[Chicken-meisters] Re: Fw: Chicken and marketing

[Mario Domenech Goulart]

Hi sirs,

(replying to chicken-meisters)

On Sun, 13 Mar 2011 09:06:13 +0100 (CET) Felix <address@hidden> wrote:

> Anyway, see attached mail. I think the man is right, what about you?
> I dont even want to think about the implications and I'm not
> suggesting anything.  Please don't reply. Read it, let it settle,
> think about it and in a week or two we talk about this, ok?

I think we'd go insane trying to imagine a name that wouldn't trigger a
bad association for everybody.

John ignored Chicken for some time because somehow he associated it to
bad farming practices and how badly chickens are treated.  He could as
well ignore Ruby if he once had a precious family jewel stolen. If
Chicken had a name like, say, Brainfuck, then ok, I'd think about
that. :-) So, the name choice is not an issue in my opinion.

I'm not sure about Johns expectations regarding to marketing. I'd be
interested in developers who see value in the technical aspects of
Chicken, not in the name or logo.

But I can see the benefits marketing could bring.  More developers,
maybe companies support etc. Some people just don't know Chicken. There
are just too many programming languages (and implementations) around.
It's hard to filter what's good and what's not worth knowing.  Everybody
has limited time.  In this sense, I think marketing would be good, since
it would show people what Chicken can do (I obviously think it's very
good).  OTOH, marketing would also show what Chicken cannot do, and
people don't want that.  For example, if I want my web app to provide an
easy way to upload a file via HTTP, I cannot do that unless I implement
it myself or wait until somebody else do that.  It's just a small
example of a thing that people usually take for granted when exposed to
"marketing", and that they can find for sure in mainstream
languages/implementations.  I'm sure there are many other examples.

Would we be able to handle the effects of marketing?  If we bring
attention to Chicken and have to answer "no" to most the questions about
"do you have?" or "will you do?", I'm not sure marketing would be
good.

The current situation is that we slowly attract developers who know
Chicken's limitations but have time and patience to improve it because
they see the project's potential.

Sorry if it all seems to vague.  It is a vague topic, IMO.

Best wishes.
Mario


> From: John Gabriele <address@hidden>
> Subject: Chicken and marketing
> To: Felix <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:23:14 -0500
>
> Hi Felix,
>
> I've had an idea about Chicken simmering and bubbling (which I think
> might interest you), and then saw your announcement of SPOCK
> yesterday, prompting me to speak up and email you.
>
> I'm still only just learning Scheme (it's taking a little while), but
> I remember running into Chicken way back when I first had an interest
> in finding out what Scheme was all about (maybe a year ago). I was
> surveying the available implementations to see what might be fun to
> learn and work with. I distinctly remember my first impression upon
> finding Chicken Scheme. My first impression had nothing to do with
> programming, but had more to do with what I associated with chicken
> (meat) and chickens (ex. salmonella poisoning).
>
> (Here in the US, those who look into it find out about awful factory
> farming practices and other unsavory aspects of how we treat animals.
>>From what I can tell, chickens and other fowl have fewer protections
> under the law (here in the US) than cows, and anyway, there's a whole
> bunch of issues.)
>
> So, for no really good reason, I sort of ignored Chicken Scheme for a
> while.
>
> Anyway, fast-forward to a couple of months ago, you might recall that
> I asked on the mailing list about the origin of the name, and
> discovered that it actually has nothing to do with actual chickens!
>
> I'm seeing a real marketing problem here. It's actually similar to --
> but much worse than -- one of the problems that the Python folks have:
> Guido named it after Monty Python (fun! :D ), but everyone instead
> associates it with the arguably less-friendly snake (slithery!
> swallows mice whole after suffocating them! :( ) instead.
>
> Steve Yegge gave an interesting talk about the powerful effects of
> marketing and branding on software projects (especially languages) at
> OSCON 2007 http://blip.tv/file/319044/ (unfortunately, they had a
> technical problem and he couldn't use his prepared slides (!)). He
> starts off talking about language implementors -- you might find it
> interesting. I think he makes a very good point about marketing
> (especially naming choices) being a key to success.
>
> As a sidenote, Ruby doesn't have a marketing problem with its name.
> When people think of rubies, they think of beautiful and precious
> glimmering gemstones. People are attracted to Ruby just by the name
> alone. :)
>
> Your new SPOCK project decidedly does *not* suffer from a marketing
> problem.  Everyone loves Spock. :) He's ... *fascinating*. ;) You've
> got his picture up at http://wiki.call-cc.org/eggref/4/spock . It's
> great. Just by its name alone hackers will be interested to check it
> out.
>
> I'm not necessarily suggesting you change the Chicken Scheme name
> (actually, I *would* suggest that (Racket did it), but I don't want to
> make anyone upset. :) ). However, I can see that although you intended
> the name to mean "funny penguin with rubber glove on head", everyone
> else draws you logos and makes colorschemes based on the farm
> animal. The Chicken Gazette even has an actual picture of the farm
> animal on it.
>
> What I *am* suggesting though is that, if you like the name and want
> to keep it, I bet you could make more headway in Chicken's popularity
> by changing the logo to a stylized version of something more like:
>
> http://images.wallaceandgromit.com/characters/feathers.gif
>
> (I think I can see why you chose the name: the penguin being the Linux
> mascot, and also that the Wallace & Gromit penguin is a *schemer* of
> sorts. Unfortunately, new people still think of the farm animal when
> they see the name.)
>
> Along with that logo change, I might also suggest changing the
> colorscheme of the website and wiki. Although I like the
> yellow/orange, coupled with the name "Chicken" it unfortunately makes
> people think of egg yolks.
>
> I think it's an interesting time for programming languages right now.
> A lot of people are looking at learning a new language because:
>
>   * Perl 5 adoption seems to have slowed or stopped
>
>   * Perl 6 is larger and more complex than many had imagined or wanted
>     (IMO)
>
>   * Ruby -- and especially Rails -- hype has cooled off
>
>   * adoption of Python 3 is slow
>
>   * no one seriously wants to use PHP for scripting
>
>   * Javascript is having huge success, but I think it's going to stay
>     primarily in the browser
>
>   * Clojure is seeing a lot of popularity, but it's based on the JVM.
>     People don't like Java. People like Oracle even less. (Though,
>     OTOH, "Clojure" *is* an extremely cool name. :) )
>
>   * R7RS is coming, and I think that's going to generate a lot of new
>     excitement in the Scheme world.
>
> So, I think if this Chicken marketing problem were fixed, it could
> mean a lot of new users over the next couple of years.
>
> Curious to hear what you think. (Also, if you any inkling of a
> temptation to explore possible new names for Chicken Scheme, let me
> know -- I may be able to contribute a useful idea or two.)
>
> ---John
>
> ----------
>

-- 
http://parenteses.org/mario