Thank you Cathal,
Apology accepted.
I started writing this application back in the before-DotNet days of Classic ASP. The reason Microsoft sponsored IBuySpy, gave away Visual Web Developer Express, encouraged DotNetNuke and most recently rolled out BizSpark to 82 countries is to engage the Developer. All in the hope that one day someone is going to come up with the next killer app – like VisiCalc, blogging, social networking – to pull through massive sales on their platform.
The problem with recognizing the next great killer app is that it’s not going to be about the tool, it’s about what you can do with it. Explaining your new app purely technically misses the point, as in:
“A blog has a reversed sort order, one that puts most recent posts first.”
“Yes, and…”
“Well, it’s more than this, it’s a ‘naked conversation’.”
“Really, so it’s self-indulgent verbal diarrhoea?”
“Not quite, then there is the blogosphere.”
“What, specialist search engines, is that all?”
And so on.
My app aids the management of complex relationships. But since most people don’t know what that means, that is where I have to start explaining what it does. And that is why the blog is not full of DotNetNuke stuff – although the site is clear enough.
To give an example from the IT World, the outsourcing of many IT jobs to India has created a new task: that of managing a complex outsourcing deal – how do you manage remotely, what do you do if they aren’t performing, how do you change outsourcing partners, and so on?
Now here is a far more serious example. Many people are blaming the regulators for the global financial crisis, and looking to regulators to make sure that it never happens again. But if you watch the MIT Baseline Scenario class (here) you will see that part of the problem is that the US has 54 regulators (one for each State plus a few more for the US as a whole) who are trying to regulate banks that are not merely US in scope but global. This truly is a complex relationship and exactly what this approach can help make work.
I know DotNetNuke is Open Source, still most of the people in this eco-system are hoping to sell what they produce. I am not appealing to the DotNetNuke people for sales because they are unlikely to be customers, but for their support and ideas on connecting with people – namely the Obama transition team - for whom this application could be an enormous boon.
When my application takes off, it is only going to help everyone with DotNetNuke know-how. So can I now resubmit that original post? This is absolutely not a frivolous request.
And if anyone has any ideas, let me know. I am open to all suggestions.
Kind regards
Geoffrey
PS: I checked my gmail spam folder. Your email is not there. But I have changed my profile to an email address with no filters.