World: r3wp

Agree totally Pekr. This altme world is about technical achievements 
and possibilities of Rebol. No debate about how good it can be, but 
there isn't any cohesive marketing going on. No blogging, no search 
engine strategies, no PR announcements to the right people, a dearth 
of both Rebol powered products and even the experts are crying out 
for some basic stuff to be fixed.  My guess is that even the rebol 
evangelists use it as "secret weapon" so that they don't get told 
to put their toys away and get back to real languages like C++ or 
Java. [off soapbox]

Pekr, what is proper marketing? Its a very difficult issue.. but 
you know that i assume.. I dont know what the difference is between 
europe and the rest of the world but I do know that it succes depends 
for 90% on "Accepted Vision of the product!" by the public (Public 
can be anything..) One thing is sure , Rebol is still its time ahead 
with many things and thats a disadvantage currently because of the 
mis-intepreted use of Rebol by the rest of the world. (thats what 
i think). Still i think the RT is overflowed by exciting and needed 
to publish towards the community "some" release. But i could be very 
wrong here as well because i only observe Rebol marketing from a 
birdview..

Rebolinth - all true. But release to the community should not apper 
on the website. TLA was not consulted. Carl could easily told us 
his choice and let us check. Now Ladislav posted link, which could 
make alredy announced TLA unusable ...

proper marketing

 - I too don't know what to do exactly, but I do know, that such things 
 do take time. I would start defining - WHAT I want to say, to WHO 
 I want to say it, and I woudl start with new website ...

What is "proper Marketing" - here is a hint. All the Rebol sites 
turn up top positions in google when you look for "rebol".  Problem 
is nobody is really looking for "rebol".

Yes you are right, though i think Carl or RT had a special meaning 
with it.. Im not sure what but it even could be used for money founders, 
or prerelease of even more software?...

Colin i think that Rebol RT does not want to market Rebol as a software 
development tool but rather in a broughter picture as a environment.. 
Thats something a lot of Internet users/developers dont even know 
yet..

So they market is right but people dont see it ;-)

that may sound strange though ;-)

Well if you cant tell me in 25 words or less just what  RT is selling, 
how successful do you think their marketing efforts have been.

For me in person? Then, RT is selling me a construction with vision 
and future. For the rest of the world i would not know.. But what 
i do know is that it could take 10 more years befor the Name "Rebol" 
pops up where it should. Thats not a marketing issue that an evolution.. 
how unfortunatly that might be..

but we have time ;-)

my attempt on RT elevator speech.

less than 20 words version

RT develops the language Rebol, a messaging language which makes 
distributed computing easier across devices

Colin -- "Problem is nobody is really looking for "rebol"."
That's true -- they are looking for solutions to problems.

 It is possible for our websites to rank highly in all sorts of areas. 
  For example, in the last three days people have found REBOL.org 
 because it ranks in the top 10 for Google for these phrases:
-- hex to integer converter
-- gui maker
-- html script calendar notes
-- script library
-- parsing html links


I suggested a year or so back (REBOL world, Advocacy, I think) that 
REBOL wevbsite owners could collaberate to help these sorts of rankings. 
 Still true.

Well thats good. So now you reverse that it determine what key words 
someone would search for so that Rebol websites would pop up. Some 
how I don't think you'd look for "vision" or "ahead of its time", 
but you would want to zero in on "rapid development multi or cross 
platform development internet protocols messaging " etc ... and start 
feeding the Search engines these sites linked to these words. If 
you go to rebol.com and do a "view source"  see how many hits you 
get on those words.

Yep.

We need to get better for the things they are finding us for....including 
having more solid content.
Plus help them find us for other things.

REBOLcom is No1 for:
-- Internet messaging
...But the content needs improving

Sunanda - those a good points. So search the rebol web server log 
and see what the key words were that got hits from the SE. Start 
building pages that maximize those key words, have links back to 
your main Rebol sites and feed the SE with these links. Its an interative 
process that takes time and effort. At the moment all we see is time 
being spent.

That's the way I do it in other fields.

Plus think a bit wider -- there must be a market for people who want 
something better/differemt to Perl or PHP etc.  We don't have the 
appropriate comparison/conversion documents.  Not marketing rah-rah 
about REBOL, but some straight-forrward comparsions that show strengths 
and weaknesses.
Maybe we should swicth to Advocacy.....

go

A marketing strategy is not based on issues like "Promotion via Google 
or Webpages" Though its indeed 5% of it...

You need to convince the Core problem!

its like i.e. "reverse enginering"...

But surely one of  its strength is in dealing with internet protocols 
and thats where most people look for solutions in this field.  What 
is the Core problem?

