Or, we could come up with a much better way than using a Journal (old) gallery for such a use
What about Journal (old) galleries that are using photos plus formatted text? I'm happy to change to a more modern gallery style but I need photos next to text.
I thought about changing this gallery to an html-only gallery when you first moved Journal (Old) into the background, but there was no ability to easily create a paged gallery without moving to multiple galleries. I didn't want to do that.
Or, we could come up with a much better way than using a Journal (old) gallery for such a use
It's not that, there are many that would have to recreate their info and
related photo on another type page. There are so many different variations of
these pages they would need to converted individually. Lots of work.
Still, the journal (old) is valuable for telling a story side by side with photos.
This is beyond the current style conversion but in the big long run picture it's
something to keep in mind about html.
What about Journal (old) galleries that are using photos plus formatted text? I'm happy to change to a more modern gallery style but I need photos next to text.
I thought about changing this gallery to an html-only gallery when you first moved Journal (Old) into the background, but there was no ability to easily create a paged gallery without moving to multiple galleries. I didn't want to do that.
I have a lot of old galleries with the side by side stye. It's great for telling a story. I'd like to see a return of this old journal style as a fully supported style.
On Jun 28, 2011, at 1:02 PM, "ed@ejbeck.com" <ed@ejbeck.com> wrote:
Before I made the move to photography I was in the computer application support business for 15 years. I started out on the phones, moved into developer support, and then into program management. I’ve seen this problem come up again and again and I’ve never seen it done right. There are several issues on the table right now.
Technology moves forward, old things no longer work in the new paradigm. The host is left with having to support two systems, create patches, or make a cut-off and say that from this point forward technology X is deprecated. Having been on the SmugMug side of the deprecation question, I can say I understand and actually support your decision. The problems come when part of your migration plan involves the customer doing anything except waking up in the morning on the new platform.
Migration is complicated by the fact that SM has allowed an incredible amount of customization. If you hadn't allowed it your market share would be a fraction of what it is. This is because professional photographers want a site that looks like their site, not like everyone else's. You're a victim of your own success, congratulations.
Migration is further complicated because not*everyone has a standard gallery-centric site. The people with the most non-standard sites are also your most successful when it comes to selling product. You can't piss these people off. *
Customers can't have any action items on this, it has to be a light switch migration for them. Custom sites must function and look exactly as they did before the cutover.
As I see it you have a couple of choices on how to accomplish this, tools or people. Most likely you'd opt for a combination, tools that will successfully migrate 80% of the data, and budget for people to migrate the rest by copy and paste if need be. These tools should never, ever be exposed to customers. There is nothing but bad karma that way.
Trying to create a tool that will migrate much more than 80% of the sites would probably be a loosing proposition. The dev and test time to get those few extra percent would be more expensive than hiring temps to do the grunt work.
Using gallery descriptions for purposes not intended creates a lot of technology problems, and functionality problems. It breaks feeds, searching, etc. We want descriptions to be descriptions.
Ben, whenever I was in a meeting in which a dev, test or PM said this it was the first step in what became the devaluation of the customer. "They're using the technology in ways it wasn't designed to be used, therefore they loose the right to complain about it, and we don't have to do anything to compensate them when we break their site."
Ben - whether or not we are using the technology in ways it was not designed to be used means absolutely nothing. The fact is that SM not only allowed HTML in description and bio boxes, but promoted it. It's in your FAQ. If SM had not allowed it, you'd be just another site with a 1% market share.
Andy - I think that this statement needs to be addressed by none other than you. *What Ben said hints at a culture that cares more about the technology than the customer. I know, I've seen it, and I've seen a company loose market share, credibility, and spend millions of dollars to get it back, including what I think was one of the best programs and commitment to change corporate culture that any company has ever mounted. Please tell us that SmugMug's commitment to the customer is paramount, and then follow it up with action.
*
But there are use cases here in this thread, and others we haven't seen yet, where people want something on an actual gallery page. In those cases, we are hoping/planning to allow sandboxed "widgets" on the gallery page. Nothing is finalized here (or else you would be playing with it), but our intentions for this would be allowing you to do all sorts of custom stuff on your gallery pages. Just not in the description.
Widgets will only allow us to put stuff in places where you'll let us put them. My site would look like every one else's and SM looses it's value to me.
