Congratulations to developerWorks for getting this year’s Hall of Fame Jolt award.

First, it just seems proper that the award is named Jolt. I may be contaminated by Hollywierd here, but I do have visions of developers working late at night drinking Jolt Cola and eating pizza.

Next, the dW crowd are a group of very talented and under appreciated group that have struggled in notoriety, but not in results against the likes of MSDN. Finally, they are getting the recognition they deserve.

How are they awarded? Here is a clip from the Dr. Dobbs website that describes who is a winner:

Software development has grown from an elite set of tools that everyone knew about and used, to today’s prolific industry awash with hundreds of products that morph and evolve with such swiftness and complexity that it is virtually impossible for developers to keep up with the changing market. Which products should they continue to use? Which upgrades and new versions are worthwhile? Which new tools’ performance and usability far outstrip their competitors? What is the new killer app? Enter the Jolt Product Excellence Awards: We recognize the most innovative, trend-making, ahead-of-the-curve products. Jolt-award winners are the software products, books and websites that developers should be using today.

Finally, here is a clip from the dW website with other winners from dW:

Two frequent developerWorks authors (but not IBM employees) also were among the co-authors of the technical book that won the Jolt Product Excellence award. Congratulations to dW contributors Brett McLaughlin and Gary Pollice, who (along with David West) co-wrote the winning title, Head First Object-Oriented Analysis & Design.

More awards!

dW and IBM also enjoyed other big honors at the Jolt awards event. The photo below reflects three IBM awards. Shown here are (clockwise from the top) award recipients IBM Fellow Grady Booch, who won the exclusive Dr. Dobb’s “Excellence in Programming Award” (pictured in the poster); yours truly, dW EIC Michael O’Connell, holding the developerWorks Jolt Hall of Fame Award; and book author and IBM Rational Practice Leader Scott W. Ambler, holding his Jolt Productivity Award for the technical book Refactoring Databases he co-authored with Pramod J. Sadalage.

Sure, I complained that Events was taking away from my ability to do my job, but this event is different.

I was just speaking with Gary Barnett of Ovum and it became clear that this event is focused both on the IBM and the analyst side. This allows us to concentrate on a smaller content area rather than a shotgun approach. It also means the audience is more intimate than usual. The specificity of the event means that we won’t recycle charts from an earlier event which is refreshing also.

Opening Comments by Jeff Smith: This is about all things Open, communities, vendors, geographies and ecosystem. Our contribution is important and is a combination of our investment and commitment. We add value to the ecosystem by adding to all things open. Our growth will leverage open source to gain new users and enter new markets.

New made up word for the event - anonymize, which is what our identiy mixer code contribution is doing to help security.

It also highlights our innovation theme. We have advancement in the Eclipse platform, OpenAjax, ODF…Open Server including Apache Geronimo, Xen Hypervisor and the Linux kernel where we do lots of work (with our partners). This is important to us as we are proponents of an environment of choice.Industry specific frameworks are important to us. We apply collaborative industry solutions as an approach, specific to the profession, i.e. healthcare.

Back to the event logistics. Most of this event is handled in round table format, designed to encourage collaboration rather than preaching on our part. It gets the discussion going rather than pontificating. As Gary said, it keeps us from traveling thousands of miles to have a pissing contest.  Thanks Gary, said better than I could.

BusinessWeek asks this question.

I’ll give the answer, yes….maybe.

There is the outside chance that SAP can emerge the golden knight and save it’s image, but this tactic is like politics. If you read the article, it does seem that SAP did some dirty work and appears guilty. I’ve learned to wait before passing judgement, especially when there are lawyers involved as you never get the whole truth from them up front…..or sometimes ever.

The politics angle is like a PR stunt. It doesn’t really matter whether SAP is judged guilty or not by the court of law. They have been judged guilty in the court of perception where everyone now at least questions did they do it.

Here’s how it’s done. One candidate stands up and says something like, “My opponent molests collies” (line from Animal House, I have nothing against collies). The opponent now has to move off of his stump and his messaging is derailed while he does damage control. This is a tactic employed by virtually all politicians, put your opponant on the defensive and he has to deal with a potential non issue and commences a cycle of wheel spinning rather than campaigning on their message. Dirty, but effective, ask any presidential loser in the last few elections.

So Oracle has accused SAP of molesting collies for the next 2-5 years and can bring it up in front of all their customers.It makes me wonder why SAP? Obviously, Oracle and SAP have it in for each other. You don’t fire your cannons at someone you don’t care about or think can’t hurt you. These guys are it together because they have the same customers or pool of money in mind. I’m just glad it wasn’t us this go around.

After I wrote about the number of events we are doing and the related planning, I had a discussion with a few analysts regarding the same.

One interesting comment was about the ROI of attending these events. If it came down to a speaking engagement vs. an event that covered a topic we can discuss by phone or have spoken to, most analysts pick the paid event…of course. The same analyst said that there are a number of events that we do not pick up the expenses for, making the content of the meeting the criteria for attending. It gets tougher and tougher for them to opt to go to these meetings.
Another comment was that with so many events, many times the content is recycled to fit the topic de jour. Since a tiger can’t change it’s stripes, the strategy is the strategy and we can only espouse it so many times before it is repetitive.

Still another analyst commented that traveling sux. Although it is a part of the job, if we could cut down the number of events it would be appreciated.

All of these were fair comments, yet we are still obligated to get our message out. We also must compete with those who are trying to cut into our market and mindshare. These face to face events are helpful, but we the industry need to figure out how to make them more beneficial and at the same time consider whether all of them are necessary or when do we reach the point of diminishing returns.

