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Day One and Two: Thursday, October 23, 1997 and Friday, October 24, 1997 | ||||
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Friday,
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We have many pictures from the various sessions today, along with some pictures of more general schmoozing. They are summarized below in simple links:
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Friday,
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An Evening with ACI [Editor's note: of the three "Birds of a Feather" sessions, we chose to attend "An Evening with ACI". We arrived a few minutes late; the discussion had already started.In order to represent as much information as possible, we are quoting what we can and paraphrasing the rest.] The Evening with ACI consisted of a panel of several ACI employees answering questions directly from developers. The ACI contingent consisted of Pierre LeBlanc, Claude Cohen, Gordon Muirhead, Doris Beaulieu, and Jean-Pierre Ribreau. Also present in the audience were John Sheets and Jim Staples. As we arrived, the two hot topics of the evening were developer program support and marketing issues. A developer asks about more training. JPR: We wll start using you developers to help us with the training. We are negotiating contracts with 10 developers right now; these developers will be trained at ACI and will then train in their local area. This will reduce the minimum number of attendees required for a class. The developer asked a follow-up question about the choice of a city for a class. Jim and Doris: On the issue of city choice for marketing seminars and training, we agonize over this. City choice is difficult. Wayne Carlson commented that ACI should give comparison infomation like 4D vs. Access, 4D vs. PowerBuilder. There would be 3000 people here (at the 4D Summit) if ACI could provde that type of information.. How can we turn this group into evangelists? Claude responded to his question noting a technicality of European law preventing comparitive advertising. [Editor's note: at this point, Bruce Finch arrived after a grueling eighrt-hour odyssey from Cupertino to Denver.] Another developer asked about ACI providing a information to larrge clients through the developer working on the project, rather than blindly providing sometimes inaccurate information. He also suggested that ACI should provide information through a video tape or PDF files. JPR responded to this question by saying that they have tried a video in France and have had limited success. JPR specifically compared the video to Roger Rabbit, saying that the video wasn't believable and that live demonsrtations were the best. Another developer asked about the possibility of a totally integrated development environment, merging Compiler, Insider, 4D, and 4D Tools. JPR responded that they are working on this, saying that it is not a piece of cake. He said that 4D Tools will be merged in, and as well Customizer Plus will disappear very soon. Some of these new features may appear as soon as 4D version 6.5. Another developer questioned the value of advertising in InfoWorld and ComputerWorld, but also mentioned InfoWorld's database competition as a wealth of comparative information. Bruce Finch respon responded to this question by saying that ACI would love to know about these competitions and highly encourages all 4D developers to participate. Dave Dell'Aquila had a suggestion: Since ACI is interested in making evanglists out of the developers, why not look at the developer community to prepare the written documentation comparing 4D and other products? JPR responded by saying that if you know someone who has switched from some other development environment to 4D, ask them why, and send the result back to JPR. [Editor's note: by implication, JPR is saying that he will collect and compile these into future information.] John Sheets said that there are a number of white papers available already on the ACI FTP site and on the developer program CD. Paul Greenman suggested that ACI offer an incentive for developers' participating in the development competitions. Doris said that they have tried this with little success, but are willing to try again. John Beaulieu commented: I've been to alot of meetings with ACI, and the one constant I see is not focusing on the technical aspect of the product. We here about marketing. No one can fault 4D technically. In this industry, perception is reality; unless you can prove that you are alive and there, you are not as good as they are. You need to market to IS departments. Let them know that the product is out there. Then IS departments will be a much better source of work. Richard Ray asked: Many of the other server products have a different paradigm with lots of databasess on one instance of a server. This is pretty important for complex projects. Can you acknowledge this or reference new features about this? JPR responded: 4D version 7 will be the definitive database. (Turning