Richard Bliss Blog

GWAVACon - London, Berlin, Las Vegas

GWAVACon London wrapped up last week. If was the first time to hold a GWAVACon event in the UK. Feedback from attendees and staff has been raving. GWAVACon London is what we call a GWAVACon on Tour. A single day event that focuses on GWAVA and Novell technology during the day and business issues and networking in the evening.

Next up is GWAVACon Berlin in a few weeks, staring on Saturday 17th of October through Monday the 19th.

I'm often asked to help people justify why they should go to a GWAVACon. I know for me, I go to GWAVACon because I'm passionate about the people who attend. When I created GWAVACon 14 events ago, I wanted to make something different, something that was personal. I wanted to  create an experience for those who came that was personal, memorable, and unique.

There are so many conferences that finding a way to be unique is extremely difficult. What I decided to do was to make the event really truly focused on the individuals in attendance. Of turning the individuals who arrived into a community by the time they left. I give out my cell phone number, my email address, we encourage family members to attend, we play boardgames in the evening. Christina, my wife, feeds the attendees until they are ready to burst. The technical sessions are often handpicked to address extremely specific issues and not talk about theory or concepts.

I go to GWAVACon because I love the community it represents. When we sang Happy Birthday to Salim, one of the regular attendees who always comes even though it is his birthday, I felt the genuine affection from those in the room. Salim said he will never forget being sang to by 300 people.

This year we expect registration to maintain its levels from last year. This is great news when we are still in the middle of a worldwide recession. I don't need GWAVACon to be a thousand attendees to be successful. I just need to keep making people feel good and have them feel like part of the community.

Novell Makes Smart Move and Cancels BrainShare 09

I've blogged about Novell's decision to cancel BrainShare and the role GWAVACon will fill.

You can view it at my new blog site:


Novell Cancels BrainShare

Interoperability - Novell Losing the Word

Novell has been focused with their messaging lately. They have told me on numerous occasions that they want to own the word "Interoperability".

Okay, I can understand wanting to own that word. It makes me wonder if anyone is hearing Novell talk about Interoperability.

I know one company is - Microsoft.

This week in eWeek (www.eweek.com) they had a story on the main page.

Microsoft Pushes Interoperability

It was in the Linux and Open Source Section. Looks like Novell is getting through to someone and that someone has decided they want that word for themselves.

At this point Novell is either going to have to fight for the ownership of the word or find a new word.

First would be to get themselves listed in the top ten on Google ranking for the word Interoperability. That would certainly help. Right now Microsoft is listed as #3 and #4 by Google for the word Interoperability.

My recommendation is that they pick a new word that Microsoft can't own or doesn't own.

First choice - Business-Driven Linux
Second choice Teaming

Novell GroupWise wants to own the word collaboration as well.

Novell can win this battle and own a word but it will take some focused effort. Right now they have a big company, Microsoft that wants to take it away from them.

BTW, GWAVACon, The Novell Teaming and GroupWise conference is just around the corner. www.gwavacon.com to register and get the early bird special. It is in Las Vegas this year, January 2009.

Competition is Good - Important lesson for GroupWise partners

Have you ever been to an AutoMall?

This is where car dealerships, fighting for your money, line themselves up like wall flowers at a high school dance, hoping that they get picked to go home with the prom king.

Why on earth would such competitive companies subject themselves to scrutiny by a cautious public?

Because they sell more cars. In truth, by clumping themselves together, it makes it easier to be found, it qualifies the buyer quicker, and it increases their overall sales.

In this case, they all come together knowing that if you are in the car buying mood, they stand a better chance of being seen, if they are seen with their competitor than if they are isolated by themselves.

GroupWise Community

This is a great lesson for the GroupWise community. GroupWise customers tend to be isolated. There are fewer of them than Exchange customers, and they tend to not congregate.

Two places you can easily find GroupWise technology partners and GroupWise customers in the same place - BrainShare and GWAVACon

The new GroupWise Open Horizons magazine is the only GroupWise publication and Cool Solutions and NGWList are about the only place that you can find them talking to each other online.

This is the reason for the GroupWise treasure hunt at BrainShare and the creation of GWAVACon, the Novell GroupWise Technology conference. A place to bring buyers and sellers together.

But you would not believe how hard it is to convince competing companies that it is in their best interest to get ALL GroupWise 3rd party vendors in the same room. That a GroupWise Partner Mall is better than attempting to go it alone.