Our plan is to make a better, easier way to make HTML-only galleries. Stay tuned, we won't let you down.
I'm a recent/new customer. I've done just a little customization. I was just about to start with a "major" customization and much of it was going to be html in the descriptions.
Do you have some time frame? I'm not asking for a date, but a time frame like this year or the end of next year?
If it is this year, I'll wait for my stuff. If it is the end of next year, I'll do my stuff now and live with it. What I don't want is to start, spend the time and being forced to change in the middle of my work or migrate as soon as I'm just finished.
Implementation/Migration
Is it possible to run both systems at the same time? And people would switch from old to new and back from the control panel?
I'm a recent/new customer. I've done just a little customization. I was just about to start with a "major" customization and much of it was going to be html in the descriptions.
Do you have some time frame? I'm not asking for a date, but a time frame like this year or the end of next year?
If it is this year, I'll wait for my stuff. If it is the end of next year, I'll do my stuff now and live with it. What I don't want is to start, spend the time and being forced to change in the middle of my work or migrate as soon as I'm just finished.
Implementation/Migration
Is it possible to run both systems at the same time? And people would switch from old to new and back from the control panel?
EdBeck, I think you've perfectly summarized the situation.
Andy, referencing a post that was pretty much devoid of details a month ago is not a very satisfactory answer. If Smugmug is waiting to "get more news", I have to wonder who is creating the news?
The big question really is pretty simple. Will the same level of customization be available in the new scheme? You folks at Smugmug don't seem to have decided that among yourselves. If you have, you certainly have not relayed the answer to your clients.
I will not keep either of my accounts at Smugmug if I cannot retain my customization. If I'm to jump ship, I'd rather know it now, and start anew with a different hosting option. The lack of any response is starting to sound more and more like a "no", and I'm thinking seriously of cutting my losses.
If you folks at Smugmug can't see fit to communicate with your clients a little more honestly (please refrain your "we don't give away trade secrets" standard excuse), I suspect you'll eventually have no clients to communicate with.
Thank you EdBeck for putting the situation so perfectly.
Andy - you seem to have ignored this very succinct and important comment completely ?? Surely EdBeck's post warrants some response from you ? Or does having an explanation like this get the dismissive approach too?
...whether or not we are using the technology in ways it was not designed to be used means absolutely nothing. The fact is that SM not only allowed HTML in description and bio boxes, but promoted it. It's in your FAQ. If SM had not allowed it, you'd be just another site with a 1% market share.
Andy - I think that this statement needs to be addressed by none other than you. *What Ben said hints at a culture that cares more about the technology than the customer. I know, I've seen it, and I've seen a company loose market share, credibility, and spend millions of dollars to get it back, including what I think was one of the best programs and commitment to change corporate culture that any company has ever mounted. Please tell us that SmugMug's commitment to the customer is paramount, and then follow it up with action.
Ed -
Thanks for your adding your words to this discussion. Very clear, very expressive. Now we can all hope that smug will listen.
Thank you EdBeck for putting the situation so perfectly.
Andy - you seem to have ignored this very succinct and important comment completely ?? Surely EdBeck's post warrants some response from you ? Or does having an explanation like this get the dismissive approach too?
Caroline
Hi Caroline - I've tried to assure you each and every time you say something like this, that we don't miss a thing here, we ready every post. And in this case, I'm not the person to reply but our product team will. And it turns out the key people have been traveling for the past 3 days. Stay tuned, Caroline, and please, please have patience with us. We were transparent in showing the new design and laying out some plans we have, and we have a 10year history of listening to you and our customers. I'm confident this will be handled in a way that will be great for all.
Hi Caroline - I've tried to assure you each and every time you say something like this, that we don't miss a thing here, we ready every post. And in this case, I'm not the person to reply but our product team will. And it turns out the key people have been traveling for the past 3 days. Stay tuned, Caroline, and please, please have patience with us. We were transparent in showing the new design and laying out some plans we have, and we have a 10year history of listening to you and our customers. I'm confident this will be handled in a way that will be great for all.
Andy - Thanks, I understand the delay. I singled you out because you have COO in your signature and are active on this board.
Everyone - Thanks for your support, but please stop giving Andy grief. I have every confidence he'll address my post. I've been on the receiving end of such questions and believe me when I say it doesn't help when more people pile on the thread. SmugMug is being transparent to us, and is a good company that cares about its customers.
