I don’t agree with how Servoy moderates on their forum*
Published by admin on Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 03:50:50 - Filed under General, News
I didn’t write here for a while and I apologize: I have been so much occupied improving/fixing/documenting/testing/polishing my Browser Suite that I didn’t find the time and energy to write about it lately.
Still I’m here and I keep working on Servoy during the day, and doing my bit for the community during the evening (should I say the night?). And I keep looking in the Servoy forum for bits and pieces, tips and tricks, news and discussions.
Today I have read a post from David Workman from Data Mosaic, which was raising some serious questions and expressing some concerns about the state of the Servoy community and the attitude of Servoy towards it, with some sort of statistical proof to it. I thought that some of his points were fair enough and I was interesting in following this thread to learn what Servoy and other fellow developers would have to say in reaction to it.
So I was but little abashed to see that this post just simply disappeared!
I know this is not the first time, but it really annoys me to see that valid concerns from a developer who invested so much in Servoy and its community for years (indeed, he created a whole business aroung it!) would simply be dismissed in such a way. IMHO it just proves how valid some of David concerns can be related to Servoy management attitude towards us developers who are trying to work as partners with them.
So I decided to reproduce it here in full (thanks to google cache). I will simply say that I don’t always agree with David - especially when it comes to Mac and Java ;-) - but I think he expresses here some valid points that should not just disappear, so here it is - as it was written:
“Servoy is screwing itself with its approach to the Servoy community — and it is the most important factor limiting the growth of Servoy. It also translates into various misunderstandings and disconnects at a fundamental level. My analysis so far:
The positives
- webinars: some of these have been nothing short of brilliant
- forum
- access: we’re all sitting here hashing things out. servoy president, chief of mac haters, and me. pretty cool considering i’m sitting in my underwear right now. actually, just very cool. thx.
The negatives:
- historically bad documentation. it has currently risen to the almost adequate level due to the near mutiny of servoy developers last year
- small collection of examples and most of them sub par. none of them make you go “wow”! have you seen what other tools are doing these days?
- monetizing VUG hosting ($1,500 a shot) that me and other developers spent a ton of hours building up an audience for
- meaningless SAN program. should be merit based. like to be a partner you have to contribute to the servoy community or something intelligent like that
- lack of training. especially at the entry level for new people picking servoy up
- no easy way to sell servoy modules/solutions. as far as i know, we’re the only ones who have figured out how to obfuscate so we can release tons of code to testers and clients while reasonably protecting our investment
- closed bug system. no voting, no commenting, no what is happening, no transparency. it screams that you are in control. we’re you’re developers, you’re just 5 guys and a windmill if i recall correctly. we demand transparency. in return, i promise to submit a gazillion bug reports to you, work with other developers to confirm their existence, and spend hours creating test solutions for you to debug
- lack of focus on simplifying developing applications in Servoy. each iteration of servoy should have a focus on making our lives easier. figuring everything out on our own and bug testing supposedly production versions does not fall in this category
- too many features coming out in production versions badly and/or partially implemented with little to zero explanation on how to use, why to use, what the hell it’s even doing there, and best of all — the occasional why didn’t i know about this a year ago when it was implemented?
- no community manager or developer advocate
- buy all your developers macs. well…ok…i had to try
- no community manager or developer advocate. repeating because this really is my last item — and i believe it is super important
The results:
About a year ago you mentioned to me that Servoy had reached the 300,000 client mark. Seeing as how we want to sell a comprehensive frameworks to Servoy developers my very first thought was, how many Servoy developers does this translate into? My subjective opinion at the time was not very many.
So for about 9 months now I have been forum scraping. Neat little solution written in Servoy of course. Tracks how many new members, when the last time someone logged in, and the last time someone posted anything. Since the Servoy forum is the only place where Servoy developers hang out, I think it’s a fairly solid indicator of Servoy developer activity. Not completely accurate as far as raw numbers goes, but the trends these numbers reveal are quite likely spot on.
