Every developer's worst nightmare? Redux


So I started work this morning the same as I pretty much always do: make some coffee, log in, check my email, etc., etc. My inbox, as usual, contained an assortment of junk (some always seems to bypass the Mail.app scanner), the odd newsletter (from those heathens who haven't heard of RSS) and the various detritus that comes from running a business (and personal life) predominantly online.

After sorting through the stuff I could deal with immediately (I'm a follower of David Allen's GTD, thanks to a post by Scoble) I started looking through the other mail. It was then that I noticed a message from someone at Near-Time - the company whose product, Flow, was the reason behind the original "worst nightmare" post. At first, being totally honest here, I was slightly annoyed at yet another email from these guys. You see I'd downloaded a copy of Flow on Monday, as Near-Time had just released it, but run into some problems with the registration. Someone at Near-Time had picked up on this (without me contacting them - impressive!) and mailed me to say that they'd fixed the problem (doubly impressive!). On Tuesday I'd successfully registered and received my confirmation message - job done. So why was I getting another email from them now?

I read the mail:

"From: Scott Hoffman

Symon,

I am contacting you regarding Flow and a Blog you posted on April, 22nd. I wanted to send this email earlier but waited until we released the product."

Uh-oh, this didn't look good. In fact it was starting to look like the kind of thing that makes solicitors (lawyers) very happy. I read on...

"First let me apologize for the issue you encountered during registration, we overlooked a test on zip code registration but I believe we have resolved it."

Huh? Where did that come from? How many people about to threaten legal action (or the legal Horseman of the Apocalypse: a Cease and Desist demand) comment on a technical issue? Intrigued, I read on some more...

"Second I wanted to send a complimentary full use registration code for Flow to you. I hope you will find Flow to be a powerful application for your use.

Please contact me when you have a moment to discuss your experience and thoughts on the application. You can send a Flow message to me with the ID provided or use email or iChat."

Wow! This just blew me away (so much so that I had to ring my wife to tell her). Firstly this was confirmation that someone actually read my 'blog. Secondly, here was a total stranger spelling my name correctly! Hell, even people who I've known for years trip up when they're IM'ing or emailing me (and let's not even get into texting, you'd just be amazed how many variants of my name there can be). Thirdly I was being given a $99.95 registration code purely because I'd 'blogged about this company and its product.

Later in the day I IM'd Scott to chat with him:

Me: "hi, hope i'm not disturbing you?"

Scott: "not at all, how are you"

Me: "fine thank you, yourself?"

Scott: "i am great, i am at the WWDC in SF"

Wow (again)! The guy was taking the time to chat with me while at the WWDC - if I'd been at the WWDC I'd have blown off Kirsten Dunst trying to ask me out on a date (maybe not, but as it's unlikely to ever happen it makes for a good comparison) - and he was polite (something I ought to 'blog about someday, we Brits are meant to be the polite ones in the world but that just isn't true in my experience, just witness my comment above about being at the WWDC...) Anyway, the conversation went on with me thanking Scott and Near-Time for their generosity (and not trying to sue me or anything) and Scott thanking me for 'blogging about them and Flow.

The upshot of all this? There are some damn nice people in the world and some of them work for damn nice companies. Oh, yeah, there's something about the power of social networks, 'blogging, good publicity, yada yada yada... I'll let someone else go into details about all that, I'm still all excited that someone actually reads my 'blog...

Posted: Wed - June 30, 2004 at 03:53 PM        

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