Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote: trade shows are good for this - you also get to see how the competition measures up Amen! There was a brief period in our corporate history (mid 90's) during which it became policy that all engineers went to a trade show. It was really cool seeing the competition and talking to our customers. The single event that stands out in my mind was talking to one of our own salesmen. I went to a show in Chicago. On the first day, I walked up to our booth, and one of the local salesmen in front of my product started 'talking me up' about it. I let him rattle on until he said something that wasn't quite true. I said "You know, that's not quite right. It really works this way...". He started trying to correct me, but then dropped his teeth when I told him "I ought to know. I wrote it." At which point, I pulled out my name badge and put it on (big corporate logo, name, and position). To the guy's credit, after I explained what he'd misunderstood, he agreed. After some discussion, we eventually changed that feature to work differently. The original implementation wasn't very intuitive, and it was easy to see why people misunderstood it. Unfortunately that policy of having engineers go to shows fell by the wayside. Someone figured out that we were losing half a man-year of engineering time by sending people to trade shows, not to mention travel expenses and so on. Now, our only contact with customers is when we get sent to trouble sites, or for evaluation visits for custom work. Neither of these settings are particularly fruitful, given that you hear only a single customer's view.
Software Zen: delete this;