to Bruce Finch) Don't kill me Bruce... but Laurent Ribardière already said these things (when showing) 4D Universal (years ago). (Turning back to Richard) Ten tables on one server instance is the same as ten server instances with one table; you won't need to use 4D Open. But, is 4D Open a bad solution? For me, it is a real solution. Since you can tune multiple server instances on NT (using the .INI configuration file), it is not bad. 4D Open is a very fast solution for accessing data. And, having multiple serves answers questions about backup and failsafe mechanisms. But, to answer your question, 4D version 7 will solve this for you. Wayne Carlson asked: Back on the vertical market bandwagon... no one at ACI showed up at the vertical market session, which was disappointment. I want to hear your strategies on how I can get people at ACI to know about our product, that it exsits. We still get people at ACI who don't know about A4 even though we have been there for 10 years. How can we flow info to ACI about our products? Bruce Finch responded : I wish I could have been there (at the vertical market session); I had intended to be. ACI does understand the value of vertical market products. We also understand co-marketing. We are moving toward that; the web site is a product we have under works right now to enhance a better relationship. Doris: We are also working on some co-markleting campaigns like (we have done in the past with) MacWeek; this time with PC Week, though. The web site is another place we feel we can help vertical market developers, we can put some info about vertical market products on there. Bruce: We are also reworking the OEM server agreement. It will be ready soon; the current contract precludes the very cheap and the very expensive vertical market products. We know that there are some products that are high end; we want to make it (the OEM server agreement) better. Steve Hussey: Maybe the ACI field reps should have a list of thrid-parrty products. Also, if the reps had a list of developers that were near a client. Doris: The tool you're loking for is on the CD press right now. It is the Solutions Demo CD. Steve: I appreciate that, but theclients are lazy. They won't look for the info in the CD. The rep should look this up proactively for the client as a part of their sales presentation. It also reassures the client that there are already people using the product. Jim Staples: They can print it out. Doris: We use it internally. [Editor's note: Apparently, ACI misunderstood Steve's question.] Adam Soos: Will the major plug-ins ever be seamlessly integrated into 4D? This will alleviate technical problems and make it (4D) more competetive. Pierre LeBlanc: We are working toward this. We already see this in 4D Chart; look for it with the others (other plug-ins) perhaps. As far as an office (Micrisoft Office) application, it is more like something you should do. We can provide you with the tools. If we are going to make an Office competitior... Paul Greenman: (passionately) I get this all the time. Compare 4D Write and Microsoft Word, and there is no comparison. We would like to be able to communicate with Word just the same way we use 4D Write right now. Pierre: I will answer that tomorrow morning (in my technical presentation). Adam Soos: Follow-up question. I don't want an Office; I use Access now because it integrates better. I would llike to be able to use 4D this way. John Bachman: Back to marketing. The web site you have is an excellent means (for distributing information). For example, at last year's Devcon, there was a comparative slide show presented. I would love to be able to present this to a client. Group answer from the panel: Yes, this is a good idea. George Tiller: Can I get a letter saying that ACI will back me up? This will be very useful with some clients. JPR: It is a service, but we want to make very sure that it will work. However, it is not just some advice; we may even modify 4D itself (to help you). It will be very expensive, like US$2000 per day, but for a big project it will be worth it -- it will save you a lot of time. We are not going to develop it for you; but we will give you examples of code showing how to do it. For your client's point of view, if you fail or die in a car wreck, they will have an escape hatch. You will need to provide us with information, for example a written variable name list. It is not just a letter, but a relationship. George: How does this convince the client? JPR: You will include this in your proposal. It is a kind of insurance. John Sheets: I have had this happen before, and it is very helpful.Gordon Muirhead: Get yourself a partner (implying that this is one of the best insurance policies for your client). Doris Bealuieu: Dave Dell'Aquila is doing something like this already, you may want to talk to him. David Fischer: I am from Canada. The CD you mentioned for support -- we make half our sales into the US, and many already have 4D products. There are also 13 other countries