New beginnings...

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Newbie4
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New beginnings...

Post by Newbie4 » Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:10 am

Let's have some fun...

LiveCode needs rebranding, something to tell people what makes it special as a language. A new name? A new catch phrase? A jingle?

Some ideas...

LiveCode, the PB and J of languages. - like peanut butter and jelly, once you try it, you like it

LiveCode, the language of the world - learning to program is basically learning a foreign language. LiveCode is in English, so you are already there, you will be programming in a jiffy

LiveCode, when you need it ASAP. - as soon as possible. It is fast and easy to write a program or app. Also Any System, Any Platform (ASAP) - write it on any computer system (Windows,Mac, Linux) and run it on any platform (PC, Apple, Linux, HTML).

LiveCode is not deadcode! It lives and runs everywhere

LiveCode, if Richmond uses it, it must be good!

...okay any other fun and exciting ideas

:wink: :wink:
Cyril Pruszko
https://sites.google.com/a/pgcps.org/livecode/
https://sites.google.com/a/setonhs.org/app-and-game-workshop/home
https://learntolivecode.com/

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Re: New beginnings...

Post by Newbie4 » Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:50 am

LiveCode, the choice of dogs, cats and alligators - if animals could talk then they would program their computers in LiveCode

LiveCode, when more is less - explaining a program in English is less work then programming it in C++ or JAVA
Cyril Pruszko
https://sites.google.com/a/pgcps.org/livecode/
https://sites.google.com/a/setonhs.org/app-and-game-workshop/home
https://learntolivecode.com/

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Re: New beginnings...

Post by richmond62 » Sat Dec 02, 2017 1:20 pm

I wonder why you are bothering to spend time on this when over a number of years, despite all the "guff" LiveCode spout about "listening" they, demonstrably only listen selectively, and never as far as I can see, to anything about what Thee and Me are banging on about.

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Re: New beginnings...

Post by bogs » Sat Dec 02, 2017 4:47 pm

Newbie4 wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:10 am
LiveCode, if Richmond uses it, it must be good!
I would spend time in this thread just to read that one line again. It is on the interwebz, so it must be true :!:

Well, that and I tend to think brilliant ideas = the one in that last 7 k that actually was good.
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Re: New beginnings...

Post by jacque » Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:36 pm

richmond62 wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 1:20 pm
I wonder why you are bothering to spend time on this when over a number of years, despite all the "guff" LiveCode spout about "listening" they, demonstrably only listen selectively, and never as far as I can see, to anything about what Thee and Me are banging on about.
They do listen. They just don't always agree.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

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Re: New beginnings...

Post by bogs » Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:27 pm

jacque wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:36 pm
They do listen. They just don't always agree.
I have said that very same thing to my mother many times when she would say it didn't seem like I was listening. I always 'listened', I just didn't always agree with what was said.
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Re: New beginnings...

Post by richmond62 » Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:40 pm

They do listen. They just don't always agree.
That, of course, is both normal and healthy.

What does make LiveCode's "listening" more difficult for us "bottom feeders" to understand
is that they do it without letting us know:

1. That they are listening,

2. What they think of opinions advanced here,

3. Why they think what they think.

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Re: New beginnings...

Post by jacque » Sat Dec 02, 2017 7:00 pm

I'm trying to think of any company, anywhere, who tells their users what their marketing efforts will be. Why would you expect that? They don't even tell their stockholders.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
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Re: New beginnings...

Post by richmond62 » Sat Dec 02, 2017 7:05 pm

Oh, Gosh, it's going to turn into another of those awful jacque 'N' richmond spats 8)

You are completely right about marketing, but there are a few things that send opposite signals such as the words "Community" and "Open Source".

We could let the good folk at LiveCode central off #3 . . . but if they gave us the odd "grunt" re #1 and #2 . . .

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Re: New beginnings...

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Dec 02, 2017 7:19 pm

I've taken what seems to be an unusual path to communicating with LiveCode: I communicate with them.

I don't send correspondence that I'd like LiveCode to act on to other users in the forum, or to my grocer, or my banker, or anyone else not in a position to act on my ideas. I write directly to the intended recipient.