Andy (and Ed)
It's not a case of piling on the grief and I'm sorry that Andy is at the sharp end here but as you say he has COO in his signature.
If a matter such is this is placed on a public forum for comment then it's inevitable that people will pile on the thread.
Unfortunately, whilst I do believe that Andy is doing the best he can I don't share the confidence of Ed, and lack of communication from Smugmug doesn't help either.
There's nothing personal against Andy just a matter of making sure the pot doesn't go off the boil.
Andy - Thanks, I understand the delay. I singled you out because you have COO in your signature and are active on this board.
Everyone - Thanks for your support, but please stop giving Andy grief. I have every confidence he'll address my post. I've been on the receiving end of such questions and believe me when I say it doesn't help when more people pile on the thread. SmugMug is being transparent to us, and is a good company that cares about its customers.
Andy (and Ed)
It's not a case of piling on the grief and I'm sorry that Andy is at the sharp end here but as you say he has COO in his signature.
If a matter such is this is placed on a public forum for comment then it's inevitable that people will pile on the thread.
Unfortunately, whilst I do believe that Andy is doing the best he can I don't share the confidence of Ed, and lack of communication from Smugmug doesn't help either.
There's nothing personal against Andy just a matter of making sure the pot doesn't go off the boil.
Caroline
Hi Caroline, I've answered every single one of your posts about asking for more info - and we promise more will come. Nothing is changing today and you needed fear or worry that we're gonna do the wrong thing. Thanks for your continued patience.
Hi Caroline, I've answered every single one of your posts about asking for more info - and we promise more will come. Nothing is changing today and you needed fear or worry that we're gonna do the wrong thing. Thanks for your continued patience.
Ben, whenever I was in a meeting in which a dev, test or PM said this it was the first step in what became the devaluation of the customer. "They're using the technology in ways it wasn't designed to be used, therefore they loose the right to complain about it, and we don't have to do anything to compensate them when we break their site."
Ben - whether or not we are using the technology in ways it was not designed to be used means absolutely nothing. The fact is that SM not only allowed HTML in description and bio boxes, but promoted it. It's in your FAQ. If SM had not allowed it, you'd be just another site with a 1% market share.
Andy - I think that this statement needs to be addressed by none other than you. *What Ben said hints at a culture that cares more about the technology than the customer. I know, I've seen it, and I've seen a company loose market share, credibility, and spend millions of dollars to get it back, including what I think was one of the best programs and commitment to change corporate culture that any company has ever mounted. Please tell us that SmugMug's commitment to the customer is paramount, and then follow it up with action.
*
Widgets will only allow us to put stuff in places where you'll let us put them. My site would look like every one else's and SM looses it's value to me.
In all seriousness, we have some updates coming. We're very focused on addressing the low-hanging fruit right now, but I think you'll like the direction customization is going.
It's difficult for us to talk about this stuff because that's all it is - talk. We prefer to spend our time listening, refreshing, and releasing so you can *see* what we're thinking rather than just hear us blather.
Stay tuned ... next update should come shortly. Customization is still not fully fleshed out, but it's come a long way based on feedback from the threads already.
Meanwhile, we're keeping our heads down working on building what you're asking us to build... Apologies if that means we don't post as often as you'd like - we'd rather get working software in your hands.
Just to set expectations, here's what you can likely expect from us as we continue to finalize this thing:
1. Release a version, ask for feedback. (A few days)
2. Listen carefully, asking a few follow-up questions, some in public and some in private. (A few days)
3. Radio silence, heads down while we digest and build. (A few weeks)
4. Rinse, lather, repeat.
We can't take a lot of time to talk during phase 3, because otherwise we'll never get a new phase 1 out.
SmugMug is full of doers, not talkers. Once the talking time is done (aka you've all asked us for some great improvements), we've gotta build.
In all seriousness, we have some updates coming. We're very focused on addressing the low-hanging fruit right now, but I think you'll like the direction customization is going.
It's difficult for us to talk about this stuff because that's all it is - talk. We prefer to spend our time listening, refreshing, and releasing so you can *see* what we're thinking rather than just hear us blather.
Stay tuned ... next update should come shortly. Customization is still not fully fleshed out, but it's come a long way based on feedback from the threads already.
Meanwhile, we're keeping our heads down working on building what you're asking us to build... Apologies if that means we don't post as often as you'd like - we'd rather get working software in your hands.