represented here. I suggest taht ACI make this available to all. Louis Camaros: Two part question. Does ACI have an offical mechanism for feature requests, and what do you do with them? JPR: They come to me and so does the beta list. I have a features list, and it is long. Something like 700 features. We are looking at this features list for the next version. I am the liason between 4D developers and the 4d development team, and I am listening. If you are the only one who asks for a feature, you will probably not get it. If more people ask, then it will probably show up. I am going to suggest a special e-mail address for new features because I am tired of them filling my mailbox. Something like features@acius.com. Pierre LeBlanc: We get lots of feature requests, but something you must realize -- we don't always implement them the way you expect in a realese. For example, a lot of the featues of 4D version 3 had to do with improving file sharing; we decided to do client server instead. Greg Law: We have had a lot of problems with pricing changes. We also have lots of systems that use 4D Server version 1.x, and the different pricing schemes are good. The developers need consistent, predictable pricing information. Bruce Finch: (Smirking) Gee, I haven't heard this before. To Doris' credit, we have been asking how to communicate better with the developers. We have heard an echo back -- is it via e-mail, fax, web page... pricing changes, how do we better communicate? I had a long discussion with someone yesterday -- you need to have a public forum. We need to know how is best. Doris Beaulieu: We are trying to communicate, not just through a monthly mailing -- daily communication if we need it. We need the developers to send us their e-mail addresses. I have had 100 responses from 1500 requests for developers to send us their e-mil addresses. Jim Staples: Announcements -- a new primary communication vechicle is in the works, and we will start it next week -- a push mechanism. Bruce: There are some things that happen here (in the US) but not overseas; we need your communication method. Jim: We need your e-mail address. Wilt ???: Regarding the "musketeers," you mentioned some development guidelines. You should publish a list of what is (considered to be) good design. JPR: Development guidelines are like naming conventions. Every one is good, as long as you follow it. As long as these rules are written down, this is okay. If you have no conventions, we can provide one for you. Paul Greenman: Regarding communicating with the developers, I suppose there is a different approach to this -- put all the info for events on a web site, and send announcements through e-mail with a link to the web page. For example, if there are ten new items, two may be interesting to a particular developer. Don't pack the e-mail with 18 pagesof text and graphics -- send the new stuff. Doris: Have the subject matter? Paul: With links. Bruce: How many developers still use the printed newsletter, for example? (Most of the room raised their hands.) How many use just the electroinic versions? (Not very many raised their hands...) Larry Sharpe: I run a web site -- http://www.infoserivce.com. It summarizes ACI info plus developer info. (Clapping) So look there. Charles Kinney: We have heard that resources (at ACI) are scarce. Why spend them on a hard copy newsletter? Jim, Doris: Do you want to get rid of the developer CD? Collective shout from the crowd: No! Bruce: Remember, these are ideas, not commitments. Doug Blew: Follow up on feature request via e-mail. I have one now: an auto acknowledgement that the feature request has been received, plus status reports for the submitter. Just having the feedback saves frustration for the developer. JPR: Yes, we can do something like this. Pierre: Decideding which make it into the shipping product, this is a very tedious process. There is no formal process for feature escalation; it is just whether it makes sense and do it and whether we have time. Sometimes we get new features that are good, but we just don't have time (to implement them). Dave Dell'Aquila: Regading the developer CD, it seems like 95% of the CD is static. The change is the tech notes, which can be downloaded (from the FTP site). Maybe a quarterly CD (would be a good idea). Now that we have access to the beta software for regular partners, this seems to be a good method. Doris: This is a good suggestion. This is the way (ACI) France does it; the reason we do it (the way we do) is because we have had lots of updates lately. We felt like there was enough info to keep it monthly, but are considering a quarterly CD. David Ringsmuth: This panel has started out ragging on ACI; you all have a good idea of what is a good and bad 4D development organization. Can you give us info on what is good and bad to do as developers? Doris: I'm nnot quite sure how to answer that. Bruce: Oh, the things I'd love to say publicly but don't dare. In our minds, a good developer knows that ACI must succeed. A bad