OK, so the sky isn't falling, but AD isn't marketing SI well

[Hirazi Blue]

Or put differently: let's leave it at that (until the next crisis comes along) ;)

"Play it again, Chin!!!"

[Hirazi Blue]

As an afterthought I just want to add the following, again on a personal note, not to be confused with my role as a moderator here:

[rant]
After the announcement of the "Autodesk Subscription Advantage Pack for Softimage 2011" everybody seems happy again. Reading some of the comments on the "Premium Suite" uproar, one, however, gets the distinct impression some people honestly think threads like this one (and a few others on this and other forums) hurt the company/software in the end. I think this is nonsense. While some of the fears and doubts surfacing during a Softimage "crisis of faith" are undoubtedly outlandish, I think we must ask ourselves, where all these fears and doubts originally come from and if they're really all equally unfounded. Blaming the doubters for everything is just as easy and misguided as blaming Autodesk. If the Softimage community as a whole starts censoring itself too much in this respect, part of what has made that community great (and fun) to begin with, gets inevitably lost. IMHO doubts and fears are best expressed out in the open, otherwise they could easily create a bunch of very unhappy customers, eventually not buying Softimage anymore, thus hurting the company/software in the end also...
[/rant]

[wacom]

I fully agree Hirazi, and I've seen things go badly both ways in terms of user base interaction. It's really a chicken and egg situation in many cases, so we need to stop arguing which came first (aka blame everyone and no one at the same time) and work to resolve the issue on all ends as productively and pro-actively as possible.

Sticking our heads in the sand or "apocalyptic freak outs" might not be justified, but I agree, they are indicators of potential, or real issues that need to be addressed. In the end I think this was constructive (if not a bit entertaining at times) as there are a number of thoughts and feelings that needed to come out of the wash from the AD acquisition, and even before that. Some of the issues in fact have very little to do with Autodesk and are more issues that were always bubbling under the surface, but have only gained more attention AFTER the acquisition.

Sorry- I'm not trying to have a war of who has the last word on this thread here- just chiming in in agreement and saying thank you too.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

I´m sorry, I just didn´t want to open a new thread for this, so maybe just take it as a footnote:

After all we know by now, there seems to be only one conclusion that really makes sense, where suddenly everything falls into place. If the future of Softimage is bright but AD doesn´t want to advertise it, if the sales exceeds expectations but AD doesn´t want to show why, it can clearly only mean one thing: they don´t want to loose Max and Maya!
They add Softimage to the bundle to make Max and Maya more attractive to new customers! They don´t want to prevent Softimage from being successfull, they just want to prevent Max and Maya from being not! That´s what you do with a really, really dangerous opponent.

Well, I think we can all live with that. ;)

[Hirazi Blue]

Ah, yes, the (highly realistic ) optimistic point of view!
Now why I hadn't I thought about that myself? ;)

[mixepix]

As one of the people that complaint about the complainers on another forum I felt compelled to answer. It's not that criticism is a bad thing, some of the complaints are legit and I'm not blaming them (or you) for anything, but the spawn of hysterical rants about how Autodesk are going to rip ICE from Soft and put it into Maya and similar are just stupid. It can be so daunting to read about how Softimage is doomed all the time, sometimes I almost feel like switching package myself (not really ). So in short, I think it can be constructive to criticize but when it's only Autodesk bashing I believe it's just bad PR for Softimage.

cheers,
Mikael

[Hirazi Blue]

Point taken! The downside of criticism obviously is, some people tend to go over the top. I just disliked the general idea, not based on one single post, that several people seemed to be starting to blame the people expressing fears/doubts for the potential harm they could do to the software, as if to say all such threads should be banned. I'd rather have some unfounded exaggerations than no discussion at all ;)

[Bellsey]

Personally I have nothing against open debate, discussion and asking questions about software, etc. But, I'd prefer it if people tried to stay on track and stick to some degree of facts and solid evidence when they start posting and throwing questions out there, instead of making wild, unfounded rumours and scaremongering, which nearly always end up being false and untrue.
Such posts to me just bring up negativity and serve no purpose. They also tend to snowball to a point that many people start to take them as the truth.

Unfortunately for us, when asked to rebuke any rumours etc, it can be very hard for us to give a definate answer, which then only fuels the debate with false truths, etc.

[Hirazi Blue]

@Bellsey - I guess both sides tend to overreact. You yourself parried two of my more or less "normal" criticisms by shouting "conspiracy, conspiracy". But I admit, these discussions tend to get slightly out of hand. That's not necessarily a bad thing, although I understand it sometimes feels that way looking at it from the standpoint of an employee of the company.
And I really think in the end all these threads do tend to regulate themselves concerning the wildest claims. And rumors and wild allegation sadly often are the only thing the community as a whole has to work with, not having the perfect insight one gets from NDA's or permanent AD-employment...
If every action of the company were perfectly clear, I think there would be less rumors flying around... (case in point: the "companion" slogan and it's subsequent handling).

[Bellsey]

yes that's right I did reply with those words, because the comments and posts by people were essentially suggesting that very thing. The word itself may not have been mentioned but there was certainly suggestion of 'things' going on behind the scenes.
I don't think you will ever get a software company to be completely fully open about everything they are doing, not 100%. But I wonder honestly think it wouldn't matter if they were. Even if a company was to be open and honest with all their info, products etc, there will always be people who would cast doubt and question things from the negative. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't.