In my opinion the "core" are the conservatives... Those who stick 
with what they have and know and dont risk a change because its too 
expencive on their budget/knowledge...

I.e. the problem with introducing REBOL into a BIG software development 
compagny is that the developers are always willing to try a change! 
but the total package of moving from 1 development enviroment to 
the other is far to complicated and expensive to do it.. So they 
stick with what  "others" use  and do, without thinking through the 
whole picture.. Its a pitty but a fact though.. Still if a development 
compagny would start directly (or on a new project) with i.e. REBOL 
the change that it will have success if far greater. Well....getting 
to that stage is difficult because REBOL is unknown... Its like "air" 
to the people, so you have to put time into it.. (There is no time 
inside big compagnies..there is only time in technology enhanced 
compagny's that do research. So you miss a market...) Anyway a nice 
topic which keeps me sometimes thinking about "Who promoted the Wheel.. 
;-)" It was an evolution... And indeed Internet promotion is part 
of this evolution so please continue ;-)

I don't know what they are selling to the world, either. I do know 
that what RT sold me is a network-aware glue language useful for 
streamlining my work tasks.

... at least, those are the features that encouraged me to spend 
money on it :-)

oh, now they accepted my news item. two very positive comments, one 
with the word "incredible" in it :-)

URI ?

no matter, if it's Danish, I won't be able to read it!

:-) well, it's newz.dk

so far so good... only twelve comments, but some are quite funny 
with people displaying disbelief that it's possible to do all that 
in one language.

words like "too incredible" and "spooky" (rough translation) pop 
up :-)

about the release thing.   That is what I have learned in the last 
year.   I am much less visible, but am doing more behind the scene. 
 I only hint at what I am doing these days, with the people part 
of some of the projects more aware.

Its hard to keep the mouth shut when its exciting, but its easier 
on the nerves and its also easier to change the priorites as they 
evolve without getting too much negative feedback.

rebol is an integrated solution.  NO OTHER LANGUAGE is soo  integrated 
a part for java, and IMHO just because its much more mature.   Managing 
databases, GUI, Image processing, drawing, doing cgi scripting, out 
of the box), working on direct tcp port in 1-2 lines of code, mails, 
and all of this in ONE no-install 500k  file!

IMHO managers want solutions which solve their dept. needs.  but 
they don't really care about other depts. so what happens (in all 
companies I've worked at) is that you end up having upwards to 6-10 
different applications working in parralel with duplicated (and usually 
out of sync) data.

but many CTOs don't realise that the dept. sync issues is THE biggest 
problem.  tools can be all powerfull, but if your stuck with the 
data, or have to use a stupid Excel sheet to share it... then you've 
just reduce your tool's effectiveness by a large proportion.

IOS helps, but the actuall applications aren't very powerfull or 
compelling yet.   and when dealing with large companies which focus 
on tool sets, they don't see the benefit of having all the data available 
as one pool of data.   So the IOS demo is a tough one IMHO.

I'm taking big apps btw, things like real large project planning/scheduling 
for costing,  with statistics.   Asset tracking,  production control, 
support softwares with integrated tickets, reports, knowledge base, 
performance ratings, bug mining, etc...   IOS just doesn't cut it 
when people have large apps which ARE usefull...  at some point, 
large is not always bloat.

The web still drives some major application development.  The company 
I work for has now switched to a ticketing system (for technical 
support) to a web based application.   The application is able to 
be access remotely via portal mobile devices.  However the application 
is very cumbersome and adds to the costs the customer must pay in 
the long run.

Thanks Volker for the editor.  I'll definately be studying your code. 
 Looks nice.

nice volker MDP-GUI needs find / highligt and replace/hightligt systeme 
 ;)

More mac's in Carl's basement - hmmmm sounds like another of Carl's 
big relic sales is coming soon  ;-)

Carl I give your information on mac OSX to french community here 
they are waiting for a mac OSX version since long time :)

That REBOL on OS X news is great news, from my point of view!!! Now 
I can't think of any other argument for not getting a Mac! :-) Quite 
a few of my friends invest in a new Mac these days, mostly portables.

I'm just waiting for OSX Tiger release & the updated models (Australian 
release date April 29th ! )

Ditto. I'll be replacing my office and home PC's with Mac minis once 
10.4 is out.

I took some mac training about 6 months ago from the company but 
the macs faded out when they thought they were going to deploy more. 
 I have come to learn something about the platforms.  If you don't 
get the big consulting firms to push the other platforms then the 
other platforms will never dominate the corporate desktop market.

Working as field technical support we see and feel the process that 
drives platform choice.  Its all about Common Operating Environments 
and it takes more than just fancy features.  It takes a robust support 
framework designed around a productive platform to break the hold 
of companies like Microsoft Dell and Intel partnerships.