developer does not understand that. A good developer understands that ACI must be profitable. A good developer supports the company. I think you saw in the latest DIMENSIONS about how I am astonished that ACI is constantly bashed in public forums. A good developer understands this. A bad developer airs their dirty laundry in public. A good developer attends things like this (conference), and givesACI good feedback -- and buys a lot of product, and never calls tech support, and never gripes about the price. (Laughter from the crowd) Doris: If you have concerns, bring them up to ACI, not in public, and not through our custmoers. Do it, but not with your customers and end-users getting the info. It is damanging to ACI and to you. Bruce: A good developer knows ACI is trying to be an ethical, straightforward business that treats their developers exactly the same. Bruce Law: Just to back up what you said about not complaining in a public forum, we should be able to send them to the 4D-NUG and they should be impressed with what they see. Jim: There are 1300 subscribers to the 4D-NUG. I monitor the Filemaker list and other lists. The technical content is execllent, and often I cut and paste stuff to save for later. Keep in mind that there are people lurking on the 4D-NUG. This will be good for you in the future. Also, point people to the announcement server. Gordon: You would like your employees to think like partners; we would like you to think like partners, too. Mike Leperfido: This is staritng to get fun now. Now that we know what you think a good developer is, what do you think a good ACI is? JPR: First I would like to say what is a bad developer. I have seen perfect code, but the client hated it. I have seen the oppostie as well. For example, I had this guy in a training class who said that everything he heard he will never use, and everything he learned he will never use. For example, when I hear about a client who says they don't like 4D, I look at their code, and then I can see why. (To analogize,) if you don't like pasta, I would like to taste it, and I think you will see why. Doris: We will let Bruce answer this question and then we will close. Bruce: A bad ACI is an ACI that is no longer in business, one that does not communicate, one that does not keep their pricing competetive, one that does not have things like this forum. A good ACI listens, and tries to be predictable, and tries to communicate as well as they can. We set our goals and look to put Microsoft out of business. That is out goal. We want to be a US$1,000,000,000 company. Will we make mistakes? Yes. We are open to constructive comments. I would rather look to the future than harp on the past. | |||
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Friday,
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Aside from the untypically interesting hotel fare and the noisy Hewlett-Packard party next door (complete with a band), the 4D Summit dinner was an interesting affair. Mark Yelich had aranged for one of his "Windows only" colleagues to demonstrate what is considered to be the state of the art in Active Server technology from Microsoft. While truly interesting, it seemed to us that there was nothing shown that hasn't been possible in 4D for at least a year. However, the demonstration left one blatantly obvious point stinging our collective cheek: while all that we saw is possible in 4D, unlike 4D it comes for next to nothing as included in Windows NT Server. We overheard several developers making similar remarks both during and after dinner. Truly, 4D faces some stiff competition from Microsoft's aggressive under-pricing. | |||
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Friday, |
Unfortunately for us, the afternoon was spent in a panic. Half of David Robbins'Java-to-4D presentation resides on our Toshiba laptop, but somehow the power cord for the laptop didn't make it to Denver. A frantic series of telephone calls and an intrepid voyage in Erik Drucker's truck led us to a local Radio Shack. Although seemingly mundane, this quest was complicated by the snow storm then seriously blanketing Denver. All's well that ends well, however -- a three dollar "boom box" power cable ensured the success of Dave's presentation for tomorrow. | |||
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Friday, |
Lunch was normal hotel fare, accented by remarks from the sponsors of the event, including Mike Erikson and Tim Haratine. Wayne Carlson emceed the popular raffle, where at least 10 items donated by various vendors were happily snatched up by the lucky winners. Some of the more noteworthy prizes included a copy of 4D Pro, and a partner program renewal. Also raffled were many third-party externals. | |||
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Friday, |
