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Vacation at Lago Maggiore, Italy

Sandro Groganz 2 Comments

Just back from a 1 week vacation at Lago Maggiore, Italy with my wife.

We stayed in a holiday house in Traffiume, a tiny and lovely village close to Cannobio. We realized after some sight seeing around the lake, that Cannobio was actually the nicest place at Lago Maggiore. It has a rather large historic center, a beautiful promenade at the lake, great restaurants, fantastic ice cream – well, simply, everything you expect from a gorgeous and relaxed Italian town.
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Of course, we did visit the Borromean Islands, but only Isola Bella and Isola dei Pescatori. Though there were tons of tourists on Isola Bella, we could still enjoy the fantastic scenery – this island is a must-see! Make sure you visit the palazzo, it’s worth the high entry fee.
Palazzo of Isola Bella
We also made a trip to a little medieval village up in the mountains, called Gurro. Driving the curly and steep road was itself an interesting experience.
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On our way back home, we stopped by at Locarno and enjoyed a few ruminant moments in the backyard of the citadella.
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See all pictures from our trip to Lago Maggiore in my Flickr photo set.

Open Source PR Agency in USA: Terpin Communications

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

4 months ago, Mindquarry was searching for a PR agency in the USA and today we can already look back at a highly successful public relations campaign, performed by Terpin Communications.

I am extremely happy with the results achieved by Terpin. They helped build up a growing momentum in the blogsphere which just now starts to spill over to traditional media.

Terpin exceeded our expectations when it comes to number of Mindquarry downloads, unique visitors at www.mindquarry.com and Google hits for “mindquarry” as well as the ranking of our Web site for certain keyword searches. Due to increased public visibility, we got contacted by new customers, potential partner companies and investors.

Our points of contact at Terpin are very attentive and highly responsive to all our requests. I appreciate their strategic expertise in software marketing and especially in PR for Open Source product vendors. Terpin is a reliable, goal-oriented and well connected PR agency.

Credit where credits are due. Thanks Terpin!

Does PHP 5 Hurt PHP?

Sandro Groganz 43 Comments

If you follow the PHP blogs, then you are likely to have read Matt “WordPress” Mullenweg’s anti-PHP 5 rant:

PHP 5 has been, from an adoption point of view, a complete flop. Most estimates place it in the single-digit percentages or at best the low teens, mostly gassed by marginal frameworks.

He makes some good points in the post. He also manages to make himself seem like a bit of a dick 🙂

The thing that I keep wondering is if we aren’t seeing a slowdown in general PHP adoption due to other technologies being able to get a leg up while PHP 5 was in development and the succeeding slow migration from PHP 4 to 5.

Now that I work for a company creating Java-based software, I see:

Finally, with PHP 5, it is possible to build OO libraries able to compete with Java libraries as far as quality is concerned – but, well, those Java libraries already have a long market track-record, i.e. have been in production use for a long time.

My impression is that PHP 5 slowed down the development of PHP applications able to compete with similar Java-based server-side products. The problem being that migration from PHP 4 to PHP 5 consumes quite some developer resources for complex PHP applications. Additionally, PHP 4 keeps developers busy with finding workarounds for their applications due to limited OO features.

Did PHP applications lose market share or at least not grow as fast as their Java (or C#, etc.) counterparts due to the slow adoption of PHP 5? Unfortunately, I did not find an informative basis to answer this question sufficiently and would appreciate any hints.

Claros, the Open Source GMail – and Even Nicer

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Screenshot of ClarosIt’s about time that I introduce you to Claros, a Web-based email client, including contact management, instant messaging for Google Talk/Jabber, digital Post-it-style notes – plus: it’s Open Source!

My good friend Görkem told me about it in March, when it was not public yet. Ever since, I kept an eye on Claros and saw a great product evolve.

Seems like it’s ready for prime time: Turkey’s biggest ASP/ISP has chosen Claros as their communication infrastructure offered to over 500,000 users.

I especially like the slick and easy to understand user interface – well done folks!

Try out the Claros online demo, screenshots, screencasts, etc.

Ice Cream and the Interaction of Sales and Marketing

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A few weeks ago I spent a fantastic weekend in lovely Regensburg with my wife. It was sunny and hot weather, so we decided to buy ice cream from one of the street vendors.

There was a queue of five people and while waiting at the end of the line, we were not able to see all the flavors they offer. When it was our turn, the iceman pressured us with a nervous tone in his voice to choose quickly (there were 3 others in the line behind us). After the purchase was done, my wife told me that she only bought one scoop of ice cream, although she intended to buy two, because she felt overstrained.

This story tells us the basics of sales and marketing: Marketing should provide the necessary information about all available options to customers, while sales supports them in their buying decision.

Some tips for ice cream street vendors:

  1. Place a poster with color photos and names of all available ice flavors highly visible to those waiting in the queue.
  2. Make sure your sales personal provides enough time to customers to make a decision – sales will increase. You won’t lose those waiting at the very end of the queue, because they are already crazy for your ice cream after studying the poster with flavor options.

Someone wants to start a cool ice cream business with me?

The same two tips also apply to the software business, especially because costs are much higher compared to end-user ice cream purchases. The financial risk of making a wrong decision is higher for customers when buying software and related services.

Hence, provide enough information and don’t rush potential customers – otherwise they might only buy one scoop instead of two, or nothing at all.

Empathy in Marketing and Sales

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Seth Godin’s thoughts on empathy:

The mistake most blogs and books make: they are about the writer, not the reader.

That’s only half the truth, because the art of self-disclosure lets others open up and tell you about their needs:

The idea that self-disclosure is important in relationships is no big surprise.

Ask a company founder why he started his business and you’ll hear a real-life story about a concrete problem for which he was missing an adequate solution. His story will help you  understand his product and it will also make you think about how it can make your life easier.

Empathy goes both ways.

Don’t talk too much about yourself in a sales relationship. Rather, use your personal experience with the product as a door opener to ask questions to potential customers to hear more about his needs.

Trust is All You Have

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

About 6 years ago I quit my studies and started to regularly earn money. I did quite a few different things: from running my own business to being employed, from software development to marketing.

Experiences I’ve made were good and bad, but mostly good, hence I almost always enjoyed what I did. Whenever terrible things happened, I realized that in the end, all you can do is to keep trusting others.

Of course, I became more aware of what can go wrong and I became more picky on whom to trust and also to which extend. But what it all comes down to is that you cannot be happy in your work life if you refuse to trust and instead become skeptical and bitter.

Those who do not trust, they are quite easy to spot: They take all the fame for themselves and blame others. They are extremely nice to their boss and behave ugly to their subordinates. They are always under pressure and make others feel nervous.

Those who don’t trust others, don’t trust themselves and lack confidence in their own and other people’s abilities. This prevents those without trust from achieving successful results.

Lars at Web Monday in Berlin

Sandro Groganz 1 Comment

Web Monday “connects users, developers, founders, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, researchers, web pioneers, bloggers, podcasters, designers and other folks interested in Web 2.0 topics (in the broadest sense)” – as they say about themselves.

This event takes place once per month on a Monday in several cities around Germany. Today, I was flying to Berlin to spend a week in the Mindquarry office and, hey – it’s Web Monday!

Right now, I sit in the Newthinking office and listen to Lars‘ presentation of Mindquarry.

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I am happy to be here, together with 40 other attendees. Lars told me that usually it is even more people – cool! If you’re in Berlin on a Monday, check if it’s Web Monday, it’s worth being there.

I am also happy to be here because finally, I got the chance to meet with Markus Beckedahl face-to-face.