As luck would have it, I've discovered that this method has some merit. I find that when I write to the person I want to communicate with, it greatly increases the odds of getting a reply from them.

Sometimes I don't get a reply (not all that surprising; my own overloaded In Box is difficult for me to keep on top of, and I can't expect others to do things I can't expect myself to do).

Sometimes I get a rejection of the idea. But when I do, most of the time it's accompanied by an explanation of why it does not appear to be a good fit with where they are at the moment.

And sometimes I get exactly what I'm looking for.

Have you noticed that most pages at livecode.com include customer testimonials? That was me. I've seen that work well for other companies, tried it myself with good results, and shared my experience with the team. And since I'd provided a clear description of the idea along with a reasonable business case and examples of where it's been successful, it was acted on within days.

As with any attempt to tell other people what to do with their own time and money, as Jacque noted we can't expect they'll just drop everything to jump on every random idea that comes in. There are too many, they often contradict one another (we have a very diverse community, with a wide range of differing needs), and sometimes they're just not good ideas.

But sometimes they are. And if you have a good one, present it clearly with a business case and there's a good chance you'll at least get a reply. They may even act on it.

Of course, if you want to get a reply from them you'll have to submit it to them first.
Richard Gaskin
LiveCode development, training, and consulting services: Fourth World Systems
LiveCode Group on Facebook
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Re: New beginnings...

Post by jacque » Sat Dec 02, 2017 8:45 pm

richmond62 wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 7:05 pm
Oh, Gosh, it's going to turn into another of those awful jacque 'N' richmond spats 8)
Nah. It's all in the family and we've known each other too long. :)
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

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Re: New beginnings...

Post by bogs » Sat Dec 02, 2017 9:13 pm

jacque wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 8:45 pm
richmond62 wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 7:05 pm
Oh, Gosh, it's going to turn into another of those awful jacque 'N' richmond spats 8)
Nah. It's all in the family and we've known each other too long. :)
Spat, spat, spat Image <getting the popcorn>
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Re: New beginnings...

Post by Newbie4 » Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:35 pm

You said:
I've taken what seems to be an unusual path to communicating with LiveCode: I communicate with them.

And if you have a good one, present it clearly with a business case and there's a good chance you'll at least get a reply. They may even act on it.
Maybe for you, but for the rest of us we usually don't even get an acknowledgement much less a reply, discussion or even a "thank you for the idea..." They fail to answer most emails.

As for these forums:
It is commonly known that
For every customer who complains, there are 26 customers who don’t say anything.
Often, they’ll simply get fed up and leave.

That’s why customers who complain are giving you an extraordinarily valuable gift: insight into what’s probably making many more customers unhappy than just the person who chose to tell you about it.
If they do not monitor these forums, how do they know how they are doing? Every company needs to pay close attention to its customers and listen to them.

They should be active participants in this forum to keep a pulse on their customers. Many companies recognize this responsibility and monitor their public perception and performance. They even monitor Twitter, Facebook and other places their customers are in order to keep them happy and be more successful in their public image

If a company has the same problems and complaints over a span of 10 years and does nothing to remedy them, then that company does not deserve to be in business. They are not listening to their customers. They are not communicating with them. Look through the posts in this forum and pay attention to the recurring themes, complaints and ongoing threads. At the very least, LC should directly acknowledge and address at least some of them. They do not have to reveal their marketing strategy just acknowledge them, listen to our ideas, ask questions, solicit suggestions and address the problems.

The more successful companies go out of their way to solicit feedback If you have an intended audience that you want to go after, doesn't it make sense to talk to those people and find out what they need and what they want? You should also talk to your current customers and find out what you are doing right and what you can do better. You get to know your target audience and work with them

Meanwhile, the rest of us who care about the language and its future will present our ideas in this forum and discuss/debate them. Sometimes, we are just seeking consensus, seeing if our perceptions are shared with others. We may be giving the company the benefit of the doubt by asking in public - "Am I alone in thinking this or do others feel the same way?" The answers will reveal themselves in the posts

Those are our options and we make use of them - emailing the company, discussing them in the public forums and defending ourselves in front of our community liaison.