From the three morning sessions, we attended the Introduction to 4D session presented by JPR, as we had colleagues present who were considering the move to 4D. JPR's presentation was typical of his inimitable style, and ended with the crown wowing over the graphicall rich "Roaring 4D's" database. We were pleased with the presentation, and most especially happy with our colleagues' favorable response to 4D. Who better then JPR to introduce someone to 4th Dimension? | |||
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Friday, Opening |
Opening Remarks from Mark Yelich and Wayne Carlson The second day of the conference opened with organizers Mark Yelich and Wayne Carlson greeting an absolutely packed, standing-room-only crowd of enthusiastic conference attendees. Mark Yelich listed a few interesting statistics: the effort to organize the 4D Summit started only in mid-July, with Wayne handling the conference details and Mark organizing the content. This effort has gorown to a conference with 320 attendees from 14 countries, including the US, Canada, the United Kingdon, Greece, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Aruba, the Netherlands, Japan, Korea, Mauritius (!) and of course France. Mark took an interested ad-hoc survey in which he asked the attendees to raise their hands in response to the following questions: How many use both MacOS and Windows versions of 4D? About 80% of the room raised their hands. How many use just Windows? About 5% raised their hands. How many use MacOS only? About 5% raised their hands. Mark remarked that this certainly seems to be the trend: 4D developers have become Windows-savvy. In his comments, Wayne Carlson issued a very interesting challenge to himself, Mark, and ACI. In addition to the annual ACI-sponsored conference, the 4D Summit organizers intend to make their event an annual, predictable occurence. The reason for this, Wayne stated, is so that third-party product developers can have a predictable schedule for rolling out new products.
Opening Remarks from Claude Cohen, Vice-President of World-Wide Sales and Marketing, ACI Claude Cohen introduced himself to the crowd, and proceeded to explain the new philosophy of business at ACI by congratulating the developers present for their choice of using 4D. "We both have made the right choice with ACI," he quipped. Claude said that there have been some big changes at ACI over the last three to six months. Not the least of these, he said, has been the arrival of a new CEO, Phillipe Souveton, who has 25 years' experience in the hardware and software business as a professional manager. Claude went on to explain his own professional history: he has worked for the French subsidiaries of US-based technology companies, including Hewlett-Packard. He joined ACI in May, and although he had what he felt was a reasonable amount of experience working for European companies, he quickly learned that working for a native French company was different. In his words, working for ACI "is a shock." (This caused a collective chuckle to rise from the crowd.) Claude explained that ACI is improving their staffing in the international department in Paris, adding more technical and marketing personnel to help the international distributors. At this point, Claude posed an intersting question: how many ACI companies are there? We know about ACI and ACI US, of course, but there are many other ACI companies in other countries, including Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Germany, to name a few. Claude stated that for the 6,000 registered developers worldwide, there are 75 local ACI distributors in the respective local countries. ACI US is the largest, Claude said, but ACI as a whole is much larger then you might think. Claude went on to say that ACI is adding to the Paris engineering team. "God, do we need these people," he extolled, finishing with the comment "Laurent can't make the whole thing by himself, even though we all know he's a genius." Regarding adding to the engineering team, Claude explained that the new engineers will not only go to Paris, but will also go to wherever they are needed, inlcuding the US. Claude stated that ACI could benefit from more staffing in the US engineering team, because this is a US-dominated industry. In perhaps his most interesting remarks, Claude detailed a meeting he had last week with Laurent Ribardère, the author of 4th Dimension. Laurent had recently returned from a visit to ACI US headquarters where he had met with some of the US developers. Claude said that Laurent was very enthusiastic about making the changes they had requested, and that he would translate Laurent's remarks into less "geeky" speech. Claude said, "we are not a database company; we are not a PC database company. We have enabling technology. What do I mean? Enabling to developers.We want to make you look good for your clients and to win contracts -- (to provide) enabling technology for professional developers. Your success is our success." Claude went on to say that there are some things that ACI needs to do:
Claude closed his remarks with a challenge to developers: "Why don't you use ACI to close deals? Now is an exciting time; the product line has been completely revamped."