These numbers tell an interesting story. Out of 1,631 forum members (as of January 30, 2010), about 400 are currently active in the last 3 months. This is about the same number that were active when Servoy 4 was released a year and a half ago. Again, the raw total of 400 may be a bit off (I don’t have the statistical chops to figure out the mean variation) but the fact that the number is the same for the last year and a half time span is a solid statistic.
For a product as great and as mature as Servoy, my take on the numbers is that they translate into a pretty solid failure in reaching out to developers. It’s a pretty low number of total active developers and the flat net growth activity rate the past year and a half is not a good future indicator.
I place the blame primarily on Servoy’s lack of community engagement, secondarily on rolling out too many features in less than polished state, and thirdly on Servoy’s inelegant switch to Eclipse. The end result is a bunch of added pain points to long time Servoy developers and a product that is much harder to use and grasp for first time developers.
I think Servoy should have a goal of 1,000 active community members by the end of 2010. Basically doubling your performance in one year what you’ve done since you first launched 6-7 years ago. I believe it’s totally doable — but not with the mindset and attitudes Servoy is currently operating with.
Compared to what other companies are doing, I seriously don’t see how Servoy plans to remain viable in the long term without being completely dedicated, single-minded and aggressive in this area. Community development is the new marketing and Servoy is obviously completely blind to this fact. Which puts you several years behind the game as it is being played now.
And this completely sucks because the health of my company is entirely dependent on the health of Servoy. So my options are to try and get you guys to figure a few things out, bring another technology or two on board, or both.
This is me trying the first option out.
Wed Feb 03, 2010 9:15 am.
David Workman
Data Mosaic”
To the ‘no community engagement’ Johan Compagner reacted (but I have no permission of his or Servoy to reproduce his statement). Basically he said he was one of the top poster on the forum, which is true and, as someone else said later, very much appreciated.
I will only add to that, as I have already done in the past, that maybe if the docs and samples were clear enough he would spend less time to answer the same newbie questions again and again, and a lot more time to develop and stabilize things in Servoy code (on Mac or Win 7 - whichever he chooses ;-)
I will leave open the comments for this post (even if I know that I will have to delete spam daily) to allow anyone (including Servoy staff) to express his thoughts and reactions here when they couldn’t do it there…
I promise I won’t delete any comments - apart from porn adds ;-)
Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 05:51:46
We did some volunteer work early last year using the Ushahidi engine. It was pretty rough around the edges at the time and it was impossible to get information to figure it out. Eventually someone had had enough and vented on their forum. The response from Ushahidi quickly became an internet class act:
http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2009/05/12/transparency-communication-and-our-own-personal-failephant/
A good quote from it:
“If someone cares enough about your project, they’ll take the time to tell you what they like/don’t like about it. That’s valuable information, and it’s especially useful when they don’t just flame you, but offer solutions and alternatives that could work. Rabble did that, and it’s made us a better project already”
Erik (the author) could have deleted the forum post. But instead chose to acknowledge and make their product better.
I don’t think all my points are fully thought out or can stand the test of authentic dialogue. But they do represent my honest frustrations and a long and careful thought process.
As a longtime positive contributor to Servoy, I was not expecting Servoy to remove that post. Very disappointed that Servoy didn’t value my input — that has taken me the better part of a year to frame — and choose to turn it into a positive for them. If they had left that post up, I believe a lot of very interesting and valuable ideas would have come from it.
Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 17:08:34
I too was very surprised to see that entire thread removed from the forum. David made a lot of valid arguments in his post and I agree that an open, honest discussion of his points would be a very constructive process.
This points to a very big thing missing in the current Servoy community, and that is a channel to discuss issues of this nature. Yes, Servoy staff from the top down are extremely active in the forum, helping out where ever they can and this is a fantastic channel of communication. But we lack a cohesive developer community that can openly bring concerns and suggestions that will push the product forward. Maybe we, as developers, have to start the community ourselves to bring together our voices as a unit.
