Hello Tim,

I have been pondering an idea, and wondered if O'Reilly would be interested:

One of the most frustrating parts of working in the programming industry, is lack of knowledge and lack of informed decision making of the decision makers. We all have been forced to use a platform or language that was ill-suited for the task at hand, soley because the manager didn't know enough to choose the right solution ( and if that solution wasn't praised in their favorite biased Journal, then they haven't heard of it. )

This is where I think O'Reilly would be best to help. I also believe O'Reilly could benefit from this assistance. My proposal is this:

A Platform/Programming Language Techology Resource Website for Managers. ( A portal for new O'Reilly customers.) ( managers.oreilly.com ??? )

O'Reilly dedicate a portion of their website to short managerial overviews about each technology which it has books for ( and if you could include all the major technologies, that would be ideal .) These overviews should contain BOTH the advantages and disadvantages of using the selected technology, and some examples of their most common usage. Included would be a section on similiar technologies ( For Example: M$ ASP versus JAVA Servlets.) It would also be beneficial to most managers to know what Big companies have invested in a particular platform ( For Example: How many managers know that IBM is currently porting a JAVA JVM for LINUX? ....... This enforces both JAVA and LINUX ) Also, for this to succeed, each techology would need to be updated frequently, as our market changes.

What we would have in essence, is a one-stop shop for managers to review the best solutions for their problems. It would be important to have absolutely no bias from the authors, so that each manager could trust the material he or she is relying on.

This would assist our industry in choosing the right platform/techology for the task, and not just the safe one (Micro$oft --- ack.. (I have bias)). I believe O'Reilly could benefit by having advertising links to each product, on these overview pages. Once a manager had made the right decision, it would be time to BUY the resources needed to educate his or her team. Hopefully, those resources would be a case of O'Reilly books on the selected subject.

The only way this would succeed is for the managers/decision makers to know this source exists. One way would be advertising this site in Journals/Magazines which many IT managers read. This would point the managers to the resource area of your website, and with the click of a link, they can buy your books.

I think O'Reilly would be one of the few organizations with the needed expertise, and you are definately respected by much of the community. Much of this material could be extracted from the first chapter of many of your books. That's pretty much the idea.

I originally thought maybe O'Reilly could print mini-overview books for the managers. I thought this was probably not a good idea, mostly because the technology changes too fast for those little books to be trusted. Also, managers have far too little time ( in their busy, busy roles ) to actually make a trip down to the bookstore.

Well, in the perfect world of unlimited resources, I'm sure you would do this in a heartbeat. The question is, do you think O'Reilly would get enough NEW customers or sales, to justify the expense.

Anyway, I would be excited to learn if this was at all interesting to you. So please let me know what you think. Thanks for all of the Great Books! ( in a perfect world, with unlimited resources, I would own your entire collection... :-) )

Jason Hoffman, Programmer/Developer

Jason,

This is a great idea, Jason, and one we've considered, especially as programmers who've read O'Reilly books for years and so have some brand loyalty move up and become managers. That being said, we've found so far that the information that sells the best is information that people feel they need--not information that *other people* feel they need. When you're struggling with sendmail configuration, or writing a Perl program, you know you need help. When your engineers wish you knew more about the technologies you are specifying, you may not even know you have a problem. You may be as clueless as Dilbert's boss.

Most managers aren't accustomed to seeking out technical information this way. There have been a number of startups that have targetted this market, and so far, most of them have failed.

That being said, there are some interesting ways to sell information to the managerial market, and we're certainly meditating on them. Like a lot of business ideas, they may sit on a back burner for us until all the ingredients come together. It may take some time, however, before we're ready to move on this one--we still have our hands pretty full providing hard core technical information.

Still, thanks for the suggestion. If there are any managers out there who do know you need this kind of information, please drop me a line. If I hear from enough of you, I might just turn up the heat on that burner.

--Tim

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