Tuesday October 8, 2024; 11:57 AM EDT
Guy Kawasaki and I have been going back and forth privately about what we want from our personal ChatGPT. Here's one thing for the list. When I go to Google and search for NBB, it should take me to this page on my blog. It shouldn't even require me to click on Feelin Lucky. Google has had 26 years to get to know me, and it still thinks I might mean National Bank of Blacksburg. Folks, this is my blog, read it and use it as context when I ask a question. And they don't have to even read my blog, NBB is defined in my glossary, which I make public and is used in rendering all my pages. #- A few years back, Google, when I searched for my mother, using her correctly-spelled last name, which happened to also be my last name, showed me results for Eve Wilmer.#
- Back to Guy. I asked if he's written about what an evangelist is. To me, he is the prototypical evangelist. He's #1 and there isn't a #2 or #3. He has written about it, in the Harvard Business Review in 2015. But his story is, excuse me, bullshit. I should record a podcast about what an evangelist is, as I was very well-schooled in this by Guy. Let me try here. #
- The evangelist for a product or organization is the person who deliberately tilts the playing field in favor of developer products that absolutely must get out there for the organization to achieve its mission. How is the tilt determined? Intuitively. If some random schmuck approaches him out of the blue at a developer conference, and explains their problem, where most BigCo people ignore them, the evangelist listens carefully. Helps without a second thought. And his door is open, if the developer wants to follow up. He helps route his needs through the organization. No developer is on their own if Guy is there. #
- And when the killer product comes along, the one that will give Mac users something to get charged up over in 1986 when the hardware problems were being solved (they were!) and the software flow had dried up, Guy gets the developer the $400K they need to keep the doors open to ship the freaking product. The level playing field approach, which most tech companies follow, results in dead developers and platforms whose capabilities go unexplored. Users get bored, and move on to where the excitement is. #
- I've seen products and companies fail to look around them to see what's possible. They only look inward at their own organizations who fail year after year to create products that users love. There's a reason for this, but you don't need to know it -- you just need to keep looking at every possible victory and when one comes along, do anything it takes to get it out to users.#
- I've applied Guy's teaching in every project I've done since I got to know him in 1983 and when we, together, rode the wave of success in the Mac in 1986. He was like a member of our team inside the Mac Division at Apple. And we did have the hit product that year. And Guy pulled every string to make sure the world knew. #
- This is how I applied the lesson. When I saw the potential in another developer and a way for their project to help me achieve my goal, I go for it. I know those things are very rare, and not to worry if it doesn't arrive in exactly the way I expected it to. #