The Servoy platform is an amazing environment to work in with in powerful potential. What David is criticizing largely points back to the experience of using Servoy. The little things go a long way to the quality of the experience in anything we develop. More effort in documentation, solid examples and polishing of the dev. environment (just to name a few) would go a LONG way in improving the Servoy experience that some of us live in all day long. New feature after new feature is great, but without solid how’s & why’s related to a new feature, we’re often left wondering what the hell to do, hoping for someone to post a good example or point us non-Java developer geeks in the right direction.
Lastly, the message Servoy is sending by deleting discussions like this is very troublesome. Intentional or not, the message Servoy is sending as a company from this incident is arrogance, intolerance & censorship. In a world where community is a key component in marketing, this is very anti-community. Servoy had accomplished very big things in their product. Some focus on the smaller things I think will push the product to another level and Servoy’s developers have great insight into those ‘little things’.
Servoy, please don’t discredit the thoughts & ideas of your developers!
Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 17:26:31
I guess the “forum” item under Positives is in danger of teetering off the edge into Negatives territory and that would be a real shame. The forums are too vast to serve as more than a hit-and-miss knowledge base, and therefore the key value of them is timely and mutually-beneficial and community-building exchange amongst developers and between developers and Servoy.
Perhaps if SAN were a real program for exchange between Servoy and developers invested in Servoy, David might have had a more appropriate forum for posting the results of his research. But apart from Servoy putting up the SAN-only forums (at my request/urging years ago, with categories I suggested) there has been no real nurturing of the SAN program or its forums.
Developer Liaison — yup! Meanwhile I can see why folks feel dissed & left out in the cold …
Props to DW and PT for their extremely un-brown noses. May the courage of your convictions end up helping Servoy and developers move towards a more constructive and mutually respectful and collaborative future.
kazar
Thursday, February 4, 2010 - 17:32:17
I’m very surpised and shocked to see someones Servoy post be deleted without -any- notice or placeholder.
Someone at Servoy definetly should take a course ‘how to communicate with my customers/developers’ or hire somebody that is able to communicate with developers/customers in a mature way. Not like this. This is just rude and demotivates developers to be active on the Servoy forum and eventually turning to other developing tools.
I truly expect an explanation why Servoy choose to act this way.
Friday, February 5, 2010 - 08:37:00
The main reason the thread was moderated was because it got to personal.
A couple of comments on David’s post:
- Documentation: this has already been mentioned a few times: we have listened to this and have recently released wiki.servoy.com. It is a work in progress and many new items are about to be published on it. You can contribute as well by commenting on it.
- Community: we have over 10 Servoy staff actively reading and responding on the forum. We have sponsored, promoted and contributed to community initiatives such as Servoy Camp
- Sponsoring of VUG. This is only if companies wish to promote their commercial services on VUG. It is free to present, free to attend and we are putting money in VUG. If there is a problem with that we are happy to stop all sponsoring.
- Training. There are multiple trainings both by Servoy and by third parties. Both online and in person. And yes as a SAN member you can get your training published in our newsletter: we have done this for David in the past multiple times.
- Closed bug system. This is not uncommon (Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe have this too). Nevertheless it is on our list to see if we can open this. There are also good reasons not to open a bug system. Keep in mind that some high security environments such as US military, Spanish anti-terrorism unit and others are running on Servoy based systems.
- Developer advocate: Send in your votes. To make this work this obviously has to be a community member and not a Servoy employee.
- Servoy samples. This is also on the agenda
- Easy way to sell modules: As we have announced we are coming soon with a Servoy appstore, an email with detailed information is going out to our SAN developers this month. BTW, self reflection: I just checked the data-mosaic website: I don’t see any way to find more information about your frameworks, how to download them or how to purchase them.
- SAN Programs: All suggestions: but please be specific are more than welcome.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 05:02:59
You might have noticed that I have changed the title of this post from “Why do serious posts disappear from the Servoy forum?” to “I don’t agree with how Servoy moderates on their forum”.
I did so following Jan Aleman’s suggestion, saying that it was too suggestive and that the altered version would be more “correct, independent and to the point”. I think he is right.
