Re: Viral Marketing PHP (was Re: [PHP] Computer Science and PHP)

Hello Manuel, I have just re-read this, and am conscious that I am appearing to disagree with you, too frequently, yet in overview I am wanting to agree!? I am a consultant, and I am well used to playing "devil's advocate", ie disagreeing with what is being said, in order to arrive at the best possible solution. Please don't interpret anything said as grounds for a personal argument. > Dl Neil wrote: > > > One good point about what you said is that one budgetless what to > > > promote PHP is to use 'viral marketing'. Viral marketing is a way to > > > market something by using a technique that spreads by itself, ie, no > > > additional effort or money needed to be spent by the originator to have > > > the notice of what you want to market spread like crazy. > > ... > > > sort what ideas can become viral. With that topic in the mind, if you > > > ever figure a viral idea to promote PHP, just share it here to prove the > > > concept as well! :-) > > > > I had intended that the 'institutional approach' be seen as the seeds of a viral > > marketing campaign. If students > > learn the tool, when they 'go out to work' they want to use it. Even if the > > student is a 'hobbyist' then it > > still spreads the 'word' around... > > That is not viral enough because it is not smooth. When it is not > smooth, not only it will propagate slowly but also it may stop > propagating at all because word of mouth is not always convincing. To > make it work smoothly it should not be hard to convince anybody that PHP > is a good idea. =I take it "smooth" means "quick"? Yes I agree propagation through 3- and 4-year training institutions will be slow. However PHP can be quickly taught to anyone beyond a 'first steps in programming' course (hopefully after they have graduated from an HTML course too. Thus a 'build on' or 'conversion' PHP course need not take long to run, even as a night course (once/week, 2-3 hours/session). =Years ago I can remember talking to one of the staff who was instrumental in getting ORACLE to market (seriously) ORACLE Applications (accounting system). He told me that he considered that it would take five years to get the product into IT Managers' (decision-makers) minds when they thought of buying an accounting package. He figured that after those five, it would run for a further five years as the pre-eminent solution, ie the first one anyone thought of; and then for the next five years it would start to 'decline' as competitors tried to 'take over'. He was arguing for methods of lengthening the middle five year period, or how essentially the same product could be re-branded, so that it began a new 5/15 year cycle without the company having to invest in a completely new product from scratch. [evidently he also didn't see SAP arriving!] > > Your point earlier, if statistics say x million dynamic web sites are held together by > > PHP, IT managers/decision > > makers tend to feel they should take notice, eg Apache and the Netcraft surveys. The same > > will apply to PHP, > > numbers need to build to some 'critical mass' for corporate credibility to > > follow (as wrong as that sounds). > > Yes, but you only establish credibility when you manage to put your > arguments in favour of PHP in the mouths of opinion makers. Statistics > of PHP usage in the PHP site will never be credible enough. It is like > when parents tell everybody how smart their kids are, see what I mean? =not the "mouths", but the "ears" of decision makers; and no I establish credibility (in myself) first and then ask them to listen to my words. I liked the parents talking about kids analogy. However I disagree with the analysis/application to this discussion. Which web site contains the most talking-up of M$ products? Which of ORACLE? Which of IBM? etc. Why, there own of course! =a lot of the talk on open source sites does not communicate with IT decision makers. It is talk by techies to techies and of techies; and thus it (almost) never will. That point is most important. It is no good saying that IT Managers are all brainless in (important) technical matters and should be first up against the wall; at least not if you're attempting to convince them of something! There needs to be communication at the IT Manager 'level' (I return to my earlier references to SuSE's marketing approach). =Now is a very good time to be doing this. There is a lot of bad press about M$, eg what's in XP that can really be called an 'upgrade', what of the privacy/M$ 'control', major changes in bulk license pricing arrangements, and some heavy-hitters (eg Gartners) who are raising the issue of M$ products with frequent needs for patching and thereby a steeply increasing TCO (M$'s preferred term = Total Cost of Ownership). Talking in terms of lines of debugged code per day, platform flexibility/neutrality, scaleability, maintainability, ease of use, security, etc, is all far more entertaining (to an IT Manager looking to purchase/standardise on a tool) than the daily interchanges of this discussion list! =unfortunately within the open source movement there is ALSO a strong dislike of anything that sounds 'corporate' or 'marketing-speak', consequently MOST of the open source organisations don't make much of an effort to 'talk-up' their products. They rely on the users, in this case, PHP