There is a moment where you are sitting at a conference, perhaps during a keynote, waiting for some huge announcement that is destined to blow you away.
This is the killer app…
This is the app that will change your life…
This is the platform that will redefine how you build…
And then you leave the conference, head back to work and try to get it working and you can’t…
- It’s still in beta.
- It doesn’t work in your environment with your configuration.
- You need to deploy a slew of other servers to even start setting it up.
- The APIs have not been released yet.
And on and on it goes… there is a well-known saying against new versions of software to only upgrade once the first Service Pack has been released.
- Who wants to be the first one to go through all that trouble of trying to figure it out?
- Who wants to be the first one to have spent hours and hours trying to make it work only to never see it there?
- Who wants to be the first one to have realized that it really doesn’t do what they claimed but maybe it does something better THEY never thought of?
The problem with Technology Announcements isn’t the announcement, it’s the follow-up and the commitment to trying to duplicate what a team of 10 – 20 Software Engineers built all by yourself. It’s dealing with that failure on an ongoing basis never knowing when you are finally going to break through.
It’s starting something not knowing if it’s going to work but the upside is, you’ve now carved out something unique where you are possibly now the expert that everyone upgrading to Service Pack 1 is waiting to talk to, to figure out – “How did you do that?”.
