Jonathan Oxer
[Blog]
>> 1,818,631
Thu, Aug 23rd 1:18pm 2007 >> Misc
While we were in the US a few weeks ago Luke and I were idly talking about market penetration and how we could come up with a metric for how successful we've been. A major problem we have as a company is that we're largely invisible: we build systems for our clients, who in turn have customers who are end users of the systems we build, but those end users would mostly have no idea who it is that actually created the software. As far as they are concerned they're using a system provided by our client, not by us. We therefore get almost no branding benefit from all the work we do while some of our clients are household names.
So Luke started pondering how many end users we have. Not in the sense of random web visitors: I mean actual, registered users in web-based systems we've built for our clients. That includes intranets, extranets, public-facing websites, and a huge variety of custom business systems.
After a bit of SQL and some mucking about with a spreadsheet I can now put a real figure on it:
1,818,631
That's 1.8 million people who are currently registered users on a system we built. Given that we have almost zero international penetration it can safely be assumed they're nearly all Australian, so looking at it another way, 8.6% of the entire population of Australia is a registered user on a system built by IVT. And they almost certainly don't know it.
That sucks.
While we were in the US a few weeks ago Luke and I were idly talking about market penetration and how we could come up with a metric for how successful we've been. A major problem we have as a company is that we're largely invisible: we build systems for our clients, who in turn have customers who are end users of the systems we build, but those end users would mostly have no idea who it is that actually created the software. As far as they are concerned they're using a system provided by our client, not by us. We therefore get almost no branding benefit from all the work we do while some of our clients are household names.
So Luke started pondering how many end users we have. Not in the sense of random web visitors: I mean actual, registered users in web-based systems we've built for our clients. That includes intranets, extranets, public-facing websites, and a huge variety of custom business systems.
After a bit of SQL and some mucking about with a spreadsheet I can now put a real figure on it:
1,818,631
That's 1.8 million people who are currently registered users on a system we built. Given that we have almost zero international penetration it can safely be assumed they're nearly all Australian, so looking at it another way, 8.6% of the entire population of Australia is a registered user on a system built by IVT. And they almost certainly don't know it.
That sucks.
>> Tech Talk about Second Life integration
Mon, Aug 6th 3:53pm 2007 >> Tech Toys
And the traveler returns! Today is my first day back on deck at IVT after tramping around the US for OSCON followed by a meeting at Adobe and a Tech Talk at Google. Andrew Pollock and Leslie Hawthorn were kind enough to arrange for me to do another Tech Talk, this time on Real World / Second Life Integration. The talk seems to have been pretty well received even though the main demo in the talk actually failed!
Also, I've gotta do a shout out to Google's A/V folk. They'll probably never read this but I don't know how to get in touch with them so this'll have to do. Basically, they were very slick. The gear all worked perfectly, the A/V team were right there on the spot the whole time and immediately responsive to my questions, and the video was up online within hours with views of both the slides (which were capped from the VGA feed) and the video itself edited together. Before the talk one of the audio guys fitted me up with a lapel mic, turned it on, and muted it at the desk until the moment I started speaking. That sounds really trivial but it shows the little ways they care about making the process super-smooth: just about every presentation I've attended has started with the speaker fumbling around with his mic transmitter for a few seconds figuring out if it's turned on, then checking if the audience can hear them, etc. None of that in this case though: I just stood up and started talking, and everything was set perfectly from the moment I opened my mouth. I didn't even think about the A/V during the whole talk because I didn't have to. And after the talk was over and people were crowding around asking questions the mic was quickly and surreptitiously unthreaded from my shirt and removed by a tech without interrupting the ongoing discussion.
That's the sort of slick professionalism that often results in people being overlooked, which is a shame. Just like an outstanding UI, the better the A/V folk are the less they'll be noticed. And so they don't get the credit they deserve. So, Google Tech Talk A/V people: you get a clap from me. And I apologise that I didn't thank you in person at the time, because it was only in retrospect that I realised how slick you were. Which of course is how it should be.
For those who are interested, the video of the talk is up at
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3850910409804844384
And the traveler returns! Today is my first day back on deck at IVT after tramping around the US for OSCON followed by a meeting at Adobe and a Tech Talk at Google. Andrew Pollock and Leslie Hawthorn were kind enough to arrange for me to do another Tech Talk, this time on Real World / Second Life Integration. The talk seems to have been pretty well received even though the main demo in the talk actually failed!
Also, I've gotta do a shout out to Google's A/V folk. They'll probably never read this but I don't know how to get in touch with them so this'll have to do. Basically, they were very slick. The gear all worked perfectly, the A/V team were right there on the spot the whole time and immediately responsive to my questions, and the video was up online within hours with views of both the slides (which were capped from the VGA feed) and the video itself edited together. Before the talk one of the audio guys fitted me up with a lapel mic, turned it on, and muted it at the desk until the moment I started speaking. That sounds really trivial but it shows the little ways they care about making the process super-smooth: just about every presentation I've attended has started with the speaker fumbling around with his mic transmitter for a few seconds figuring out if it's turned on, then checking if the audience can hear them, etc. None of that in this case though: I just stood up and started talking, and everything was set perfectly from the moment I opened my mouth. I didn't even think about the A/V during the whole talk because I didn't have to. And after the talk was over and people were crowding around asking questions the mic was quickly and surreptitiously unthreaded from my shirt and removed by a tech without interrupting the ongoing discussion.
That's the sort of slick professionalism that often results in people being overlooked, which is a shame. Just like an outstanding UI, the better the A/V folk are the less they'll be noticed. And so they don't get the credit they deserve. So, Google Tech Talk A/V people: you get a clap from me. And I apologise that I didn't thank you in person at the time, because it was only in retrospect that I realised how slick you were. Which of course is how it should be.
For those who are interested, the video of the talk is up at
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3850910409804844384
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