Don, I'll just have to say that you guys have a bit of a funny way of interacting with us. If you want to do it that way, you can (it's your shop - you can do it however you want), but don't be surprised if you get odd results like this and generate a lot of confusion and angst among your customer base when you do it this way.
The funniness comes because you ask us for our feedback, we generate a ton of questions (some of them from serious concern about the direction things are going) and then there is no public active engagement or discussion with anyone who seriously knows anything or is willing to really address or discuss the questions.
Andy attempts to "answer" all the questions, but they are never really answers. Either he doesn't know or he feels like his hands are tied to really talk about anything meaningful. 99% of the answers are "we hear you, we're working on things, just wait". For a customer that's afraid you're going in a bad direction for them and are going to ruin their site, that just isn't very comforting at all.
It's like you take your car into the mechanic for a checkup and he calls you an hour later and says: "there's a really big issue with your car". You ask "what's wrong, how much will it cost and how long will it take?". He responds: "I don't have time to talk now because I'm a doer not a talker, just trust me it will be better than new when I'm done, but I might have to remove your $2000 custom stereo to fix it because it's in the way." You object to losing the stereo and ask for a bunch more information about what's wrong, how much it will cost and how long it will take. He responds that he'll try to preserve the stereo, but can't really make any promises yet and you just need to trust him on all the other questions. If that was really your car, you'd say no thanks. I'm taking my business elsewhere. You wouldn't tolerate that sort of lack of communication.
That's what you're doing with us here. You've dropped a bomb - showed improvements and threatened to take "page-busting custom HTML away" that generated tons of feedback and concern. And, you've engaged in no real meaningful public discussion about why you wanted to take stuff away and what you were going to do to replace it. A win/win feedback situation like this is a two-way street. We tell you what we think and what we're concerned about and you get meaningfully involved in the conversation. It flat out doesn't work when you drop the bomb and turn over the communication to Andy and Ben who either don't have the right information or aren't empowered to share it. There are only three choices here (two are good, one is not):
1) You spend a little time answering questions and being seriously engaged with the bigger issues yourself.
2) Equip Andy and Ben with both information and the power to discuss it.
3) Neither of these happens and you create a lot of customer angst.
Right now you've done #3.
I applaud you for attempting to collect customer feedback on such a big change, but your bedside manner in how you do it is really pretty horrible and leads to maximum customer angst. Perhaps it gets you some of the feedback you want, but it's not a very customer-friendly way to do so. You could learn to do the process so much better. You'd probably get more out of the feedback and you'd have a lot less customer angst. It's up to you if you want a better path. But, telling us that you're a doer and don't have time to talk to concerned customers after you've dropped a bomb on us is actually a pretty odd attitude and I'm frankly quite surprised you'd ever say that in public. That might be something you might expect out of junior software developer who was massively busy and not very sensitive to the needs of customers and the value of your relationship with customers, but not something you'd expect out of a CEO.
If I were advising your business, I wouldn't suggest doing this again. When you release customer-angst causing information, you have to be ready to honestly discuss it and really engage in answering the questions (something that has not happened here at all). If you don't want to have such a discussion in public for whatever reason, then you should pick a smaller non-public group that you can more openly discuss it with under NDA.
A plan of record (POR) is an outline of how a company plans to do something. It can be a rough sketch with pillars (central themes) that is later developed into a more robust plan, and specs (specifications).
Oh, everyone can call me "Ed", (unless there's another Ed active on this thread).
Just to set expectations, here's what you can likely expect from us as we continue to finalize this thing:
1. Release a version, ask for feedback. (A few days)
2. Listen carefully, asking a few follow-up questions, some in public and some in private. (A few days)
3. Radio silence, heads down while we digest and build. (A few weeks)
4. Rinse, lather, repeat.
We can't take a lot of time to talk during phase 3, because otherwise we'll never get a new phase 1 out.
I'm more curious about which phase of the overall dev cycle we're in. Certainly not Alpha, is this Beta 1 or Beta 2? God help up if this is a release candidate.
Q. What about my customizations?
A. We knew this would be an important issue too. We're too early to go into all the details (we're still figuring them out), but we can say that one of the biggest goals of this new design is to make customization even more powerful, not limit it.
This doesn't answer the question of what about MY customizations.