The first title was coming from my gut reaction to the fact that a thread had been deleted from the forum when I thought there was some valid content in it, and this without notice or explanations.
Now that Jan took the time to explain a little more, I don’t want this post to appear as a simple negative rant against Servoy, since my goal (if I have any! :) is certainly not to give Servoy bad publicity (because like everyone else involved in it, I want Servoy to be more widespread) but to share my experiences (good or bad) with it.
I still feel that it was a bad move that was giving a bad message to us developpers, so I won’t change the content of the post which is still valid as the reaction of someone who has been shocked by the process.
This was my reaction, it seems that I was not alone. Let’s hope that this episode will give everyone to think about its responsabilities in the Servoy microcosm to help make it a macrocosm… We’re not alone! ;-)
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 18:01:30
I think there are a few valid points in David’s post, but I have to honestly say that I mostly disagree. It all depends on what your perspective of where Servoy should be spending their time. Personally, I prefer to see them working on developing the Servoy platform than attempting to increase the Servoy community. Those of you that are just Servoy consultants and developers shouldn’t depend on Servoy to be brining in the customers. Especially those of us that are SAN partners. Our job is to use Servoy as a competitive advantage, because of its rapid application development environment, to be able to go out into the market and compete to win software RFP’s. You can’t, and should’t, just sit back and rely on Servoy to bring in more customers and hand them over to you on a silver platter so you can be their consultant :)
As for the other listed grievances, as a business owner and especially SAN members, you should be looking at those items as business opportunities. Consider writing some documentation guides or samples or trainings, like Patrick and I have done. Servoyguy.com and Servoy-stuff.net has a pretty good collection of resources.
Finally, as a SAN Partner, I have to disagree that the SAN program is meaningless. Servoy has a full time staff member that handles PR. Her name is Brenda Christensen. If your a SAN Partner, and release a product build in Servoy, she will help you market your product and get you some good PR. They also allow you to do joint webinar events (besides the VUG). However, if your not releasing great products in Servoy, then you can’t take advantage of these things.
Not to get too personal, but it is always easy poke holes in other’s situations. I know of a Servoy developer who will remain nameless that releases frameworks in Servoy with poor documentation, buggy releases, and no real bug tracking system. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Or at lease if they do, they should probably do it privately before posting it on the forum. Again, there are a few valid points, but is a forum post really the appropriate place for that? Just my 2 cents.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 19:17:18
Hi Scott — There are very few SAN partners in the world, and partner-level membership is by invitation only. I’m glad your experience as a Servoy Partner has been fruitful. For the rest of us who might be on the Developer level, basically it means some cheap licenses, and that’s it.
kazar
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 19:25:20
I should add about SAN Developer memberships, that the 20% earnings back from license sales is very nice. But two things about that:
1. It means we are channel partners, but other than the 20% sales incentive we are not treated otherwise like channel partners. If we have observations and suggestions we would like to discuss (with other developers as well as with Servoy) Servoy has made the message loud and clear that we are not to do so publicly. This puts a big dent in our ability to work as a community to make Servoy more and more viable both for our customers and for developers.
2. There used to be an application provided by Servoy for managing our customers’ orders. It became so buggy and under-maintained it was bad news. Then it sort of disappeared. At least the last time I checked. Resources that back up the SAN program could stand some serious polishing up.
kazar
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 19:27:36
Ilyse,
I strongly disagree with your comments. Brenda, who does our PR does that for anybody in the SAN program and this has been offered multiple times including at last years Servoy World on tour where you attended.
Second it is good to point out that the original complainer, David, was a Partner level member so again your comment is not applicable.
Third: we offer much more in the SAN program including co-marketing opportunities, the possibility to bring us onsite with a customer and much more.
Your point about licenses is a very good one: just the license value alone is already more than we charge for the entire program.
Last but not least: there is no obligation to joint the program. Think about it as the iPad: if you don’t like it you don’t have to buy it.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 19:30:21
Ilyse on your later posted two points:
1. Yes there is a reseller program, in fact if you just resell very few licenses your SAN membership is already profitable. Ofcourse this does require that you do some work. You want to make money and on top of that get the business pushed to you?