'nuff said.
Cyril Pruszko
https://sites.google.com/a/pgcps.org/livecode/
https://sites.google.com/a/setonhs.org/app-and-game-workshop/home
https://learntolivecode.com/

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Re: New beginnings...

Post by Newbie4 » Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:37 pm

How about:

LiveCode - if you can't do it, then it can not be done.

or

LiveCode with the most powerful feature of all - Klaus :lol:
Cyril Pruszko
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Re: New beginnings...

Post by FourthWorld » Sun Dec 03, 2017 12:24 am

Newbie4 wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:35 pm
You said:
I've taken what seems to be an unusual path to communicating with LiveCode: I communicate with them.

And if you have a good one, present it clearly with a business case and there's a good chance you'll at least get a reply. They may even act on it.
Maybe for you, but for the rest of us we usually don't even get an acknowledgement much less a reply, discussion or even a "thank you for the idea..." They fail to answer most emails.
You may notice that my sigline here includes "LiveCode Community Liaison". Part of that role is to solicit feedback from the community and coordinate between projects the community wants to accomplish and resources internal to the company needed to execute those projects.

If you have a specific actionable suggestion with at least a summary of a business case justifying the expense I'll be happy to include it in my next meeting with them.


As for these forums:
It is commonly known that
For every customer who complains, there are 26 customers who don’t say anything.
Often, they’ll simply get fed up and leave.

That’s why customers who complain are giving you an extraordinarily valuable gift: insight into what’s probably making many more customers unhappy than just the person who chose to tell you about it.
If they do not monitor these forums, how do they know how they are doing? Every company needs to pay close attention to its customers and listen to them.

They should be active participants in this forum to keep a pulse on their customers. Many companies recognize this responsibility and monitor their public perception and performance. They even monitor Twitter, Facebook and other places their customers are in order to keep them happy and be more successful in their public image
Sounds good. The part about how each voiced complaint represents a far larger number sounds like the sort of thing I tell my clients all the time. LiveCode is aware of that basic principle too. Every business that lasts beyond three years has already learned that, or they wouldn't have been able to last longer than the majority that fold much earlier.

When comparing activities between companies, it can be helpful to consider relevant details like: What is the total staff size in those companies? How are those companies funded? How many conversions do they get through those online activities?

In your own business, what percentage of your payroll do your spend on social media outreach?

I agree that those things are useful, and LC does some of them better than others. The use-livecode list tends to work well for the core dev team in ways that most of the forums don't; the forums are vast and much of what happens here is the sort of user-to-user support they're designed for, so the core team doesn't regularly schedule time to read each of the hundreds of posts that crop up here every week. But you will find LC staff in the Engine Contributors and LC Builder forums fairly regularly.

Sure, they could and arguably should do more. There are more features I'd like to see too. And some pet bugs I'd like to see fixed. And the things I want are different from the things Jacque wants, or what Klaus wants, or Trevor, or anyone else.

Of all those people, can you tell us which ones the company should say "No" to so they can pull staff from development to enhance socmed outreach?

Because LiveCode Ltd is no different from your business, or mine, or any other. Everything is a game of tradeoffs between limited resources*. Even the Big Four (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google) have to be mindful of resource management. Every business does.

LC has a team size well suited for what they need to do technically, but I would agree it's short for what would be ideal with regard to outreach.

If you're in a position to sponsor payroll for adding new team members to handle that, I'm sure Ian would love to talk with you. :)

But in the meantime, the LC discussions here, on the list, on FB, LinkedIn, G+, and all over the web are for the most part, as they are with most software communities, well handled by helpful volunteers.

This works well for most things people use those venues for, which are generally about learning and using LiveCode.

But they are not implemented to replace LC's email In Box, which leads us to:
If a company has the same problems and complaints over a span of 10 years and does nothing to remedy them, then that company does not deserve to be in business. They are not listening to their customers. They are not communicating with them.
Well then, as you suggest, that would be a self-correcting problem. ;)

But seriously, who exactly should they be listening to? Is my opinion more, or less, important to them as someone who may be interested in LC but has not yet purchased a license? After all, they already have my money, and the person not yet in the forums is where platform growth comes from.

