Earlier quoted context omitted.
[deleted]
that subject line... "Re: draft: ask white house permission"
What was there before it was deleted?
What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
21–30 of 68 posts
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Screw 'em. A London based company is under no obligations to kowtow to the PR wishes of the whitehouse, or the president's pet organization.
"Screw our highest profile customer! That'll teach 'em! Heh heh"
Maybe they'll cancel their $9.99/month account!
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised OFA thought it'd work at their scale at that price point. I'd definitely be cautious and offer to pay more if I was their procurement officer. It could definitely ruin your night.
The blogpost says that OFA contacted them and forewarned about the size of the call. I guess that's the point where Mixlr could have asked an extra to handle the scale, while it sounds like they just said "no problems, go ahead".
Right, I was implying that even after they said 'no problems, go ahead' (perhaps by opening the discussion about an enterprise plan). My reasoning is because it makes it easier to shift blame for the procurement officer. In the event of a service failure instead of being picked on for hosting a presidential conference for the price of a chipotle, you can blame the company you paid a good amount of money to for their crappy service. Anyhow, glad everything worked out and I'm sure they made up for it in marketing.
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#24I think Greg is too close to the events: I still mostly don't know what happened when Obama used Mixlr. Can anyone help out? Some specific questions: >Unfortunately the call was marketed and promoted as a “conference call” ... which does happen to be what Mixlr is intended for Okay, so what is Mixlr for? I poked around and found out briefly, but I'm still curious what Mixlr allows that they didn't use and could have.…
It allows for multiple screens to be broadcasted and the screens to be sent to everybody. Everybody can also chime in. Apparently, it was a one way feed from the President to everyone else. Nobody could chime in. How is that a conference call.
I got the impression from the blog post that the President's team disabled that feature for fairly obvious reasons (i.e. can't really let 10K+ people chime in). Here:
"Unfortunately the call was marketed and promoted as a “conference call” and questions were invited in advance [...] which does happen to be what Mixlr is intended for [...] However, in the end they didn’t really use it that way nor to the extent of what Mixlr allows and it was just a one-way broadcast." (from the eighth paragraph in)
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
what account details?
Normally businesses don't disclose who their customers are without prior approval.
Really? The president does a mass mailing to millions of Americans telling them about the conference call, where it is hosted, and how to participate.. and you're concerned about revealing him as a customer? I think only the Swiss are that much of a stickler for privacy.
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#26From an achievement point of view, are there are any challenges after this?
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The blogpost says that OFA contacted them and forewarned about the size of the call. I guess that's the point where Mixlr could have asked an extra to handle the scale, while it sounds like they just said "no problems, go ahead".
Right, I was implying that even after they said 'no problems, go ahead' (perhaps by opening the discussion about an enterprise plan). My reasoning is because it makes it easier to shift blame for the procurement officer. In the event of a service failure instead of being picked on for hosting a presidential conference for the price of a chipotle, you can blame the company you paid a good amount of money to for their…
I see. I reckon it doesn't work either way. Think of how wonderful would have been to run a flawless presidential conference call with $9.99, instead of, for instance, procuring a custom-made IBM+Cisco contract for $200k.
Maybe there's a number in the middle, but I think it's hard to draw a line. At the end of the day, if I were a US citizen, I would prefer my government to attempt with a $9.99 service that went almost flawlessly, rather than ditch it just because "it's cheap, it can't work, we must pay at least $X".
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#28Meanwhile, even though we’re not US voters, our hats are off to the President and his team for being agile, using third party web services and trying to be as engaged as possible with his constituents. We love that he’s done an AMA on Reddit, that his team uses Twitter, Facebook and Instagram regularly, and we’re seriously proud they now use Mixlr too.
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Hardly.
They do maintain some sort of vain presence, so as to appease the college crowd that make use of large amounts of social media, but no actual debate or interesting conversation has been inspired by it.
The AMA on Reddit in particular was one of the most pathetic PR stunts I've witnessed in a while. A few generic responses to mundane and chauvinistic questions. But, since his campaign team ended up referencing the "NOT BAD" meme, Reddit swallowed it all up with gusto.
It was sad to watch.
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#29Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#30From an achievement point of view, are there are any challenges after this?
Yep, it turns out that post Obama's use of Moderator (and then hangouts with moderator) we realized that this was only a taste of what can happen when you have a really popular person using your systems. Yes, I'm talking about Lady Gaga. Made Obama look downright pedestrian.