I’ve been meaning to draw this Venn diagram to represent my classification of animals for quite a while. This is the kind of stuff I can accomplish with vacation time at home. Just think of the possibilities…

Notes

1. Goat really is delicious. Try it.
2. So is rabbit.
3. No, I didn’t do this just to piss off animal rights activists, so lighten up.

 

tags: animals

I don’t often write about the specifics of my work at Blackboard, but a recent challenge at work illustrates some fundamental issues with technology and technology marketing that I would like to explore here. Nothing I say goes beyond anything that you can read about on the Blackboard website.

I run the main software marketing team for the Learn platform at Blackboard and we were starting down the path of refreshing our platform positioning for the coming year. One of the key messages we had to refresh was our commitment to openness because we really have done a lot to support it in the past year and we are doing a lot more in 2011.

Here’s the problem though. Going out to the software market with an openness message these days is like going out and saying your product is ‘enterprise.’ Just what does it mean? Most software vendors claim to be enterprise just as most claim their products to be ‘easy to use,’ ‘customizable,’ and ‘extensible.’ These terms have become meaningless.

(more…)

tags: marketing | openness