Instead of working last Friday, I took my son fishing for crappie.  We got on them and had fun, and dinner.  One day this will be my day job.

Here are Eddie Haskell, The Beaver and Wally.

The WSJ reports that the sale of music is in decline. There is talk in the article about shake out in music retailers, iPod and digital music and cheaper prices from big retailers but the article never really comes to a conclusion or result other than it’s declining.

I’ll list a few probable causes, then my choice for the answer.

In the album days, you bought all of the songs as that is how it was sold. Whether it was a record,cassette or CD, you get the album at album prices. Sure you come to like a lot of the songs on the album that are not released as hits, some even grow to be your favorites. The reality is that if you had the choice you likely wouldn’t have bought them though. Now you can pick and choose what you want and buy digital music a la carte so you spend less than a dollar a song instead of around ten dollars for an album download.

Next potential reason is that a lot of sales were booked as sold when they went to the record stores or album area in Best Buy, Target, Tower Records, whatever. Not all of these made it to the end user, but were recorded as sales.

Next potential reason is that we are being distracted by other types of entertainment. I have an iPod and i don’t only use it for music. I listen to lots of podcasts, watch videos, listen to audiobooks and other things it does. My time for music has been reduced. I like many others just don’t have the time I used to have.

Next potential reason is that younger people are a big consumer (I didn’t say purchaser) of music. They are more emotionally connected to it, have had more time for it, are more empowered by music and so on. But they are spending more time texting on their phones, playing video games and other things that don’t leave the time we used to have for music.

Now for why I think sales are going down. First (but not the number one reason, I saved that for last), piracy. Songs are being traded on MySpace, email, and other places with other people. This is cutting into sales more than a lot of people think, except the accountants and lawyers in the music industry. I refuse to pirate music and will pay for every song as a matter of principle, but almost no one I’ve met fully agrees with me. There is also a huge amount of piracy documented in the Asia/Pacific region.

Here’s why I think sales are down the most. People vote with their money. They buy what they want and don’t buy what they don’t want. The quality of music today is crap with a capital K. Don’t even pretend to tell me what goes on in RAP is good (kill cops, beat women). For those that want to argue this point, the jury will open 5 years from now when it will have stood the test of time, which it won’t - contact me then. I don’t have any dog in this fight other than what I and a lot of others think. I’m not just down on RAP as a majority of the rest of the music is rubbish, being put out to get a share of the money but with no real quality. I’m not slamming all new music, everyone has their personal likes and you will buy that (hopefully not steal). Your tastes will show up in the buying numbers, which are going down as is documented. A lot of what is being made now is just noise. People don’t buy Krap.

So that is my opinion, which is just that, my opinion. But someone smarter than me give a better reason for why sales are down?

It seems that the the trend for A/R is steeply going towards events.  Currently, I’m involved in 6 at some stage or another.  While these are crucial to our job with presenting the message, the time and detail commitment is significant and takes one away from your actual duties.  Not that I’m not suited for it, I was show coordinator for many companies, but I never like to take my eye off the ball.

There is a certain level of complexity involved in getting an executive to a meeting with an analyst when you do it right.  Preparation and perspiration is closely linked to success.  I’ve noticed that when you bring multiple executives into the fray (always the case at an event) the complexity increase is geometric, not mathematic.   Doing what I call the calendar dance to get schedules to meet is tough enough with a busy exec., but bring in multiples, plus prep, plus follow up and it’s heaping fuel to the fire.

This gets compounded by the number and type of analysts that are at the event.  If it is a single firm, personality is a main concern, but most of a firm have a general commitment to the firm’s business goal, so you have an target to shoot at.  Bring in multiple firms with competing egos and business objectives, the complexity quotient goes up now on another side.

I’ll spare the meeting details, but we do have to deal with non a/r related items like food, travel and other issues that again drain your time from actually engaging with an analyst.

So I’m pondering where is the line of diminishing returns where you have so many meetings to plan for that you are planning more than you are engaging.  Are we getting the same bang for the buck from adding an additional meeting, or can we count on the traditional methods and technology to brief, answer questions, exchange messaging and inform each other?

One thing I learned at the Evans Developer Conference was that IBM has it’s own TV channel. 

While I am a supporter of Social Computing, I am still a TV junkie with DVR’s/DVD read and write, and multiple other tv related devices.  I fully intend to get a slingbox to send my recorded shows to airports, hotels and wherever IBM sends me.

So I’m encouraged to find that there is a place at IBM to find this medium.  Maybe it’s “anti-social” computing that I want to watch it?

I spent the last 2 days at the Evans Developer Conference. I noticed a few things and trends that stood out.

There was more transparancy than any other conference I’d been to. Why this was intriguing was that we were a group of competitors sharing our ways of success. I’ll name a few:

• Giving out direct links to company program offereings, yes they are findable, but this was a bit interesting
• Tactics for a successful developer program, telling everyone how to be a success, also interesting
• How to drive revenue
• How to speak to the developers in developer terms, the art of communication
• Specific Communications process by content
• Global issues
• Price points
• Sales tracking process and opportunity
• Developer mindset

I guess it wasn’t a big deal, every company was clear about what they did.

Here are other things I noticed about the people:

• There were a lot of MacBooks, usually it is Lenovo, Dell or other Wintel machines
• The Ferrari Acer Notebook is way cool
• Developers can’t operate without a Blackberry
• A distinct lack of Wedding rings…too much time developing?
• Much less jeans than I though I would see
• A lack of make up by the ladies
• No sign of Microsoft, Oracle or SAP at a major developer conference? Are they that successful, or don’t they care?

Update: SAP was there, I didn’t get the chance to meet them.