To clarify, I know that the simple creation of this space isn’t what draws anger. FMI is very open to constructive criticism. The difficult part is when it goes beyond constructive and what gets posted looks like an attack. A couple examples:
Posting about a conversation you have someone at FMI, and making it look like they are stupid for the decision they made. It is possible, and very likely, they can’t reveal the entire reason to you, and they were trying to be friendly and helpful by explaining what they are allowed to. I know we run into that many times in our business. A decision is made by management, for very legitimate reasons. We implement that decision. The employees think we “don’t understand their needs” because we made that change. There are times, we simply can not explain the reason. The same for FileMaker and us, even as MVPs, and having monthly calls with them, we don’t get to know everything and why.
Another separate, but semi-related point to this…when you share the details of those calls in a public venue, then they simply can’t tell you everything. It has legal implications, customer expectations, and can honestly just loose something in the translation. The MVPs at times do get more info than can be shared on the public forum. But they trust us to be professional, and keep certain details confidential. That happens a lot.
So you pushing back and trying to offer an alternative, isn’t the problem. It is when it crossed the line and appeared like public bashing, both here and on the community site. As you mentioned, even you realized there was little beneficial info in that one post. Do I think your intent was to publicly call FMI stupid? Not at all. However, the words sure did come across in a way you didn’t intend. From that, we learn a lesson and move on. No permanent damage is done.
To add some opposing thoughts to ponder: define "succeeded".
Since you make the comparison to the decisions made by FileMaker, calling it "wasting silly amounts of money": Define what FileMaker was attempting to do. Provide the short, mid, and long term goals you think FileMaker was trying to achieve.
Compare those 2 lists...and you will find that this forum only handled a small portion of what FileMaker has to account for. I'm not saying @Cecile didn't do a great job setting this up. However, this site only represents one small portion of what FileMaker is aiming at. I use the word aiming...but it's not done. I agree that the base SalesForce Community Cloud product, well, leaves a lot to be desired. FMI would tell you the same thing. But they have a plan, and are executing the plan. As time continues, the community space will keep getting better.
For what I understand, succeeded in that context means achieved providing all the tools needed by Community without spending extra money (the out of the box concept).
Now, of course if we consider the added contingencies (no open source and those we don’t know about) of course this demo doesn’t achieve FMI’s challenge “providing all the tools needed by Community that is not open source and that xyz”
It stems from their extremely inefficient communication “plan”. They did not get Community on board. As a communication psychosociologist, that bit bothers me a lot. We were not presented with the contingencies (at least those they can share). We were left to simply suffer the consequences of their choices/ actions, wich from our skewed perspective (remember that they sold us the move as a move for better, a platform that would be more flexible and would meet more of Community’s needs) did not make sense to us.
And frankly they could have built and put the site online and adjust it while we were still on Jive instead of the last 3 months we just went through. But I am rehashing arguments that were already presented.
Community’s objectives was simply to have a home where it can continue to thrive. Its contingency, if any aside the tools to do so, and if aware of an order of investement, would have been to find the most adequate affordable solution so that money can be attributed to developing certain functionnalities people want.
Different objectives = different visions of what success means.
Since we are the primary beneficiaries of the Community platform, it is only normal that we feel Community’s objectives should be the base to evaluate success.
You stated that there is the obligation to not waste money. The old trick of throwing the thing back in form of ‘proof this and that’ is old and boring.
If you want to proof something, show written evidence.
So that kind of makes my point. You actually have only listed 1 of the needed features of the community. There is so much more they needed in a platform…so, so, so much more. Off the top of my head, there are at least a dozen other things going on with the community that needed to be included.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the SalesForce Community Cloud has been a challenge to all of us.
My point of posting, was not being oversensitive, I was typing too fast and posted without rereading it. But I know you are experienced enough in life to know what I meant.
I would add that if we must look at the entire program FMI is trying to achieve yet only disclose one part of it to people and that their part sucks, of course people aren’t going to be happy.
I also feel that by trying to fulfill all the program with one unified solution, we necessarily will end up with underserved areas of the program. Turn out the site ended up on the bad end of the deal.
The sister site suggestion would have addressed that.
But you are missing a lot of people. You see this only from the one perspective. There are entire groups of people using the site for stuff other than a public forum. FMI can't ignore them either. :sigh:
Unfortunately, my presence seems to only invoke angst here...so I will leave the site. I was hoping providing a little bit of inside knowledge and perspective would help...but it doesn't seem to be.
In the spirit of the nerd world. So long and thanks for all the fish.
Cécile, were you around when we were being asked for our opinions about what was wanted in a future version of the community? There was plenty of opportunity for us to contribute to a vision of the future.
Although, I should say that the SalesForce platform didn’t fail for me on “vision” grounds, it was failing on functional grounds.
Unfortunately, my presence seems to only invoke angst here
No, it doesn't. Of course it doesn't.
…so I will leave the site.
No, that's oversensitive too.
I was hoping providing a little bit of inside knowledge and perspective would help
And you do. That's fantastic. Occasionally you put your "Defender of the Faith" hat and white gloves on - I always roll my eyes when that happens. :eye-roll:
Gosh wait!!! I was just about to do a bit of moderation here. I was busy answering something else and wanted to tell you that I wanted to thank you for being so patient and taking the time to bring other reasonable perspective.
It’s not an oversensitive thing. I hope one day we can meet in person. You will understand me better.
So it’s not oversensitive, it’s about prioritizing time. I only have so much time to help others. If I am helping, I prioritize that space to help in. If I’m not helping, or it seems like my approach just bothers the reader, I move on to somewhere different. Really, not about sensitivity…in fact, I probably care too little about what people say to me.
Also, you all know how long my responses are. I always make tons of edits to complete my thoughts. For some reason I read them better once they are posted
When I remember, I try liberal use of faces. lol…I just forget.
I’m not bothered by any of the comments here, really. And the reason for the . It’s a reference to hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Basically I’m leaving, but I’m grateful for everything.
I will probably write it better for a how to article but for now…
I was going also to explain to us all children that when we comment on someone’s emotions (oversensitive) we are INEVITABLY hurting a persons feeling by invalidating their emotion. It raises defense mechanisms and things usually spiral downward.?
So from now on, if someone’s comment (especially since in writing we do not have context and non verbal) Seem [“put an emotion here”] to you (you being any of us). Please, do not point the finger at that emotion or bring it up as if an annoyance.
What you CAN (should even in some cases) do is start from YOUR perspective.
First, if you “read” (remember that what you will read will be tainted by your perception) some sort of emotion, instead of saying something that has the effect of:
“you are over-reacting, I was just bla bla bla”
Try to see what you said from other perspective to intuit what message the person could have “received” rather than what you thought you were saying.
Then clarify: I was trying to convey bla bla bla.
If appropriate, apologise: I aplologise, I forgot/did not consider/etc.
I’m not angry. So go easy.
faces. lol…I just forget.