There will be a painful migration process, which we'll be helping with as much as we can (details still to come)
Helping is not enough. It has to be a light-switch migration for a few reasons.
Many of your customers are not coders. Seriously, you do not want to mess this crowd up. Professional photographers will be really, really mad, but they won't be nearly as vocal as the guy who put up pictures of his daughter's 10th birthday and now his page's color scheme no longer matches the tablecloth. You support costs will go through the roof in ways you can't imagine.
Customers who have the most customized sites are busy with photography. For a lot of people revenue from the site is a major contributor to their overall income. I can't say this (yet, hopefully) but I'm sure other's following this discussion can. They don't want to take time to fix their site.
Site outages will adversely affect customer income. (This is part of the second bullet, but there's something very Minbari about having lists of three.) If a photographer's site is broken it will prevent customers from buying or hiring.
We don't have one yet. We're still busy building requested features, changes, and improvements.
Once we feel like we're doing "building" we'll figure out (with customer feedback) how to roll this out and what that'll look like.
Not really fond of putting the cart before the horse.
Excuse me? I didn't hear you, I was too busy putting on my parachute.
Planning migration isn't putting the cart before the horse, it's more like hitching another horse next to your existing horse. Well, it's not really like that either, it's more like your wife sitting next to you when you're driving on a trip, and she's constantly asking if you know where you're going (Caroline - I really hope I didn't just tick you off). And the really annoying thing is that you took a wrong turn about two miles back.
This is actually a really good analogy. If you don't have a plan for migration there will come a day in the migration planning session when someone comes up with a great idea, but you can't implement it because remember back in July '11 when you had to decide between X and Y, and they were cost neutral? Yeah, well choosing X kinda made it impossible to implement this idea.
I'm trying to make light of this, but that's simply because I have painful memories of migrating customers to new platforms because migration was always an after thought. I swear to you on a copy of "Light, Science and Magic" that having a migration plan in place, and making sure that at every phase of development the spec makes the migration bar, you will be better off in the long run.
Migration should be assigned as a PM's central responsibility and not one of the lowly PMs that are interning with you, one of the more senior ones who has the ability to trash a spec if it doesn't meet the migration bar.
Excuse me? I didn't hear you, I was too busy putting on my parachute.
(Caroline - I really hope I didn't just tick you off).
No Ed you didn't tick me off:) and even if you did I'm so appreciative of your comments here!
I suspect I pretty much tick Andy off though - just asking for my patience and then going quiet for an indeterminable period adds to the frustration I am feeling.
My site is extremely important to me in a different way from the event or wedding photographer - I don't sell loads of prints for a start, and I'm in the UK .
However, that doesn't mean I'm going to wait and see how this turns out, all the while continue to add galleries etc and implement the customizations I have previously been able to do, only to find out in a few months time that my site is broken, in my terms, and that I need to do a whole load of work to fix it.
So what I'm doing actively now is:-
1. NOT adding more photos, galleries etc.
2. Seriously considering what to do about my site in the future
3. Attempting to extract some 'useful' information from Smugmug that will help me ensure my site functions exactly as I want it to in the future
I don't think it unreasonable to raise the issue every couple of weeks if there has been no update from Smugmug. If that looks like I'm giving Andy grief I'm sorry, but I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting updates/progress reports etc. - It's not personal.
Comments
I thought about changing this gallery to an html-only gallery when you first moved Journal (Old) into the background, but there was no ability to easily create a paged gallery without moving to multiple galleries. I didn't want to do that.
So - will there be a gallery style that will be appropriate for this gallery - http://www.denisegoldberg.com/Travel-stories/Wandering-assisted-by-2-feet/7251621_YYARS?
Side by side photo and text is a requirement. I don't care if the photos and text alternate, but I do care that they are side-by-side.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
related photo on another type page. There are so many different variations of
these pages they would need to converted individually. Lots of work.
Still, the journal (old) is valuable for telling a story side by side with photos.
This is beyond the current style conversion but in the big long run picture it's
something to keep in mind about html.
My Website index | My Blog
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
This is just the album description because comments are not on. Added this
to hide photo in gallery
.sm-gallery-images {display:none;}
My Website index | My Blog
I have a lot of old galleries with the side by side stye. It's great for telling a story. I'd like to see a return of this old journal style as a fully supported style.
