Hi Adrian -

Yes, I can see why (given your customers) you might choose not to 
mention Squeak or link to it. But I have two questions: From the look of 
your site, it seems to me that most of what you would be doing is 
related to Seaside anyway - why not instead use it as your reference? 
(if you are using primarily Seaside it would seem the more logical 
choice when it comes to technology reference and clearly, it's website 
is catered more to the audience that you are looking at) And secondly, 
do you think it's a good idea to make what appeals to suisse bank 
managers the benchmark for including stuff on the Squeak.org website? 
Like you are saying (and I entirely agree) there are many things up 
there right now that will not appeal to a suisse bank manager. But those 
things (at least up until today) are part of Squeak as well, and I think 
they ought to be represented on its website. Making any particular 
sub-group of Squeak the exclusive focus of what should be presented at 
the web site seems very unwise to me.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Adrian Lienhard wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On Jul 3, 2005, at 1:57 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
> 
>>
>>>> PS. And I find your claim about companies not mentioning Squeak   
>>>> "because of the website" very, very strange. If that were true  I'm  
>>>> not sure that those companies do understand very much about  Squeak  
>>>> and its strengths.
>>>>
>>> Sure tell that I'm lying if this is what you want to imply. You  can  
>>> say to netStyle people that they are idiot too.
>>> But this is what they are living daily. May be adrian will reply  on  
>>> this one?
>>>
>>
>> This would indeed be very interesting.
> 
> 
> It's true, we do not show the Squeak website (and if they do not ask,  
> we just say that we use a free open-source Smalltalk) to potential  
> customers for one simple reason: it can give them a very simple  reason 
> to shoot us... Let's imagine a bank evaluates our proposal and  others 
> for some business critical application. If one guy there does  not like 
> us because of whatever reason, he has an easy way to  argument against 
> us since the website is the only thing a manager  will see about Squeak. 
> If it does not look professional then this  definitely will raise 
> questions.
> 
> I think, the new website looks much better compared to the old one.  
>  From the business point of view, I'd even vote for a new logo.  Anyway, 
> I know that there are other groups of users and there are  other guys 
> that love the mouse etc. so I don't even think about  proposing it. I 
> don't want to start arguing why the old web page is  bad (apart from the 
> general look). But, just as an example: the  tutorials part of the 
> documentation page (http://www.squeak.org/ documentation/) has 5 dead 
> out of 11 links; or, "Squeak and the  Internet" mentions that we have "a 
> very basic telnet  client" (wow!!!), but there is not one word about 
> Seaside!
> 
> Andreas, you say that maybe we do not understand the strengths of  
> Squeak if we do not mention it because of the website. I don't think  
> that's why, but what is rather the case is that we fear that the  
> *customer* does not understand it which seams to be likely (how  should 
> he from looking at that website? Do you really think, he  believes that 
> Squeak is capable of managing his bank if he looks at  
> http://www.squeak.org/features/ ?).
> 
> I think that the same argument also holds in respect to potential new  
> developers. From the website one has the impression that Squeak is  dead 
> and I guess that there are quite some people that do stop there.  Again, 
> you can say, well, they do not understand its strengths. Yes,  but how 
> should they if they do not get into it when they stop because  of the 
> website?
> 
> It's just not enough to be good and cool today - one also has to sell  
> it. At least, if one of our goal is to attract new people to Squeak  (is 
> that a goal?). As a side mark, a more modern look of Squeak would  be 
> good as well. Not for me (I'm really used to it now) but for new  users.
> 
> So, an appealing website which is up to date and provides relevant  and 
> interesting contents does not only serve for selling some  contracts but 
> also, and that's important as well, to attract new  users, which, I 
> think, has been neglected so far.
> 
> Adrian
> 
> 
> ___________________
> Adrian Lienhard
> www.adrian-lienhard.ch
> www.netstyle.ch
> 
> 
>