C9 video that Marketing (or Lawyers) killed

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikemill/archive/2005/09/23/473456.aspx

Apparently, this C9 interview with a member of the MS-CRM team got killed, because he admitted that they "watch what they [their CRM competitors] do closely."  Needless to say, I'm very disappointed with MS legal and-or marketing.  Lawyers/marketing 1, transparency 0.

Interesting though not surprising, I guess, to note that C9 video has to be vetted by legal and marketing to get on-line.

PS.  I hope Mr. Miller doesn't get in "trouble" for blogging that.

JChung2006 wrote:

Lawyers/marketing 1, transparency 0.

Probably not the first time, probably not gonna be the last.

What I don't get is that Scoble offered to edit the video and they said no.  Then he offered to reshoot the video completely and they said no.  What's up with that?

You know, I'm trying to see it from their point of view, and yeah, I suppose saying you watch a competitor closely could be yanked completely out of context in a courtroom.  But not letting them edit or even reshoot -- that's just Orwellian.   What did they do, burn the tapes and dump the camera in the river?  Sheesh.

There's a nice little irony in one of his earlier blog posts:

It got up there because we had a lot of spirited discussion in the weeks and months leading up to PDC and the Business Summit about what would change in the world if we could democratize data. That is, could we do something that would unlock a company’s business data in a controlled way that could also make the entire supply chain work better.

What initially came out of those discussions was that CRM had a pile of cool technologies available that at least enable us to start exposing the data.

So here is a guy who is really passionate about "unlocking" and "exposing data to the masses" and he's not merely expurgated, edited, or redacted -- he's completely censored. 

I did manage to get part of a transcript, though.  It went something like this:

Scoble: Wow -- so all this data is available via web services?

Miller: That's right.  So anything can consume the data, whether it's another component of the CRM, or Microsoft Excel, or ________ ________ from _________'s  __ ________.

Scoble: So what you've got there is interoperability between Microsoft's CRM and  __.  That's pretty amazing.

Miller: Yeah, it's actually much more advanced than the equivalent in __.  As for ____, they haven't even started to do web services, so there's not much integration we can do with ____'s ___ _______.  They say they're going to add it in the next version, though.

Scoble: Sounds like you try to keep current with ___ and ____.

Miller: Oh we watch ___ and ____ very closely.  Like a friggin' hawk.  [laughs]  Oh -- can I say "friggin'" on Channel 9?

Scoble: [laughs]  Let me check with Legal and get back to you.

(Transcript provided by Microsoft Legal)

Not all teams value openness in the same way. And in particular, not all teams have legal or marketing representatives who value openness in the same way.

In my experience (note HUGE GENERALIZATION HERE), I've found that developers tend to want the most openness, lawyers are (amazingly enough) happy to sit somewhere in the middle, and marketers want the least.

In particular, a lot of marketers still want complete control over every little thing that gets said about their product. This is gradually changing (both at Microsoft and elsewhere) as more of them "get" blogs, web forums, etc etc, but it's a slow process.

jonathanh wrote:

In particular, a lot of marketers still want complete control over every little thing that gets said about their product. This is gradually changing (both at Microsoft and elsewhere) as more of them "get" blogs, web forums, etc etc, but it's a slow process.

That's because admiting another application does the same job or is interoperable is free advertisement for THEM.

One thing I've noticed is that if someone tells me that Product A works awesome with Product B, I find myself more interested in Product B if I have never used it before than with Product A.

Also if you say that your product works with another product then your saying that you've had competition and had to build and accomidate because you lost market share or what not. Similar to what will be said if Office ever begins to use the OpenDocument format...

"They were losing market share to OpenOffice, so they have to include this to get that share back."
 
Believe it or not...every Linux person out there will say this the minute Office starts using OpenDoc format.

If that's all they squashed it over, that's pathetic.

Seriously.

Really.

I hope we're not getting the whole story. For their sake.

ahhhh... just for the record... I totally made up that whole "transcript."  Including the interop stuff.  And it wasn't provided by Microsoft Legal.

Sorry, I forgot the closing </joke> tag....

Looking back at that email thread, that video did get killed for lame reasons. I should have fought for it harder. Maybe I'll bring it out of the vault and play it as "the one that PR tried to kill." Heh.

By the way, my videos have this signoff process:

1) Me.
2) The Channel 9 team.
3) The person being interviewed.
4) Our PR team.

Sometimes I loop in lawyers if I have a question, but that's only happened a handful of times (actually only two that I remember about).

Any of these four can get us to kill a video completely, or edit it. Lately they've been a lot looser than they used to be (and I've been pushing back more cause I really hate editing).

Question:

Does this mean interviewees can't mention any competitors products now? Not even Firefox, Linux, or RMS?

No, that was a year ago.

Look at Marc McDonald's video. He talks in depth about the iPod.

So post it already

Why didn't we read about this on the Scobleizer?

eagle wrote:

Why didn't we read about this on the Scobleizer?

It is a blog, he can't say whatever he wants.. That is why he has to post things that are controversial on a forum. Anyway as per his webcast, if you work for any company you have to go ask permission from your boss before you use a blog otherwise you could get fired... [A]

Cause I don't blog about everything that happens to me or Channel 9.

Someday you'll hear stories about how they tried to close Channel 9 shortly after it was opened and how there were trying to get me fired.

It's a big company. Navigating the waters is difficult.

Changing a big company isn't for the weak. It's also not for the stupid.

scobleizer wrote:

Someday you'll hear stories about how they tried to close Channel 9 shortly after it was opened and how there were trying to get me fired.

How soon after? I just wonder if it is because of the content of the videos or stuff people have done/said on the coffeehouse?

Now you have had Gates + Balmer on C9 it wouldn't be so easy to kill -- It almost legitimises the entire concept.

Channel 9 can't die. If they did, I would lose total respect for Microsoft. Scoble's the man. No other company has a view from the outside like Microsoft does, and I attribute that to blogging and Channel 9.

 "Subvert From Within, a user-focused employee guide."  



Found on John Porcaro: mktg@msft

Oh, the folks who wanted it killed are now our best friends. But I sure learned a lot about changing corporate culture back then.

It's also good that corporate culture makes doing this hard. I've had a lot of other companies tell me they'd like to do their own Channel 9 but no one else has been able to copy it yet.

scobleizer wrote:

I really hate editing

I notice a 'fart' sound at the end of every video. Do you hate editing videos that much?