GS
http://georgesphotos.net
Maybe I'm not understanding the scope. I don't need the html galleries that other folks need.
I do need to put links to other sites in the captions. What will happen to those html links (and font tags) in my captions when we transition? gs
http://georgesphotos.net
[url]Http://EdBeckPhotography.com[/url]
On Jun 28, 2011, at 1:02 PM, "ed@ejbeck.com" <ed@ejbeck.com> wrote:
Before I made the move to photography I was in the computer application support business for 15 years. I started out on the phones, moved into developer support, and then into program management. I’ve seen this problem come up again and again and I’ve never seen it done right. There are several issues on the table right now.
Technology moves forward, old things no longer work in the new paradigm. The host is left with having to support two systems, create patches, or make a cut-off and say that from this point forward technology X is deprecated. Having been on the SmugMug side of the deprecation question, I can say I understand and actually support your decision. The problems come when part of your migration plan involves the customer doing anything except waking up in the morning on the new platform.
Migration is complicated by the fact that SM has allowed an incredible amount of customization. If you hadn't allowed it your market share would be a fraction of what it is. This is because professional photographers want a site that looks like their site, not like everyone else's. You're a victim of your own success, congratulations.
Migration is further complicated because not*everyone has a standard gallery-centric site. The people with the most non-standard sites are also your most successful when it comes to selling product. You can't piss these people off. *
Customers can't have any action items on this, it has to be a light switch migration for them. Custom sites must function and look exactly as they did before the cutover.
As I see it you have a couple of choices on how to accomplish this, tools or people. Most likely you'd opt for a combination, tools that will successfully migrate 80% of the data, and budget for people to migrate the rest by copy and paste if need be. These tools should never, ever be exposed to customers. There is nothing but bad karma that way.
Trying to create a tool that will migrate much more than 80% of the sites would probably be a loosing proposition. The dev and test time to get those few extra percent would be more expensive than hiring temps to do the grunt work.
Ben, whenever I was in a meeting in which a dev, test or PM said this it was the first step in what became the devaluation of the customer. "They're using the technology in ways it wasn't designed to be used, therefore they loose the right to complain about it, and we don't have to do anything to compensate them when we break their site."
Ben - whether or not we are using the technology in ways it was not designed to be used means absolutely nothing. The fact is that SM not only allowed HTML in description and bio boxes, but promoted it. It's in your FAQ. If SM had not allowed it, you'd be just another site with a 1% market share.
Andy - I think that this statement needs to be addressed by none other than you. *What Ben said hints at a culture that cares more about the technology than the customer. I know, I've seen it, and I've seen a company loose market share, credibility, and spend millions of dollars to get it back, including what I think was one of the best programs and commitment to change corporate culture that any company has ever mounted. Please tell us that SmugMug's commitment to the customer is paramount, and then follow it up with action.
*
Widgets will only allow us to put stuff in places where you'll let us put them. My site would look like every one else's and SM looses it's value to me.
I'm a recent/new customer. I've done just a little customization. I was just about to start with a "major" customization and much of it was going to be html in the descriptions.
Do you have some time frame? I'm not asking for a date, but a time frame like this year or the end of next year?
If it is this year, I'll wait for my stuff. If it is the end of next year, I'll do my stuff now and live with it. What I don't want is to start, spend the time and being forced to change in the middle of my work or migrate as soon as I'm just finished.
Implementation/Migration
Is it possible to run both systems at the same time? And people would switch from old to new and back from the control panel?
http://www.sritch.com
The Dogs of Vancouver, BC
Hi, see the FAQ here, and we'll update as we get more news.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=198816
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Andy, referencing a post that was pretty much devoid of details a month ago is not a very satisfactory answer. If Smugmug is waiting to "get more news", I have to wonder who is creating the news?
The big question really is pretty simple. Will the same level of customization be available in the new scheme? You folks at Smugmug don't seem to have decided that among yourselves. If you have, you certainly have not relayed the answer to your clients.
I will not keep either of my accounts at Smugmug if I cannot retain my customization. If I'm to jump ship, I'd rather know it now, and start anew with a different hosting option. The lack of any response is starting to sound more and more like a "no", and I'm thinking seriously of cutting my losses.
If you folks at Smugmug can't see fit to communicate with your clients a little more honestly (please refrain your "we don't give away trade secrets" standard excuse), I suspect you'll eventually have no clients to communicate with.
