RE: Trevor on AS/400 vs. System i was->RE: MSFT video demos HostIntegration Server

Here's a chance for us to put up or shut up after all the complaining we've
done about IBM marketing.

Here, read about the powerful influence of a name, just a name!:

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/1998/09/beato.html?welcome=true

According to the article, America spends $25 million dollars for just pure
naming services. I think that is a awfully understated idea of how much
importance the influence of a name in a market.

He told of name-consultant firms like like NameLabs, Namestormers, ABC
Namebanks, and the one he seemed to go to, Master-McNeil. That last one gave
their name to the "Mac Color Classic". Maybe iPod was another product of naming
service genius, I think so.

Now there's a vague suggestive echo between the iPod and the "i". We have the
"big" i, they got the little one. People have an iPod, we work on an "i", or an
"i5". Remember the "high five"?

--Alan


-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Trevor Perry

Aaron,

While I beat on the brand drum in this forum (ok - a lot), there is work I
put in other areas. I speak on modernization a lot. My session called "How
to be an IT Survivor" is also a smack in the face for a lot of green
programmers. I work on refacing and modernizing applications where the users
no longer know what hardware is running the application. I talk to IBM a lot
about naming, GUI, modernization, etc. Yes, I pound on a lot of people. You
don't see any of that in this forum.

FWIW, IBM already has a GUI or two for i. I choose to use other solutions,
and get better results. Changing the GUI is like using the right name - it
is just ONE of many things we MUST do. Some of it is about perception, and
some of it is about having modern applications on our platform.

I still maintain that a small thing as the community calling it by the right
name will go a long way to maintaining the platform for our future. But it
is not my only gig.

Trevor



On 6/5/07 11:59 AM, "albartell" <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It really is such a simple thing. It is amazing how difficult it is for

some people to make such a simple change.

I try to call it by it's current name as best I can, but that simply isn't
the problem with it's bad image. IBM is adding awesome new features to the
hardware and OS on a regular basis, but it still severely lacks in a native
GUI. The reason people have the perception that it is old is because IT
LOOKS OLD! Sure we have iSeries Navigator to do admin stuff (which I don't
use) but that doesn't help RPG developers who want to develop rich graphical
user interfaces on the platform.

I think if we keep saying AS/400 or iSeries, our careers will disappear

before our eyes. I also think that not using the new name is a poor excuse
for an inability to modernize oneself.

I think you have taken it upon yourself to try and change perception in the
community which I will say your efforts have been great. But you are on
this path where the only thing that matters to you (or the only thing I hear
in your postings) is that we need to call something that is relatively the
same a different name. Maybe you should start pounding on IBM to physically
change the UI image and see if that would work better for people's
perception??

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com