ColdFusion Developers
I had a great chat with Tim Buntel, Adobe's Sr. Product Marketing Manager for ColdFusion, yesterday regarding my recent posting about the misconceptions plaguing ColdFusion. We touched on several topics including:
- Tim’s budgetary constraints
- Adobe’s efforts to help subsidize existing publications like Fusion Authority
- The need for Adobe’s sale teams to follow up with existing clients before they lose them
- How ColdFusion was recently reprioritized within Adobe’s product structure to change its focus to an enterprise level
- My opinion where advertising should be targeted
Overall, I came away with a much better sense of what Tim and his group have to contend with and while I’m not happy that he doesn’t have more of a budget to work with (c'mon Adobe!!), I did come to the conclusion that Tim is very dedicated to the ColdFusion community and is trying to improve CF’s reach. The fact that he took the time to address my concerns definitely showed me that he’s trying hard to meet our needs.
Thanks Tim!!
Other marketing ideas are for Adobe to fund an independent research firm to gather "real" statistics on the performance of a CF8 OO app compared to PHP, ASP.NET, and JSP. Heck fund CNET to do it, then have them publicize the findings. (Assuming CF8 really can hang with the others, which I assume it can.)
Or help fund print advertising in newspapers and business journals in cities where Ben Forta will be presenting on Scorpio, during his Scorpio tour. User Groups organize and put on the event, but only members know about it. We need to get the word out to non-members to come find out the "truth" about Coldfusion. User Groups can't afford to advertise, but Adobe could. It would likely increase attendance to the event too, another plus.
And finally, the new buzz about marketing these days is for organizations to hire ameteurs and everyday people to participate in contests or make videos which include a company's product. Doritos did this with their commercials last Sunday for the biggest NFL game of the year. Adobe could easily create a factsheet about CF and distribute it to User Group Managers, Community Experts, Champions, etc., to blog about and post in forums to get a new conversation started. Perhaps a "that was then, this is now" approach to CF8. One of the great things about a new product is no one can trash it, because they don't know anything about it. The naysayers will be silent about CF8, so getting a conversation started prior to its release might get some of them to try CF8 out.
Adobe really needs to back Coldfusion 8. One of the pros of the merger was because Adobe has all that cash, whereas Macromedia didn't. C'mon Adobe, give Mr. Buntel some funds.
I think ColdFusion's biggest strength is also the most difficult to measure and that is how rapidly you can develop applications using it...
I like the idea of a community contest - this would tie in perfectly with Adobe's creative end...
ColdFusions strength is RAD and its competition is Ruby, Groovy, Python, PHP and anything else that lets you quickly script together functional web apps. The great news with CF is that while it supports a decent range of advanced programming functions, it doesn't require them allowing less skilled developers to get something working quickly but still supporting more experienced developers in building credible, maintainable systems (I'd love everything to be an object, native support for closures and Lisp style Macros, but I'd recommend firing anyone at Adobe if they seriously considered adding any of them to the language).
CF is about cfquery, cfoutput and cf-whatever cool stuff you'd like to do. Its niche is RAD for departments within enterprises and government and I think the story should be about testimonials about what *you* can do with CF - showing everyday business people printing cool reports and the very occasional intermediate developer building larger well architected sites - all the time focusing on the deployment on Java.
And talk about the tags. That is what differentiates CF from PHP.
Just my 2c!
@Jim, Jim & Peter: You all offerred great ideas and I hope that Tim is reading your comments. I know he's actively looking for better and more cost efficient ways of reaching new customers.
It's great to see those comments going to Adobe :) The other week I replied on David Fekke's blog about a couple of points which I think may seem small to some who have been in the game for a while, but both of which might prove to be fairly large influencing factors when you consider reaching developers who might otherwise snob off CF because they see so many other options readily available to them. Here are the two main points I posted:
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A few months ago when there was a similar discussion about adoption of CF, I almost got my head bitten off for saying that I think the cost of CF is a prohibitive factor. If that weren't true, then why do people always bring it up? It was brought up in the digg thread, and it gets brought up all the time by people who know little to nothing about ColdFusion <--- it's THOSE people whose eyes we are trying to open!!! Just because some people think a few grand means nothing to business does not mean that developers who are looking for a language to call their own will think the same way - they just won't. Ask any developer who has never used or taken the time to evaluate ColdFusion and they will say "doesn't that cost money?". If people can't look past the dollar signs then they will never see the language (and platform) for what is really is. Cost *is* a prohibiting factor to CF adoption. Can anyone honestly tell me that I don't have a valid point here?
I think Adobe need to take a clear stance with the "Developer" edition of CF. Don't call it a "free trial". Just call it "free" and still clearly list any limitations (maybe the limitations can be relaxed a little too, but that's for another post). Don't smother the ColdFusion homepage with "Buy online", "Buy or upgrade", "Order by phone". Just have a whopping great box that says "Download now". Seriously, take a look at the page (http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/): the first link you see at the top of the content is "Buy or upgrade to ColdFusion MX 7", and the first link you see in the navigation on the right is "Buy online'. Remember: almost all of the competition is completely free - there is no such thing as "Buy online" with Ruby or Phython or PHP or Java.
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I probably didn't word those two paragraphs the best way at the time because I was in a rush, and I totally agree that Adobe still needs the "Buy now" links featured reasonably prominently on the page so they can ensure they aren't going to lose any sales, but I feel the misconceptions around the "cost" of using CF are somewhat widespread and need to be rectified somehow. I don't have the answers, but it seems that some people don't even consider this a valid argument, and I whole heartedly disagree with them for the reasons already mentioned.
Incidentally, my third point was about letting more people into the CF8 beta, and I got my invite during the week :D I still think the CF8 open beta will need to be widely publicised though, because we need to start getting people interested and start generating a bit of hype now, not after CF8 has launched. ;)
If I was bored it would be fun to compile a list of all the new 'Web 2.0' applications (Flickr, Digg, etc) and find out what platform/technologies they use...
Jim
Not everyone can go on to become pros, but if the "script kiddies" have good reasons for choosing CF then Adobe might be able to gain a foothold within the up and coming generations.
I am a long-time CF developer who is buckling under the constraints of having to run all my CF projects all on my own, and I have to go the route of PHP/Ruby, which means I have to get someone else to develop for me because all I know is CF (I have not been a pro developer since 2001).
I love ColdFusion and I really, really hope we can see some of the excellent suggestions about "free versions" and marketing come real.