Re: 9.5 Release press coverage - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 9:17 AM, Tomas Vondra
<tomas.vondra@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> I think it's one thing when an article does not mention other companies
> (which is perfectly understandable and I have no problem with that) and a
> completely different thing when it gives the impression that there are no
> other companies or that one company is responsible for the new release. And
> it has nothing to do with the number of people in your PR department.

No, it doesn't.  But Dave already said that he didn't say at any point
what that article seems to imply.  I don't know what else to say here:
you either believe Dave is telling the truth, or you don't.

> I'm not suggesting Renee or Dave made such claims on purpose. I'd expect
> authorization of the articles before publication, but I'm not familiar with
> the process so maybe I'm too naive.

It does not work like that AT ALL.  I've only done one or two of
these, but inevitably what the journalist writes in the article is a
heavily mutilated version of what I actually said.  They certainly do
not come back and ask for my permission to publish.  I look forward
eagerly to the day when PostgreSQL gets a five-page article in the New
Yorker that some journalist spends two months researching, but what
you actually get is 15 minutes from somebody whose column covers the
entire technology space and whose goal is to maximize the ratio of
clicks obtained : time spent talking to you.  Talking to you longer
doesn't produce enough clicks to make it worthwhile.

> FWIW I'm not here to tell anyone how to do PR, but let me say that I've
> received a number of WTF reactions from a number of people who happen to
> understand how PostgreSQL community works, including possible future
> customers. So it's probably in your interest to make the wording clear.

Look, please understand: I get that.  Every time one of these things
happen I groan internally.  I want to EnterpriseDB to succeed as a
business so I can keep getting paid, but the PostgreSQL community is
full of people that I need to work with every day, every week, every
month, and having them upset with me or my employer makes my life very
significantly harder; not to mention that the articles are
embarrassing in their own right.  And *sometimes* there is actually a
thing I can point to where somebody who works here did something that
conveyed an impression that they should not have conveyed, but very
often there isn't.  I heartily agree that when an article comes out
that makes it sound like EDB is hogging all the glory, it's not only
annoying to other PostgreSQL companies, but bad for EnterpriseDB.  But
again, *we did not word that article*.  We do not get to pick what
people write about us.  Really.

For example, I just did a search for "Robert Haas PostgreSQL" on
Google News.  The most recent hit is an article that doesn't even
mention that I work for EnterpriseDB.  Not exactly a PR coup.  The
previous couple are better, and I think they're better mostly because
they were based on an email exchange rather than a voice interview.
Harder to screw up.

All of the above having been said, I've got a sneaking suspicion -
which I bet you also share - that there are probably things our
marketing department could be doing to make this kind of error less
frequent.  Unfortunately, not knowing anything about marketing, I
don't really know what those things are, and not working in that
department, I don't see all of how the sausage gets made.  All I can
tell you is that the part I see feels to me like a bunch of
well-intentioned people trying to do a reasonable thing.  I don't
believe there is malice here.  Of course, you don't have to believe
me: I might be part of the cabal.

> In any case, I don't quite see the point of posting "EDB announces 9.5" to
> pgsql-announce right after the official announcement, but I do see how that
> might be confusing for people outside the community.

Totally agreed.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company