But I guess thats the trap of online forums like these. As good as they are, its all too easy to be drawn into a thread on some subject and then perhaps try and hold your tongue, lol
"Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt"

[Hirazi Blue]

;)
But then the forums would run dry very quickly...

[wacom]

Well I agree on both sides of the coin here (well the reasonable coin) that there is nothing wrong with good debate and some airing of grievances, and also understanding that companies are in turn never going to be able to achieve 100% customer satisfaction on all fronts. There will always be those at the margins (fan-club, “haters”, conspirators, etc.) it seems.

In my own defense I still feel that while maybe my threads subject line might be a bit “racy” most of my points are somewhat valid, or were at the time, given the information I had on hand. I didn't say that SI is going away, dead, or a plugin for Maya, and my intention was to give this subject of SI marketing more light. My understanding is that any company with divisions with have overlap but finite resources will lead to some infighting for attention. While it has been made abundantly clear that the technical progression of softimage is well funded, I still feel that the marketing/pr could be better. I am not talking about the companion upgrade, but still just the over all “feel” of the AD sites in terms of SI coverage etc.

So in the end my thread was fully intended to make AD re-think what the SI user base deems as an acceptable amount of marketing and PR for SI, and yes, fully shift a small portion of it over to SI from other divisions, much as they have probably done with funding of the technical side of SI.

I do not expect anyone from the AD to come out and say that they do ANY of this- it would only insight a riot of sorts and be poor for the company on all fronts. Still I do expect discussions like this to hopefully give the SI team more resources other than for technical development. Same for the SI support team which has always been top rate IMHO.

While any employee of AD has to play nice when talking about other software within the AD portfolio, I do not, and also am not afraid to state that I want SI to kick some ass internally and, in a perfect world, crush the “other two” applications into oblivion. While that is not realistic in the near future (I can dream), I'm only looking out for MY interests here! I'm sure an avid Maya or Max user feels the same (though probably hasn't really used SI like we've been forced to use theirs).

So, to re-iterate yet once more, my rant wasn't coming from some conspiracy theory angle, but more of one that is based on what I perceive to be the corporate reality at AD. This is based on my understanding how other companies work, and unfortunately, by the very nature of the subject, can not be confirmed or denied by any employee of AD!

In the end, just like a piece of art, once its out in the public's hands, to some degree it's out of the hands of AD as to the opinions and ideas raised about any of their software. So we do also need to acknowledge that as much as we love to live in our little SI caves, we have our part in “proselytizing” SI too.

PS- Hirazi I agree, though I'd hate for this place to start looking like the NewTek forums or have the SI team doing the same. That is also anti-productive, and annoying as hell. One of the things that drew me to SI was the fact that the forums were not stuffed full of junk (kind of like my posts- YIKES) and were full of good information and know how instead of flame wars, fan-boys, and the rest. That's why when it goes too far I feel it needs to be squashed pronto- tears and all.

[Hirazi Blue]

Well personally I found this last wave of uproar (concerning the Premium Suite) went over quite well & as far as I can recall without that many extreme utterances. But I haven't read them all and surely cannot recall them all, so I could be mistaken.
Personally, so not as Moderator, I feel I contribute a lot to this/the community and my own criticisms, however unfounded they may turn out to be, are never meant to incite a riot, bring the company down etc. The suggestion, someone criticizing the company should stop, because we wouldn't want to displease the poor defenseless company is something I find troublesome. That's why I started the epilogue to this thread about that implied course of action for the community. Those who express fears and doubts (within reason) are just as valuable a part of the community as those that don't.
This reminds me of a time (long ago) when I worked with a software package, of which the main source of information was a company-run mailing list. First rule of this mailing list was that you weren't allowed to talk about the bugs in the software, or else you would be banned permanently. As the software however was full of bugs that left the people on the mailing list few things to actually discuss.
In an ideal world, the user base has no reason whatsoever to fear and doubt any actions of the company. In an ideal world however the company spends a little more time keeping the user base happy. It works both ways.
And personally I think that the general way the Softimage team reacted to this last crisis was already a big improvement over the way the previous one was handled. So:

[Rez007]

Being a contributor to this thread, I have to agree with Hirazi. I don’t think anything that was said here was overboard at all. Having a place for open discussion, whether it be for concerns or optimism, is a great thing to have. We pay our money to this software, and being able to share our voice is important. If no one said anything at all and we just sat on our hands waiting for the next release to come out - that would be ridiculous. Maybe for the people that don’t pay for their copies, whether they are getting it from a company they work for or by other means, that is up to them, but I know that I would want my money spent to its maximum potential. As long as everything is being dealt with in a professional manner, as I see here, then there is no problem. That is why I like these forums much better than others, the censorship and "superiority" on other sites is laughable. A little off tangent here, but still relevant, I think it would be great if wages were discussed in these forums too...I have no idea why it is so taboo. Being open about it would help the industry greatly, rather than having unknowing under-cutting taking place.

Hirazi, and anyone else who contributes to keeping this site up and running the way it is - keep up the great job!!!

[Bellsey]

And personally I think that the general way the Softimage team reacted to this last crisis was already a big improvement over the way the previous one was handled. So:

lol, what previous crisis? I must have missed that one, but then I don't think this was a crisis either, just a massive overreation, imo.

[Hirazi Blue]

Very funny...