Today Mena posted that Anil Dash got re-organized again. He was given his 3rd title that I know of for this year. Now he has the newly created position of VP of the Six Apart Professional Network. Congratulations, I hope. It isn't being advertised, but as an incentive to join the Professional Network, Six Apart is currently giving away 5 author commercial licenses for MT 3.1 to people who sign up for TypeKey, then for the Professional Network, then fill out their survey. Not a bad deal.
Six Apart also announced that they released a new version of Movable Type, 3.1 and promptly got slammed for releasing a version with incompatible features. According to Brandon Fuller you can have your old plugins or dynamic pages, but not both, at least not without a lot of tweaking. The only exciting new features for users besides dynamic pages that I saw are delivered by plugins supplied by SixApart that SixApart is explicitly disclaiming any support for, which makes them a lot less appetizing than they might otherwise be. Personally, while delighted to have a licence to 3.1, I'm happy with my combination of pMachine, Wordpress and MT 2.661, and I'm in no hurry to upgrade my MT installations from 2.661, and judging from the other preliminary comments I've seen it doesn't seem like a lot of other people are as well.
Ouch. This is sad. When Six Apart has a bad year, it's bad. I really liked Ben and Mena when I met them at Supernova 2002, and they have hired some people I really respect, but I have to say that following Six Apart this last year has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I hope that early impressions of this release are wrong and that their luck turns soon.
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I don't mean to interject, well, *facts* into this conversation, but I figured it'd make sense to comment... :)
I've had two jobs at Six Apart in the entire time I've been here. I was hired as VP of Business Development, and now that we've got a great business team, I've become VP of the Professional Network since it lets me work more with our community, which I love. It's also working with one of the areas that's growing fastest, people who are building careers and experience on top of MT and TypePad. So, yeah, I think congratulations are in order, but I don't wanna toot my own horn.
And "slammed"? We *added* a feature. You can choose between MT's traditional plugin architecture with a lot of expansions and new features or you can have an entirely new way of expanding MT in a new language that lots of our users love. You linked to the announcement post, so I'm sure you can read for yourself that people are excited about the new version of MT.
Basically, a new release of MT, one of our core products that's advancing more quickly than before, a lot of progress on TypePad, lots of great people hired, and a way for people to communicate with us and each other about making a living with weblogs. We absolutely miscommunicated about the MT3 launch, but other than that, I honestly fail to see the trainwreck.
Posted by: Anil on September 1, 2004 11:15 AMWell, facts are always entertaining ...
About your title - you would know certainly know better than I. I had thought there was a time when you had a marketing role, creating "new licenses and prices for MT. I stand corrected.
Slammed? Well, I guess it depends on who you read. Some people don't seem to think that forking your own product was the wisest move, but hey, if Microsoft can ship Longhorn without its most touted feature, how can users complain about Six Apart making the price of one nice new feature doing away with all the plugins they are currently using. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
If you fail to see the trainwreck, I hope it is because my eye is jaundiced, not yours. All my personal interactions with you and the rest of the team at SA have been very pleasant, and I wish you all the best. I really do hope, as I said above, that early impressions of this release are wrong. But I also hope that you guys are looking at the world with clear, as opposed to defensive, eyes.
Good luck.
Posted by: Tim on September 1, 2004 02:02 PMP.S. I thought giving away 5 author MT 3.1 commercial licenses for joining the Professional Network was very generous, but why not advertise it?
Posted by: Tim on September 1, 2004 02:06 PMSee what the developers are saying http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mt-dev/message/561
"But now it's apparent (though little realised, I fear) that you can't use ANY of the existing plugins. This is just weird: for an application that sells itself on having a huge development community, and the hundreds of plugins available for it, having the key feature of a point release basically throw that development away is just bizarre...
I mean, now MT users have been sold on Dynamic Publishing, there's even more reason for them to move to WordPress - because they will have both DP *and* a whole load of plugins.
I just don't see the strategic sense of it. Anyone?"
and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mt-dev/message/564
"I will say that the dynamic building is a cool feature - and it appears to be done well enough for what it is. But the lack of plugins that exist for it is going to make it very unpopular, and for me, push further MT development stuff way down the list. That means for now, it's a doorstop. Have to make a living - MT will have to wait. :)"
It is another amazing blunder by Six Apart.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on September 3, 2004 03:29 AM