Shape of Things

You’re the expert.

You’re the one who knows how to position the product.

You know how to tell the story.

You know the buttons to push: benefits, benefits, benefits.

But what’s that language you’re speaking? Is it marketese? Is it generalism? Is it how you would explain it to your family and friends? Is that a Facebook hook or an Anandtech hook?

If you are talking to people like yourself, you’re likely speaking a foreign language to the engineers, developers or R&D people with whom you want to engage.

To communicate in the same language as those you want to reach, you need to reach out yourself. Interview people from the target audience. Immerse yourself in their culture. Find out their pain points and what they consider their victories. Put yourself in their position and feel what they feel.

Most of all, get technical. If you don’t understand the concept or terminology, get someone to explain it to you. Be the person who makes the technical understandable, without patronizing anyone.

It’s hard work, but it has immense value. We need people who can bridge marketing, engineering and upper management. You can be one of those rare people.

Isn’t it time that we celebrate the people behind the technological success stories?

If you’ve been a part of a marketing, PR or news organization involved with technology, you’ve dealt with press releases, case studies, technical articles and white papers that purport to show how a product makes a breakthrough in solving a vexing problem.

I’ve been on both sides of the desk, as a journalist and a content provider for technology companies. Beyond the task of convincing marketing managers that superlatives and hyperbole  simply don’t work for jaded engineers, developers, researchers and others on the front lines, there’s the challenge of injecting the human element into corporate content.

We get it that technology is the great enabler, but sometimes technology stories are the equivalent of giving credit to Aaron Judge’s bat, Serena Williams’ racket, Jimi Hendrix’s guitar or J.K. Rowling’s word processor. 

I’m not talking about praise for the achievements of the CEO, but recognition for how people are applying technology to solve day-to-day problems: The people who are discovering new ways to adapt technology-driven processes to make their organizations more creative, productive and cost-effective.

For some reason, the victories of these people — the unsung heroes of technological revolution — are largely missing from case studies, blogs, websites and other corporate communication channels.  We get it that technology is the great enabler, but sometimes technology stories are the equivalent of giving credit to Aaron Judge’s bat, Serena Williams’ racket, Jimi Hendrix’s guitar or J.K. Rowling’s word processor.

The logical question, of course, is this: What’s in it for the organization to shine a light on its innovative users or best technological minds? There are many benefits, but here are a few:

• It creates a story-line for which everyone can identify, but especially your current and potential customers.
• It positions your company as an organization that has a culture of sharing credit for achievements.
• It brings the rare element of emotion into the story; something sorely lacking in most technology company content.
• It allows the story recipient to share his or her achievements with families, friends and others who might not understand what she or he does.
• At the most commercially crass level, it makes your organization stand out from your competitors.

So, hooray for technologically innovative humans. Now give them their due.

Anaheim brought back memories.

I was there two weeks ago to write about SIGGRAPH 2013 for Develop3D, but my mind drifted back more than a quarter of a century.

My memories are of computer graphics shows — first the National Computer Graphics Association (NCGA) in the late 1980s and 1990, then Siggraph in 1987 and 1993.

My first show in Anaheim was NCGA ’86, attended by 35,000 people with nearly 300 exhibitors taking up every bit of space in the convention center, then one of the largest in America.

“West End Girls” by the Pet Shop Boys was sitting on top of the Billboard charts, “Top Gun” with Tom Cruise would be released later that week and become the world’s number-one movie of 1986, and a standalone CAD station from Computervision cost $65,000.

Not yet ready for prime time

I was editor-in-chief of a tabloid called Computer Graphics Today that year and the CAD products I was writing about were from companies such as Intergraph, Applicon, SDRC, PC Productivity Systems, MCS, Tasvir and Cordata.  Autodesk was around and held 41-percent of the PC CAD market, but AutoCAD was considered not suitable for serious design and engineering work.

One of the more unique products at NCGA ’86 was Softplot 2122 (forward thinking!) by Greyhawk Systems.  As I reported at the time, it “displays a full-color D-size drawing with the image quality of a pen plotter and the speed of an electrostatic printer.” Basically, it was a big-ass 400-dpi display. Price: $46,176.  In the same issue was a new HP laser printer that output eight pages a minute in 300-dpi resolution for $4,995.

From industry to critical tools

Computer graphics was considered an industry then, although folks such as the late Carl Machover were already predicting that these products would soon become everyday tools. Proprietary systems ruled and information exchange was problematic, as exchange standards such as IGES were still in their infancy. Solid modeling was relatively new; images were flat and without shading. Even on the fastest systems, a rotating 3D image looked like a spastic robot dance.

NCGA ’86 and Siggraph ’87 the following year in Anaheim were in many ways the apex of computer graphics as an industry, with attendance and exhibitors decreasing in subsequent years.  As computer graphics technologies progressed through the 1990s, they migrated from the hands of specialists to the desktops of design and engineering professionals of every type.

Nostalgia need not apply

While there are many things one can be nostalgic about, the state of computer graphics is not one of them.  Where we might not see progress measured in large leaps like in the early 80s, there is a steady, inexorable march toward better, cheaper and faster.  The net result, when measured over time, is astounding.

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For the curious, here are my blog postings from SIGGRAPH 2013:

http://www.develop3d.com/blog/2013/07/siggraph-2013-3-immersive-heads-to-the-mainstream

http://www.develop3d.com/blog/2013/07/siggraph-2013-5-rendering-star-power

The Greyhawk Systems Softplot 2122