I was hoping we would celebrate the return to Phil’s outstanding classes this year at AU after his absence last year. But that doesn’t seem likely.
If you’ve ever been to AU and attended Revit classes, you HAVE to know what I’m talking about. I remember my first AU in 2005 and he made a huge impression on me. He inspires positivity in his approach to solving problems/shortfalls/perceived limitations and his classes were the ones that every power user yearned for.
I don’t believe anyone at Autodesk marketing knows about Seth Godin. Their marketing department is redundant and a colossal waste of money. They’re useless. You want to cut costs? There, I just solved one of your major problems; fire the whole department and turn the office space into a game room or something. Let’s make it even clearer: your users are your marketing machine. Sadly, you don’t seem to get it. Too bad.
I don’t necessarily agree with Phil’s views on the Ribbon UI, however I listen to him with big, wide-open ears as I don’t pretend to even measure up against his knowledge and insight. Personally I thought he was a bit aggressive and surprisingly “negative” perhaps in his criticism of the UI. But that’s the beauty of the world we live in: we can speak our mind and agree to disagree. I’m not working in production right now so I cannot express judgment of the new UI based on working experience with the product; I’ve only tested since January and agree on most of the issues outlined with tool placement, etc. If one factors in the increased amount of clicks, then I’d say there’s potential for decreased productivity. But one cannot infer that the productivity hit is linearly related, because we’re not interacting with the tools 100% of the time.
Anyway, I don’t want to delve on this because that’s not why I posted. I just wanted to express my utmost dismay at how this matter was handled. Sure, let someone else handle the Power Track. But reject perfectly legitimate class proposals? That’s as childish, unprofessional and immature of behavior as it gets. How sad.
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I think your point on Seth Godin is very true but I don't think it is just the marketing department that needs to listen. I have read almost all of his books and if Autodesk made a mandate for its core leadership to read them also, Autodesk would be a far different company today. They would not be afraid of criticism but would embrace its core base of users not matter if the comments are positive or negative. They would be open and not just create additional justification for what they did.
ok really what GOOD is there to say about the ribbon UI? it takes more space, requires more clicks, and eats cycles and time with animation compared to toolbars.
seriously, give me an answer as to why i do more to work slower and dumber with fewer resources.
i think he came out too *weak* on what a bad idea it is.
-metis
How sure are we that Phil's classes had received enough votes, but Autodesk chose not to include the classes? I for one, didn't vote for Phil's classes (not on purpose, I just hadn't noticed them). So although Autodesk might have done this purposely,how sure are we that was the case?
That's beside the point. The classes were tagged as "rejected" anyway, so it's not possible to figure out whether they would have gotten enough votes. Personally, I have no doubt they would have gone though.
According to Phil, he's been asked to do the classes once more.
http://architechure.blogspot.com/2009/06/ctrl-z.html
Yup, read that this morning. Someone must have come to their senses ;)
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