Both GWAVACon in Las Vegas in January and BrainShare in Salt Lake City in March will be a big party for the launch of GroupWise 8.

Here's hoping that everyone comes to the party.

GWAVACon Berlin a huge success

I returned this week from GWAVACon Berlin, the Novell Collaboration Conference. The event was a spectacular success. This GWAVACon was the 9th worldwide that my team has delivered, and each one just keeps getting better.

I've called GWAVACon the Novell Collaboration Conference because it has begun to grown and expand beyond the traditional GroupWise that are its roots.

There bulk of the conference is still focused on GroupWise, but now Teaming has become part of the conference and ZENworks has been there nearly from the beginning. This moves the conference from the focus of just GroupWise to a broader discussion of collaboration.

My keynote theme, like many I've delivered in the past, was the focus on owning a word. I have talked about owning a word in this blog many times and this was an opportunity for the Novell community in Europe to hear it first hand.

Novell needs to own a word and I believe that word is "Business-Driven Linux"

Not all in the audience agreed with me. Novell has been attempting to own the word "Interoperability", something the European crowd had a tough time even saying, let alone understanding what it meant.

Volker Smid, President of EMEA, delivered the keynote on day two and did a great job of emphasizing the ownership of the word Interoperability. He is an talented and enthusiastic presenter, and the audience responded well.

Feeling Good

The thing that most people feel coming away from GWAVACon is that they now belong to something bigger. They often feel that they are alone as a GroupWise IT administrator. When they attend GWAVACon they are surrounded by hundreds of other GroupWise enthusiasts and they are not alone.

In addition, the unprecedented support from Novell makes a difference to the attendees. I use the word unprecedented because in all my 15+ years involved with GroupWise I have never seen the support from all levels of the company like I'm seeing today.

Novell Marketing Makes a Difference

Wendy Steinle, as the person responsible for managing the marketing teams for GroupWise and Teaming, has been doing an outstanding job of increasing the overall involvement of Novell in the community. It has been very effective and it is very appreciated.

Thank you Wendy for hiring great people like Travis Grandpre over GroupWise marketing and Karen Rowell over Teaming marketing. They are both new in their roles, but came to GWAVACon and make an impact to the success of the conference.

Surprise visitor

We had a surprise visitor as well at GWAVACon. Mike Morgan from Novell manages the BrainShare event every year. Mike was in Berlin for another conference and was able to spend a day with us. GWAVACon is a very small event in comparison to the thousands that Mike takes care of for a week every year. But we were proud to be able to show off our little conference and the success we have had building it into a voice of influence in the GroupWise community.

BrainShare and GWAVACon

It has been asked if GWAVACon competes with BrainShare. My answer to that is that it complements BrainShare. When asked, GWAVACon attendees tell me that they, as GroupWise administrators get to come to GWAVACon while their boss, often the head of IT, gets to go to the much bigger event of BrainShare.

This has been GWAVACon's purpose. To focus on giving the GroupWise administrator a place to come and be king for a day. And in Berlin, we treated them like Royalty.

Marketing Execution - The Great Differentiator

“ Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it.” - Mark Twain

In marketing, the generation of an idea is often the easiest part of any project. People have ideas all the time. I often will receive, unsolicited, numerous ideas about the next great thing.

I remember in my youth being told that everyone has good ideas. That good ideas are easy to come by. It isn’t a lack of ideas that keep people from solving problems. It is the fear to act that keeps people from executing on a good idea.

I used to work in technical support many years ago. Over the five years I took about 35,000 phone calls. It was a very educational experience. Then one day I decided to quit my job.

It was January of 1994. Wordperfect Corporation had just announced their very first layoffs. I was part of the WordPerfect Office Team, now called Novell GroupWise. The team was not being touched. But I turned in my resignation anyway and took a modest severance.

I technically didn’t have a job when I did this but had an opportunity for a job in South Carolina. A long way to pick up my family and suddenly move. I had bought my first home a month earlier and had two young children.

As I was preparing to leave my support team, a teammate came up to me and asked what I was going to go do?

I said that I was going to be a consultant for a company that sold software and hardware to Law Firms in the Carolinas.

His eyes got big as he said, “But that means you will have to be responsible for the things you tell people to do”

He meant that I would not be able to extend a suggested course of action to help someone fix their problem and then tell them to hang up and call back into support if the problem wasn’t fixed, knowing that they would end up talking with someone else.

Yes, that was correct. By leaving and going out to face the customers, I would have to be responsible for the advice I gave my customers.