There are many segments in this audience, each with different priorities, and a larger segment of potential future users on whom future growth depends and whose needs are different still.

Any conversation that doesn't take the tradeoffs or the nuances of the challenge of marketing into account is unlikely to be effective.

Let's look at how this plays out here:
Look through the posts in this forum and pay attention to the recurring themes, complaints and ongoing threads.
Yes, let's. But as with any business proposal, look carefully and soberly. Let's be prepared to discover things we may not have noticed before. No one is expert at all things. Just as we feel the company could benefit from learning some things, we ourselves always have new opportunities to learn too.

When we look at this earnestly, we do indeed see many recurring threads, many of them quite long, with a great many posts over a great many years...


...from about half a dozen people.

There are a handful of other posts and threads from the occasional passersby (not all of whom have had earnest intent, but we needn't name names), but by and large while the number of posts may be large the number of people complaining is not nearly so large.

Out of many thousands of users, active users in this forum are a small percentage. Of active users, most are here to learn LiveCode, and they seem to be finding what they need (thanks to Klaus, Bernd, and the others who provide such great support here). By the time we look at the subset of a subset of a subset of users who keep voicing the same concerns over and over, in all honesty I think we're looking at a fraction of 1%.

Meanwhile, consider developers like Mark Talutto, Ken Ray, Trevor DeVore, Sean Cole, Greg Miller, David Simpson, Devin Asay, Jacque Gay, Tom Glod, Matt Meier, Ralf Bitter, Dave Kilroy, Brian Milby, Tore Nielsen, Max Shafer, Jim Lambert, etc. (too many to name, and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head): how often do they post complaints in the user-to-user support forum?

All of those developers make great apps with LiveCode, and some have built businesses around their LiveCode apps. They understand the complexities of development and business management. None of them believe LC or LC Ltd is perfect, but they respect the inherent difficulty of the task at hand. When they have suggestions, they're well presented in constructive, actionable terms, with a business case, and delivered to the company, rather than delivering them to people who cannot act on them.

In short, what we see here is something I've seen in the Apple forums, Adobe forums, Ubuntu forums, and many other venues I've frequented over the years: those with the most experience managing projects of similar scope complain the least, and contribute the most. They have a lot at stake, and a good understanding of the challenges of running a business to know what it takes to be successful.

Good feedback is of course extremely valuable.

But let's do our part to make sure it's good feedback.

Let's focus on specific, actionable tasks. Let's consider the budget required to execute them and the business case for the investment. Let's consider the opportunity cost that comes with everything every company does (doing anything means not doing something else).

And perhaps most importantly, let's assume good intentions and be prepared to learn from the core team as well.

They're not stupid or drunk, as someone might get the impression from some of the random repetitive repetitive kvetching that goes on here. They're quite smart, actually. And damned earnest about success for the platform. After all, if LC stops being maintained all it means for us is about a year of retooling for another language, but for them it's their careers.

So let's engage in any discussion about how we want to spend other people's time and money with a healthy professional respect for the people we want to influence.

Together, the community and the core team can accomplish much. I believe that despite the challenges inherent in selling a dev tool in the 21st century, LiveCode has a good opportunity ahead to claim its rightful place among the world's great languages.


* This post is already so insanely long that I'll indulge in a semi-OT link:

Billionaire LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman can trace his business success back to a childhood hobby he still loves decades later
http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin ... gy-2017-11

I've started studying board games over the last year, initially as a form of what I like to think of as "transparent systems design": with computer game the magic happens under the hood where you can't see it; board games offer similar resource-tradeoff dynamics, but in a format made of cardboard, where every aspect of the mechanics is laid bare.

Over time I've come to appreciate them on another level too: as the founder of LinkedIn discovered early on, learning to work within the constraints of resource management is a skill that pays dividends in many aspects of life.
Richard Gaskin
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