developers, to do that 'advertising' for them - and we're right back at where you started this thread. Legal issues aside, there are strong reasons why it would be good to retain the existing PHP.net site as-is, and to set up PHP.com as a marketing site (which most of us would well avoid). The marketing site would then be made up of all those distasteful marketing topics that so irritate many, but which are the bread-and-butter of those aforementioned decision makers. =maintaining my contrary point: I think it would be a good idea to put up a number of comparisons, eg PHP vs ASP, both from a theoretical point of view, and some 'real case studies'. Further, because no one buys ASP by itself (so to speak), perhaps it should really be a PHP 'Triad' type approach, and have links to LAMPS. =Unless the PHP community dresses up with some comparisons, the magazines and trade papers are not going to think it work picking up the case. The studies and efforts that end up as content on a marketing web site should also be fed in those directions. > > How to get PHP into the institutions? You'd think it would be easy, wouldn't you > > - it's 'free', and that sounds > > Being 'free' may be good for budgetless individuals but is the wrong > argument for institutions and companies in particular. You need to pick > up other argument. =perhaps I used the wrong terminology: by "institutions" I meant teaching/training institutes, colleges, universities, etc. Almost all of these are very budget conscious. They are also conscious of the demands that they must place upon their students, as part of the course/in order that they complete any coursework/practical work. =My brother-in-law (who lives in Germany) phoned last night. He is an electrical engineer (not a computer person) and wanted to talk over his options in attending a Visual Basic course, to expand on his Excel macro-writing skills. We talked about the difference between VBA and VB (which most users reading the Excel documentation fail to readily understand). We then established that the course is VB, not VBA specifically. So then I pointed out, that unless his company has a VB license that he can utilise, he will not be able to do any 'homework' unless he goes to the school OR pays for his own license/slice of M$ profits. You can imagine how this has affected his enthusiasm! > > great! However you need competent/trained teachers/training staff. You need teaching > > materials and supporting > > text books. You need sample exercises and databases. Look at what SuSE are doing with > > email servers (etc) and > > RedHat with Linux distributions. Perhaps a distribution of LAMPS or the 'PHP > > Triad', especially configured for > > an educational environment could be considered? Finally you need people to be convinced > > that there's a demand > > for the teaching, and conversely students convinced that it is a valuable skill to > > acquire... > > That is the core of the problem. You can only demonstrate there is > demand for teaching if you spread that there is demand for qualified > professionals. The PHP situation could be improved if there was an > officially certificated training, like some Linux distributions have and > even MySQL. The effect of spreading about official certification is that > it passes a good impression to those that are not aware that Linux and > MySQL is something being taken seriously to the point of having official > certifications like for certified Microsoft and Sun Java trainings. =I might sound cynical, but the institutions will do anything that they think they can put on and will get enough of a response to their marketing of its availability - provided the other stuff (as discussed last time) can be put in place. =You have now opened up the idea of certification. Lending an air of officialdom always appeals to educational institutions, employers, etc. However, is there also an air of disapproval amongst the individuals of the open source community for such schemes (eg sarcastic comments made on this list about M$ certified-individuals who should never be left unsupervised in charge of PCs)? =As much as this might be the case, with the shakedown of the Internet 'industry' (particularly in the States), the people who are having the most trouble maintaining/re-gaining employment are those without formal (ie college/uni) qualifications or some sort of alternative, eg certification. Personally I am loath to characterise all unqualified IT practitioners as sub-standard or even below-average, and I prefer to see some experience rather than pure qualifications particularly in more senior positions; but if you gave me the choice of an unqualified person with two years' PHP programming experience, against a 'trained' person with two years' PHP, and all other factors were equal, I'd take the same one as you would! =I've pointed out that I'm not a marketing type. I've also pointed out that most of the people on this list/associated with PHP are not really into that aspect either. Accordingly if you agree with the above, it looks as if 'marketing' requires a whole new group of people - and a separate web site... =I wonder if there are some teachers and trainers on the list who could give us the benefit of a personal view and/or assessment of what it would take to get their institution to offer courses, with or without certification? Regards, =dn