I remember this incident because it struck me how different that person was from myself. How amazed they were that I had the courage to go do this thing, even without a guaranteed job.

Like the quote says at the top, courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the ability to act in the face of fear.

In Marketing, ideas are easy to find. You pick up your chair and turn it over and you can be assured that there is an idea hiding under it.

Oftentimes, marketing departments are criticized for not having good ideas. Often times management teams and sales teams are always looking for the next great idea that is going to turn everything around for them. Make their job easier, make customers suddenly want the product so they don’t have to sell as hard. I call this the “Myth of the Idea”

The Myth of the Idea is that the idea itself is what holds the key to success.

The idea holds nothing. Each person can have an idea, the same idea. One person will act on it, the other will not.

A mediocre idea executed brilliantly will always succeed over a brilliant idea executed with mediocrity.

It is the effort that is the great divider. The execution of an idea is what distinguishes the successful from the failures.

THE DIP

Seth Godin, the marketing guru, recently wrote a book called The Dip. In this very short book he identifies the dip as a lull, or drop in results with an increase in effort. The time that the going gets the most tough and the rewards are few and far between. It is during this time that most people drop out of a contest or abandon the pursuit of an idea.

He states that those who persevere are the ones who justly garner the rewards. We, as a society, reward those who push through the Dip, whether they be doctors, lawyers, or skilled plumbers. We pay them the extra amount in recognition for them accomplishing something that we ourselves would abandon.

In marketing, to be the most successful, you must focus on execution, execution, execution. Don’t keep trying to find the perfect price, or perfect slogan, or perfect, idea. Simply execute with aggression and passion on the ideas that you have and that will lead to much greater success.

Example of overcoming fear and executing on an idea.

Being a news interviewer.

During my keynote at GWAVACon I mentioned the US Presidential candidates were each owning a word. Obama owned Change, Clinton owned experience, Giuliani 9/11, Romney owned Business or Broken.

I received a notice today that Romney was in town to make an announcement. I decided that I would like to see if my theory was right and Romney was attempting to own the word/phrase “Washington is Broken” .

I contacted a friend with a camera and we went down to rally to see what we could find out. I wanted to practice asking people about ideas and getting their responses. Below is some of those results. I was able to get some footage of Mitt Romney speaking and he avoided the word/phrase "Washington is Broken". I suspect it had something to do with the Congressman and Senator that were there to endorse him. I was hoping to get an interview with the Governor, but I wasn't able to. Instead I snagged my Congressman as he left the rally and was able to ask him his opinion about Mitt Romney's experience and its impact on his being President. Here is that interview:



Overcoming my fear, not worrying about being no one of significance, I decided to generate my own news.

I use this as an example of the what you can accomplish by simply acting in the face of your own personal fears.

The power of the word

I have received tremendous response to my keynote delivered Monday morning at GWAVACon. For those who didn't catch it on GWAVA TV (http://www.gwava.com/gwavatv) can view the slide presentation here. I will be rebroadcasting the presentation in the future.

My presentation focused on Novell owning a new word in the minds of the market and becoming the dominant player in the Linux world by using the word Business-Driven Linux.

My Response to some harsh criticism from GWAVACon

For a frame of reference to this post, it is necessary to read the previous post. For a complete frame of reference it would be helpful to read several of my previous posts, particularly concerning the idea of owning a word in the minds of your customers.

Okay, Kennon had some interesting comments to make about my keynote at GWAVACon. One thing that is correct, is that my words were tailored for an audience of ex- Novell/NetWare admins, although many in the room are current NetWare admins as well.

I believe I do understand the way the world is changing, although I can see from your perspective, Kennon, that you might see me stuck in the past.

When I spoke of Linux, I wasn't actually speaking about the software itself. I was speaking about the perception of what Linux stands for in the minds of the business world owners and leaders.

When I asked the audience what word Linux stood for, someone shouted out, "OPEN". I realize now that it may have been you, Kennon, that spoke up. I publicly disagreed with the statement that "Open" is the word owned by Linux. I should have been more specific because in hindsight I realize that word Open is owned by Linux. Linux owns that word for those who understand what Linux does and what it is capable of doing. An informed person would immediately understand that and next time I will be more specific.

My disagreement with Linux owning the word OPEN is that the majority of business owners and business professionals don't understand the world of Linux and don't understand Open Source Software. The majority of the business world who are casually familiar with Linux know that the word FREE is often associated with it. If they only know one thing about Linux, it is that they have heard it is free.