Andy - you seem to have ignored this very succinct and important comment completely ?? Surely EdBeck's post warrants some response from you ? Or does having an explanation like this get the dismissive approach too?
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
Thanks for your adding your words to this discussion. Very clear, very expressive. Now we can all hope that smug will listen.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
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Andy - Thanks, I understand the delay. I singled you out because you have COO in your signature and are active on this board.
Everyone - Thanks for your support, but please stop giving Andy grief. I have every confidence he'll address my post. I've been on the receiving end of such questions and believe me when I say it doesn't help when more people pile on the thread. SmugMug is being transparent to us, and is a good company that cares about its customers.
Ed (just woke up out here on the Best Coast) Beck
It's not a case of piling on the grief and I'm sorry that Andy is at the sharp end here but as you say he has COO in his signature.
If a matter such is this is placed on a public forum for comment then it's inevitable that people will pile on the thread.
Unfortunately, whilst I do believe that Andy is doing the best he can I don't share the confidence of Ed, and lack of communication from Smugmug doesn't help either.
There's nothing personal against Andy just a matter of making sure the pot doesn't go off the boil.
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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Hi Caroline, I've answered every single one of your posts about asking for more info - and we promise more will come. Nothing is changing today and you needed fear or worry that we're gonna do the wrong thing. Thanks for your continued patience.
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Hi Andy,
Thanks for a positive response:)
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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Dang. I had a reply all queued up, but I guess I'll leave it to Andy.
In all seriousness, we have some updates coming. We're very focused on addressing the low-hanging fruit right now, but I think you'll like the direction customization is going.
It's difficult for us to talk about this stuff because that's all it is - talk. We prefer to spend our time listening, refreshing, and releasing so you can *see* what we're thinking rather than just hear us blather.
Stay tuned ... next update should come shortly. Customization is still not fully fleshed out, but it's come a long way based on feedback from the threads already.
Meanwhile, we're keeping our heads down working on building what you're asking us to build... Apologies if that means we don't post as often as you'd like - we'd rather get working software in your hands.
1. Release a version, ask for feedback. (A few days)
2. Listen carefully, asking a few follow-up questions, some in public and some in private. (A few days)
3. Radio silence, heads down while we digest and build. (A few weeks)
4. Rinse, lather, repeat.
We can't take a lot of time to talk during phase 3, because otherwise we'll never get a new phase 1 out.
SmugMug is full of doers, not talkers. Once the talking time is done (aka you've all asked us for some great improvements), we've gotta build.
We're building now.
The funniness comes because you ask us for our feedback, we generate a ton of questions (some of them from serious concern about the direction things are going) and then there is no public active engagement or discussion with anyone who seriously knows anything or is willing to really address or discuss the questions.
Andy attempts to "answer" all the questions, but they are never really answers. Either he doesn't know or he feels like his hands are tied to really talk about anything meaningful. 99% of the answers are "we hear you, we're working on things, just wait". For a customer that's afraid you're going in a bad direction for them and are going to ruin their site, that just isn't very comforting at all.
It's like you take your car into the mechanic for a checkup and he calls you an hour later and says: "there's a really big issue with your car". You ask "what's wrong, how much will it cost and how long will it take?". He responds: "I don't have time to talk now because I'm a doer not a talker, just trust me it will be better than new when I'm done, but I might have to remove your $2000 custom stereo to fix it because it's in the way." You object to losing the stereo and ask for a bunch more information about what's wrong, how much it will cost and how long it will take. He responds that he'll try to preserve the stereo, but can't really make any promises yet and you just need to trust him on all the other questions. If that was really your car, you'd say no thanks. I'm taking my business elsewhere. You wouldn't tolerate that sort of lack of communication.
That's what you're doing with us here. You've dropped a bomb - showed improvements and threatened to take "page-busting custom HTML away" that generated tons of feedback and concern. And, you've engaged in no real meaningful public discussion about why you wanted to take stuff away and what you were going to do to replace it. A win/win feedback situation like this is a two-way street. We tell you what we think and what we're concerned about and you get meaningfully involved in the conversation. It flat out doesn't work when you drop the bomb and turn over the communication to Andy and Ben who either don't have the right information or aren't empowered to share it. There are only three choices here (two are good, one is not):
1) You spend a little time answering questions and being seriously engaged with the bigger issues yourself.
