EDIT: I used a fair and random dice-roll to make the decision.
"The one thing you've got to remember about these lads, is that they can't ever be seen to be wrong. They won't stick their heads over the parapet. They always have to be able to say that they did the Right Thing. And that Right Thing isn't necessarily doing their job exactly according to spec. That Right Thing, is whatever the public thinks the answer should be. It might not be the right answer, but public opinion doesn't care about that. Fandom doesn't care about that.
All fandom really cares about is it being the Popular answer. Because then it will be seen to be Right because everyone will agree with it. Do something that's against Public opinion, but that you believe is Right, risks being utterly and publicly ridiculed if you're wrong, or if the program hits the usual bumps and hiccups all programs hit because then it will be your fault. No sane human being would risk pissing off the entirety of the fandom - especially the bloody mil-fen. The keyboard warriors will make your life hell until you become a liability to keep around.
So they'll do their job to make it happen. Either by writing the spec to make the Right Thing easier to achieve, or scoring things up to fill in the numbers in just the right way.
Once you realise that, you realise we won't win many of these. Not until we get a reputation for doing the Right Thing, more and more, do we become the safe choice. It's worked in our favour before. The Foxhound became the Right Thing amongst the hackerspace after it stumbled on the Raven - and GJ split the contract and bought 3 of them. Just on a trial basis. It worked with Survival Shot - we got three big hits right after that Defense journal wrote about us - and I hadn't even realised to ask them to do it.
Once you get a few defense journals writing positively about how you do things, your thing starts to be seen as a Right Thing. Or it gets easier for it to be seen as the Right Thing. That's whay I've invited bloggers from three different journals out to give it a try. And if it goes well, they'll start to see things our way, and write about our way as the Right Way. Or why we're all debating on public channels, rather than in private rooms. Okay, it's a risk, but it works.
The problem, is everyone else will be doing exactly the same thing. Everyone's out there, in the backrooms and halls and journals, making the independant voices of the Convention see their thing as the Right Thing. And that's a lot easier to do when your reputation is strong enough to give them a reason to listen to you. And until we get the reputation for doing this, we're always going to be swimming against the stream.
That's why we didn't get it this time. You could offer the best purple squirrel in the universe, but if the public opinion isn't there to back it up and make it the Right Thing, it's going nowhere. Look, Mackie, we carried a lot of good press from this - a lot of people liked what we offered, so we can carry that into the next one. It wasn't the Right Thing, this time, but we're now at least capable of doing Right Things.
And Padraig O'Neil finally released his specification for his own high-speed Concorde-style cruiser.... it might look familiar."
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Quote:...therefore, it is the recommendation of the board that the submission from Black Aeronaut Technologies be accepted as the winning bid.
"The one thing you've got to remember about these lads, is that they can't ever be seen to be wrong. They won't stick their heads over the parapet. They always have to be able to say that they did the Right Thing. And that Right Thing isn't necessarily doing their job exactly according to spec. That Right Thing, is whatever the public thinks the answer should be. It might not be the right answer, but public opinion doesn't care about that. Fandom doesn't care about that.
All fandom really cares about is it being the Popular answer. Because then it will be seen to be Right because everyone will agree with it. Do something that's against Public opinion, but that you believe is Right, risks being utterly and publicly ridiculed if you're wrong, or if the program hits the usual bumps and hiccups all programs hit because then it will be your fault. No sane human being would risk pissing off the entirety of the fandom - especially the bloody mil-fen. The keyboard warriors will make your life hell until you become a liability to keep around.
So they'll do their job to make it happen. Either by writing the spec to make the Right Thing easier to achieve, or scoring things up to fill in the numbers in just the right way.
Once you realise that, you realise we won't win many of these. Not until we get a reputation for doing the Right Thing, more and more, do we become the safe choice. It's worked in our favour before. The Foxhound became the Right Thing amongst the hackerspace after it stumbled on the Raven - and GJ split the contract and bought 3 of them. Just on a trial basis. It worked with Survival Shot - we got three big hits right after that Defense journal wrote about us - and I hadn't even realised to ask them to do it.
Once you get a few defense journals writing positively about how you do things, your thing starts to be seen as a Right Thing. Or it gets easier for it to be seen as the Right Thing. That's whay I've invited bloggers from three different journals out to give it a try. And if it goes well, they'll start to see things our way, and write about our way as the Right Way. Or why we're all debating on public channels, rather than in private rooms. Okay, it's a risk, but it works.
The problem, is everyone else will be doing exactly the same thing. Everyone's out there, in the backrooms and halls and journals, making the independant voices of the Convention see their thing as the Right Thing. And that's a lot easier to do when your reputation is strong enough to give them a reason to listen to you. And until we get the reputation for doing this, we're always going to be swimming against the stream.
That's why we didn't get it this time. You could offer the best purple squirrel in the universe, but if the public opinion isn't there to back it up and make it the Right Thing, it's going nowhere. Look, Mackie, we carried a lot of good press from this - a lot of people liked what we offered, so we can carry that into the next one. It wasn't the Right Thing, this time, but we're now at least capable of doing Right Things.
And Padraig O'Neil finally released his specification for his own high-speed Concorde-style cruiser.... it might look familiar."
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?