This belief is strong enough that many business people still wonder how any company that "sells" Linux can make money when the product is free.

Savvy business owners and executives know that nothing is truly free. This means they translate the concept of the word free to something they understand, which is the idea that Linux will lower their IT costs. They may not be sure how but they believe that it will happen.

Thus, the word FREE is associated with Linux no matter how hard the Linux community attempts to change the word to Open or something else.

Fortunately my keynote will be posted soon so that those reading this blog can at least watch the presentation to get a better understanding about the discussion that Kennon and I are having here.

My statement of giving the community to Red Hat was meant to communicate that the word Community be given to Red Hat since Red Hat already owns the word Linux Community. Novell, to succeed, must and will continue to be involved with the Linux community. As you point out, without this community, there is no Linux.

My point was also to point out that once someone owns a word, it is not possible to take that word away from them. Novell cannot take the word Linux, or Linux Community, away from Red Hat. They own it and they get to keep it.

If Novell is to have a future with Linux, they will need to find a new niche, a new market, and a new word that they can lay claim to, that they can own.

My suggestion is that the word (phrase) Business-Driven Linux is the word that Novell can own. Business-Driven Linux conveys many different ideas, values, and concepts than the traditional single word of Linux or Linux Community does not.

Business-Driven Linux conveys a fundamental understanding of how business works, not just technology. It conveys the idea of technology that solves problems, that is focused on the pain of business. It is a word that is strong and dynamic, one that a business owner, a University CIO, a CTO, or any other decision maker will understand means something to them.

My presentation at GWAVACon was a discussion on perception and market dynamics. It was about how customers think about software even when they don't understand it. It was also a way to show those who have grown disillusioned with Novell of the past, that the future is much brighter and that the world is indeed changing.

Comments from my GWAVACon Keynote

I have not had a chance to blog about the results of GWAVACon but I was pleased to see that some others have had the chance.

I'm posting the comments made by one of the GWAVACon attendees who took exception to my keynote. I feel that the comments deserve some space and a response from me, but one that is much better than just comments. Kennon, who's comments appear below, raises some very valid points and identifies some issues that need to be addressed.

Here are Kennon's comments from my GWAVACon Keynote:

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Dear Mr. Bliss,

I just got done sitting through your keynote at gwavacon in San Diego where you reiterated all this monkey business. Your speech was fine for a bunch of 40-something ex-Netware (or soon to be ex) admins. But it is painfully obvious that you don’t understand the way the world is changing. You spoke about Linux but it is plain that you don’t even understand what Free software is. You are still one of those people who think that it means dope smoking hippies giving away the farm for the good of mankind. Your keynote was something out of 1999. I cringed in pain when you said “We are giving the community to Red Hat”. You spoke as if the community and the business were two different things that could somehow be separated. Which really means to me that you don’t understand the first thing about Free and Open Source Software. When you say free you mean as in beer. Without the community, you have no business. You have nothing.

Doesn’t it seem strange to you that Red Hat as a company makes more money per year than Novell when Novell has about a zillion more products that Red Hat does?* Novell has decades in the business and a software portfolio that if implemented fully could fork lift replace almost every Microsoft application from a data center and Red Hat has a fraction of that and yet somehow Red Hat is bigger than Novell? And did I mention that Red Hat ONLY sells Open Source software. Not a line of proprietary code in the shop. How could this be? I sincerely appreciate the disclaimer at the end when you said that you cannot make decisions for Novell. When you said that I thought, thank God, to myself. Novell’s only hope of surviving the next 5 years is to realize the same thing Sun, IBM, and HP are realizing. Free your code or die.

*I realized that I worded this poorly. Novell’s annual total revenue is more than Red Hat (for now), but Red Hat has a larger market cap and makes it’s revenue from Open Source software. Whereas 90% of Novell’s products are still proprietary.

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I would like to take the time and space in my next posting to respond to Kennon and his comments.

GWAVA and GroupWise and the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

There is a great book that has been around for about 15 years called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

It is a great read and something that I refer to as a common practice when facing marketing decisions. In this blog I would like to talk about how GWAVA has dealt with these laws and what Novell can do to use these laws to have GroupWise soar with success.

Law #1 The Law of Leadership
It is better to be first than it is to be better

My first response to this would be that it is better to be first AND better...but that is not reality. Someone is always a little better than you at something. The important part is to remember to be first at something.