2) Equip Andy and Ben with both information and the power to discuss it.
3) Neither of these happens and you create a lot of customer angst.
Right now you've done #3.
I applaud you for attempting to collect customer feedback on such a big change, but your bedside manner in how you do it is really pretty horrible and leads to maximum customer angst. Perhaps it gets you some of the feedback you want, but it's not a very customer-friendly way to do so. You could learn to do the process so much better. You'd probably get more out of the feedback and you'd have a lot less customer angst. It's up to you if you want a better path. But, telling us that you're a doer and don't have time to talk to concerned customers after you've dropped a bomb on us is actually a pretty odd attitude and I'm frankly quite surprised you'd ever say that in public. That might be something you might expect out of junior software developer who was massively busy and not very sensitive to the needs of customers and the value of your relationship with customers, but not something you'd expect out of a CEO.
If I were advising your business, I wouldn't suggest doing this again. When you release customer-angst causing information, you have to be ready to honestly discuss it and really engage in answering the questions (something that has not happened here at all). If you don't want to have such a discussion in public for whatever reason, then you should pick a smaller non-public group that you can more openly discuss it with under NDA.
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EdBeck could you please explain what you mean by this, thank you.
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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We don't have one yet. We're still busy building requested features, changes, and improvements.
Once we feel like we're doing "building" we'll figure out (with customer feedback) how to roll this out and what that'll look like.
Not really fond of putting the cart before the horse.
Oh, everyone can call me "Ed", (unless there's another Ed active on this thread).
Oh, everyone can call me "Ed", (unless there's another Ed active on this thread).[/QUOTE]
Thanks for your explanation, that's roughly what I thought you meant:)
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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I'm more curious about which phase of the overall dev cycle we're in. Certainly not Alpha, is this Beta 1 or Beta 2? God help up if this is a release candidate.
Um, got any listeners? (I admit this is a cheap shot, but it was just laying there waiting for someone to pick up).
This doesn't answer the question of what about MY customizations.
Helping is not enough. It has to be a light-switch migration for a few reasons.
Migration has got to be part of the design. If you don't build your design with migration in mind then you'll end up having to patch the migration...
Just read your reply, more on this in a bit.
Excuse me? I didn't hear you, I was too busy putting on my parachute.
Planning migration isn't putting the cart before the horse, it's more like hitching another horse next to your existing horse. Well, it's not really like that either, it's more like your wife sitting next to you when you're driving on a trip, and she's constantly asking if you know where you're going (Caroline - I really hope I didn't just tick you off). And the really annoying thing is that you took a wrong turn about two miles back.
This is actually a really good analogy. If you don't have a plan for migration there will come a day in the migration planning session when someone comes up with a great idea, but you can't implement it because remember back in July '11 when you had to decide between X and Y, and they were cost neutral? Yeah, well choosing X kinda made it impossible to implement this idea.
I'm trying to make light of this, but that's simply because I have painful memories of migrating customers to new platforms because migration was always an after thought. I swear to you on a copy of "Light, Science and Magic" that having a migration plan in place, and making sure that at every phase of development the spec makes the migration bar, you will be better off in the long run.
Migration should be assigned as a PM's central responsibility and not one of the lowly PMs that are interning with you, one of the more senior ones who has the ability to trash a spec if it doesn't meet the migration bar.
No Ed you didn't tick me off:) and even if you did I'm so appreciative of your comments here!
I suspect I pretty much tick Andy off though - just asking for my patience and then going quiet for an indeterminable period adds to the frustration I am feeling.
My site is extremely important to me in a different way from the event or wedding photographer - I don't sell loads of prints for a start, and I'm in the UK .
However, that doesn't mean I'm going to wait and see how this turns out, all the while continue to add galleries etc and implement the customizations I have previously been able to do, only to find out in a few months time that my site is broken, in my terms, and that I need to do a whole load of work to fix it.
So what I'm doing actively now is:-
1. NOT adding more photos, galleries etc.
2. Seriously considering what to do about my site in the future
3. Attempting to extract some 'useful' information from Smugmug that will help me ensure my site functions exactly as I want it to in the future
I don't think it unreasonable to raise the issue every couple of weeks if there has been no update from Smugmug. If that looks like I'm giving Andy grief I'm sorry, but I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting updates/progress reports etc. - It's not personal.
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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