2. The self-service SAN application was discontinued for various reasons but you can easily get your orders processed by contacting sales@servoy.com. One email and you are all set.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - 20:30:28
In addition to my previous comments:
To further increase quality of our documentation, examples and communication about new releases we have created a new position within Servoy. Paul Bakker, former project manager, will be fulfilling this role on a full time basis. In his new role as Product (Marketing) Manager he will work closely with the community.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 03:28:52
Hi Scott,
thanks for you views. I’m only not convinced when you say:
“Personally, I prefer to see them working on developing the Servoy platform than attempting to increase the Servoy community… Our job is to use Servoy as a competitive advantage, because of its rapid application development environment, to be able to go out into the market and compete to win software RFP’s.”
I agree that improving the tool is what should always be Servoy’s primary goal, and I like them to do that, but having more people involved in the platform - a bigger developer based community - would just mean more enhancements, third party tools, new ideas, new solutions, exchanges with other technologies, not less market. It strikes me as a strange statement coming from you. It’s like forgetting that you are part of that microcosm that enhances the platform and thus make it better.
I’m not at all for sitting there and waiting for Servoy to bring me clients, quite the contrary.
I believe that staying in our own little corner and betting on Servoy’s competitive advantage won’t last long if we rely only on them to always be at the cutting edge. Not that they are not good at it, but there are young wolves out there who are not wasting their time either! The IT world is going fast, fast, as you know, and for me having a bigger, more active, community means better chances to stay on top of the wave…
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 12:28:49
I think what Scott is trying to point out that as a community there is a responsibility as well. As Servoy we invest as much as we can by advertising, doing PR, reaching out to analists, briefing industry publications (I personally do over 5 briefings per week), being member of key organizations (eg I’m board member of EuroCloud), speaking at conferences and more. We do a lot to get a bigger community. As a community member everybody can contribute to this. Things you can do as a community member:
- Write about Servoy, eg what Patrick and Scott actively do on their blogs
- Contribute useful plugins, again Patrick and Scott are good examples
- Tell your friends about Servoy!
- Post on other websites about Servoy. eg if you see a discussion on dev environments there is often a possibility to leave a comment
- Speak at user groups and conferences about Servoy
- Get your success story out. If you haven’t yet contact Brenda and she’ll help you get your success story out for free.
- Get your apps in the Servoy app store. If you’re a SAN member you’ll receive an invite for this later this month
- Other ideas?
Friday, February 12, 2010 - 12:13:57
mixed feelings about all this, don’t want to bore anyone with my personal views, but just mention some important points:
- doc is definitly weak and late on new features while these are the ones which should be the best documented (I have been product manager in another life), because this is where are the biggest expectations, and nothing is more disappointing than spending 3 days to get the new feature working, when you succeed).
- bring more customers rather than more dev people? I disagree. Servoy lacks notoriety, and keeping it confidential is a major drawback. I am living in France, if I do a dev. for a customer, then crash myself (bikers are all mad!), how many peope can take over? so few than almost no reasonable customer will accept. Say Filemaker, 4D, Windev, Omnis, (no need to mentions the majors) they will accept.
- Servoy relies too much on the forum community even if they participate. Half of the questions should not exist with proper docs.
- Not enough integration of external beans, plugins; when you adopt an IDE, what is it for? to get an INTEGRATED tool, not spend your life on yahoo. When a plug-in is done, 1 time out of 2, it fills a gap, therefore it should be bought from the 1/3rd party and integrated in the regular release. What a waste of time. I hope Paul Bakker can improve things but I doubt a former project mgr is the right profile for this, too close to dev and too far from a newcomer point of view.
Sunday, April 4, 2010 - 20:02:49
I’m closing the comments today, after having to delete 34 spam messages urging me to buy some Valium(!).
This topic is still ongoing with the support system still waiting to be opened, buy we can sense a significant will from Servoy to listen to developers in the past weeks…