In the late 90s and until 2002 the GroupWise partner community lacked any kind of cohesion. Novell, back then, still suffered from the NIH syndrome and rarely reached out to assist 3rd party vendors. Still suffering from a hangover of the beginning decline of NetWare in the market place, few at Novell saw the need of embracing 3rd party vendors to help build up the product or the community.

This meant that during this time, most third party vendors supporting GroupWise were small shops doing a little bit of work, hoping that Novell didn't noticed.

I joined Novell as the head of marketing for GroupWise in April of 2001. I came from the 3rd party partner community and new the value that 3rd party partners could bring, but I remember the blank stares and open hostility that I faced when I recommended that Novell begin looking outside the community to help themselves be competitive.

I can remember one product manager who is now long gone, make the following statement.

"Help a 3rd party partner? Are you crazy, I'm not going to let any 3rd party partner get rich off our products!"

It was in this environment that GWAVA was born the month after 9/11. Internet Viruses were running rampant through email systems, making headlines every few months. I was on CNN a couple of times when the Melissa Virus hit because it was such a new threat that no one had really prepared for.

GWAVA, which back then stood for GroupWise Anti-Virus Agent, was the first AV product designed exclusively for GroupWise and it ran on NetWare. Even though most of the email viruses at that time were targeted at Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, IT Managers didn't want to take any chances. Charles and Marc, launching the company out of their spare bedrooms, became profitable overnight.

They became the First AV/Anti-Spam solution built exclusively for GroupWise. Now, it is possible that someone else, somewhere built something before they did, but they were the first KNOWN AV solution for GroupWise that ran on NetWare.

With that focused success, GWAVA was able to grow beyond the small techy company. They opened offices, hired technical support people, and built a real company.

In the meantime, they continued to add new products into the GroupWise space. Products like Reload by Tay Kratzer...the first Disaster Recovery Solution built exclusively for GroupWise and it runs on Linux.

Retain - The first GroupWise Enterprise Archiving Solution that runs on NetWare, Linux, or Windows.

In each case, GWAVA continues to strive to be #1 to keep the success going.

Novell GroupWise and the Law of Leadership

Novell GroupWise has a problem with the first immutable law of marketing. It isn't perceived as the leader in anything.

Several years ago in the late 90s, in a act of misunderstanding, the product managers of GroupWise at Novell decided to take the Leader in Document Management and embed it into GroupWise. Forming the first collaboration product that had document management integrated natively. It seemed like a good idea at the time to them. But it violate the 5th Law of Marketing, the Law of Focus, something we will discuss in a future post. What it did was destroy the market opportunity for SoftSolutions and allowed PC Docs to become the leader.

Today, GroupWise still has document management integrated whether a customer wants it or not, but Novell has not invested in that portion of the product to make it number 1.

Here is a question that I ask my audiences all over the world...

"What is the Number Email Software product in the world for corporations"

Easy answer "Exchange"

What is the number 2?

Another easy answer? Not really, if you said Lotus Notes from IBM, then you might technically be right. There are as more users that use the product, but if you haven't noticed lately, no one is rushing out to buy Notes servers to run their email.

But for now we will stick with that answer...Notes number 2

Who is number 3? Easy answer, at least to the readers of this blog...Novell GroupWise.

Okay, not only is GroupWise not the leader for Email Collaboration in the marketplace, it isn't even perceived to be number 2. This is bad news, especially because Law #8, the Law of Duality, states that every market comes down to a two horse race. And right now, GroupWise is a 3rd horse in a two horse race.

Does that mean GroupWise is finished, done, kaput? No, not by a longshot. But it does mean that Novell needs to pay attention and not violate the first law. Because the race isn't over and there is a lot of opportunity.

How could Novell violate the first law? Remember...It is better to be first than to be better.

Novell should NOT pour their resources into attempting to compete with Notes and Exchange at their own game. They should NOT attempt to build their products to be "Superior" to Microsoft or Notes. They should attempt to maintain parity, since no one wants a product that is actually worse, but don't think you are going to horserace that you aren't even in, by running faster than the other guys.

Hold the line by...
Priority number 1 - Not attempting to out Microsoft, Microsoft.

Priority number 2 - Turning to the 3rd party community to help deliver the complete solution to market.

Grow and gain marketshare by...

Remembering Law #1 and find something to be number 1 by following Law #2

Law #2 The Law of the Category
If you can't be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.

That will be the topic of another article. But to give you a hint, it has to do with Linux.

Richard Bliss