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Tech journalists who make no sense

37signals.com

11–20 of 44 posts

Re: Tech journalists who make no sense

#11
I've found that you can just keep shoving marketing bullshit through badtranslator[1] until the message becomes clear:

> Salesforce.com remains a stock with much upside, according to analysts at RBC Capital Markets, as the company continues to control larger quantities of customer data and leads the way to a post cloud world.

becomes

> Royal Bank of Canada investment of foreign customers, Salesforce.com (NYSE).

[1] http://www.cheatingtranslators.com/bad-translator

Re: Tech journalists who make no sense

#12
post #10

You know what's awesome? That the journalist makes perfect sense to me. This guy is just apparently not the target audience. First off, the more data that Salesforce controls, the better they have locked in their customers... Or the more customers they have. I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare. The second clip talks about using social networking…

I have no idea what "post cloud world" means, but other than that, I agree with your assessment. There's a difference between "your phrasing screams that you are an outsider and you don't have a full understanding of what you are talking about" and "I truly do not comprehend what you mean." I would be surprised if readers of this site honestly could not translate the buzz-filled marketing speak into what they actuall…

By him saying he's ready for the "post cloud world" shows that Salesforce is aware of the "buzz word" world we live in and that Salesforce is staying on the cutting edge.

It seems to me that they are interested in customer retention, being the go-to location for storing important business data, and that their business is much more concerned with having the best and most solid infrastructural, and they aren't simply creating a "cloud" for the sake of creating a "cloud". It's about what the "cloud" IS and what it's supposed to provide.

So, if the "cloud" isn't the best solution anymore, they will be ready for that.

I thought it was a pretty well done piece.

Re: Tech journalists who make no sense

#13

I'll give David credit where it's due - Rework is an excellent book, ROR has a great fanbase, and 37Signals products are generally very well executed. However I find myself paying little attention to anything he says because it's all just so negative. I unfollowed him on Twitter because I just found every single one of his tweets to be criticising someone else or someone else's business. There's only so much negativi…

I understand the distaste for negativity in general, but if you have a quota on the amount of negativity taken "from one person", then you're judging the person rather than the message. Why not evaluate the argument on its own merits?

I'd like to see less discussion of "David" and "Zed"'s peccadillo on this site. A cult around someone's personality flaws is just as vapid as a cult around someone's personality. The well-worn proverb goes, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

Re: Tech journalists who make no sense

#14

You know what's awesome? That the journalist makes perfect sense to me. This guy is just apparently not the target audience. First off, the more data that Salesforce controls, the better they have locked in their customers... Or the more customers they have. I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare. The second clip talks about using social networking…

> I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare.

Talking about this, does anyone know a good CRM to use for a web agency? We've tested salesforce for a month and it feels over-engineered and unintuitive.

Re: Tech journalists who make no sense

#16

You know what's awesome? That the journalist makes perfect sense to me. This guy is just apparently not the target audience. First off, the more data that Salesforce controls, the better they have locked in their customers... Or the more customers they have. I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare. The second clip talks about using social networking…

Your summary is more sensible than what the journalist wrote.

Re: Tech journalists who make no sense

#17

I'll give David credit where it's due - Rework is an excellent book, ROR has a great fanbase, and 37Signals products are generally very well executed. However I find myself paying little attention to anything he says because it's all just so negative. I unfollowed him on Twitter because I just found every single one of his tweets to be criticising someone else or someone else's business. There's only so much negativi…

I understand the distaste for negativity in general, but if you have a quota on the amount of negativity taken "from one person", then you're judging the person rather than the message. Why not evaluate the argument on its own merits? I'd like to see less discussion of "David" and "Zed"'s peccadillo on this site. A cult around someone's personality flaws is just as vapid as a cult around someone's personality. The we…

I haven't heard that proverb before, and yes, I can see how you can apply it. I think that maybe this is being overanalysed slightly, I don't mean to apply a quota to anyone. I hardly think this qualifies as a 'cult'.

I just think that overall very little of what DHH has to say is praising or supportive of anything. Yes, that's judging the person, but only after I've judged the messages for the several months I was reading what he had to say. It's mostly things like this - "Forbes isn't exactly known as the pinnacle of journalism, but their latest piece on Salesforce was too much" - I can make my own mind up about Forbes' quality of journalism. He states that as a fact, not an opinion.

Re: Tech journalists who make no sense

#18

You know what's awesome? That the journalist makes perfect sense to me. This guy is just apparently not the target audience. First off, the more data that Salesforce controls, the better they have locked in their customers... Or the more customers they have. I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare. The second clip talks about using social networking…

> I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare.

Can you explain how, please? There are simple ways to extract your data from Salesforce (weekly export, bulk APIs, etc). What, per se, would cause said nightmare?

Re: Tech journalists who make no sense

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the distaste for negativity in general, but if you have a quota on the amount of negativity taken "from one person", then you're judging the person rather than the message. Why not evaluate the argument on its own merits? I'd like to see less discussion of "David" and "Zed"'s peccadillo on this site. A cult around someone's personality flaws is just as vapid as a cult around someone's personality. The we…

I haven't heard that proverb before, and yes, I can see how you can apply it. I think that maybe this is being overanalysed slightly, I don't mean to apply a quota to anyone. I hardly think this qualifies as a 'cult'. I just think that overall very little of what DHH has to say is praising or supportive of anything. Yes, that's judging the person, but only after I've judged the messages for the several months I was r…

How is he stating it that makes it a fact? It's clearly a blog entry which would immediately categorize it as an opinion. I think you already have a certain distate for David so anything he says, no matter how true, will fall on your deaf ears.

If you've ready any OpEd articles in reputable newspapers, they're not going to start their column with "this is my opinion of x". Rarely would writers use phrases like "I feel" or "I think" -- it's already implied.

Re: Tech journalists who make no sense

#20

You know what's awesome? That the journalist makes perfect sense to me. This guy is just apparently not the target audience. First off, the more data that Salesforce controls, the better they have locked in their customers... Or the more customers they have. I pity anyone who uses Salesforce and decides to leave for greener pastures. It would be a bloody nightmare. The second clip talks about using social networking…

I can't speak to your personal understanding, of course, but one thing to be wary of is that buzzword-laden speech often forms a tabula rasa. Since it means so little, listeners "fill in the blanks" and make up their own explanation for what it means. It is not surprising that the listener's interpretation closely agrees with their point of view.

Thus, people who use a lot of buzzwords can often be perceived as sensible and their speech as intelligent. Not for what their speech actually says, but for what the listener thinks it says.

This is one of the reasons buzzwords have become so common in business and politics. They are an effective means of selling the speaker to listeners, each of whom believes that they understand what the speaker is saying and agrees with it.

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