At this point in the presentation, Claude introduced Jean-Pierre Ribreau, who is more widely known by his initials JPR. Famous for his particular style of French-accented English, JPR opened his remarks by saying to Claude, "my French accent is stronger than yours, but your marketing accent is much stronger than mine" -- evoking a healthy laugh from the crowd. JPR said that he wanted to give a business brief from a technical point of view, which he did by giving some details about the next versions of 4D. He said that there will be a version 6.0.5, and at some future point there will be a version 6.5 and a version 7.0. JPR made it very clear that he will not comment on a release date for 4D 6.5 or 7.0, saying that "even if you try to trick me by asking in a funny way, I will not tell you." JPR said that there are currently 12 developers working on 4D version 6.5. Their design goal, he says, was to include everything that they wished could have been included in version 6.0 He also mentioned that there is another team working on upgrading the productivity modules. The modules will be written around a common kernel, which, JPR says, ACI will make available for third-party developers. JPR went on to announce Victor, the Virtual Guru, or Virtual Center for Technically Optimized Responses. Victor will be an e-mail based technical support entity that will be available for developers. In addition to being able to ask a live technical support person for help, developers will also be able to send their questions to Victor. JPR and Bernard Gallet, among others, will be the people behind Victor. JPR commented that if they didn't know between them, then the question was probably bad. He went on to say that Victor could be considered to be 100% true all the time -- as far as they knew. JPR explained further that the ACI development team intends to spend more time in the US. For example, JPR said, he himself will spend two weeks of every two months in the US. He wants to visit user groups, and requested that if any user group wanted him to visit that they should send him an e-mail at jpr@aci.fr. JPR also explained that he will be doing more training, but in but in smaller segments -- two days at a time instead of four. Specifically, he said, he will be offering training the week after MacWorld in January and then the week after in Washington, D.C. Continuing, JPR announced that ACI will be starting an evangelism program specifically involving the developers. If you want to participate, he said, send him an email. It will not be for pay, he said, but he said that maybe there would be payment other than money. JPR then admonished the crowd by saying, "don't be shy about telling people you use 4D. 4D is the best out there." He gave a personal anecdote about a demonstration he gave recently to a group of developers in Germany. This group consisted of 32 hard-core Visual Basic, MS Access, FoxPro, FileMaker, and Oracle -- none used 4D. In this no bull, all technical session, JPR spent the day winning the attendees over to 4D. By the end of the day, 75% of them purchased 4D. Remarking further, JPR asserted that "4D is the best front end for ORACLE; don't be shy to show it against PowerBuilder. There are some bad points, but just don't show them." JPR then announced that another new program to be instated at ACI. In French, the program is abbreviated ISF -- in English, it translates to Intervention, Service, and Training. To explain, JPR said that when you are a small developer, and you are trying to sign a big contract with a big client, they may wonder about your credibility.This is where ISF can assist. They will examine your design, and guarantee it -- if you are unable to finish the project, ACI will find someone who can or they will do it themselves. Internally, JPR calls this his "Five Musketeers," since there are currently five members to the team. JPR compared them to firemen that you might use for really big trouble. It will be expensive, but if you need it this will act as a kind of parachute. To summarize, JPR said, "Don't worry, we are behind you." JPR went on to praise the developers by saying "We don't sell servers without developers." He further admonished the crowd by suggesting that 4D developers demonstrate 4D to the user groups of competing products, such as Delphi and PowerBuilder -- use 4D to know our enemies. Finishing, JPR said that if you want to demo to a big company, call ACI and they will help you. He concluded his remarks by saying thank you to the crowd in at least six languages, including English, French, Japanese, Spanish, and German. | |||
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Thursday,
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Although we spend most of the day demonstrating our new MemWatch utility, we took many pictures. Included in this set are several soon-to-be classics, including photos of our pilgrimage to Benihana, where we donned a chef's hat and took up knives for a special momento photo. Sadly, software driver problems have prevented us from donloading the pictures to our hard disk -- thus they will remain a legend for the time being. Our colleague and co-conspirator Larry Hagood took these photos:
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