[Adium-devl] Focus/What are we doing?

[Chris Forsythe]

Folks,

    So for the first couple of years of what ended up being Adium X, we 
were going for "so many features you'll crap your pants". For those who 
are newer, yes, that was the motto.

    We stopped that a while ago, but we never really came back with what 
it is we're doing. I've been running under the belief that we're going 
for "the best IM experience, period", but I'm sure others feel other 
ways. This has come to light recently, however indirectly, with the 
naming convention discussion we had recently. Some folks wanted Adium 
VV/Adium AV or something similar, which would indicate some kind of 
emphasis on Voice/Video. Others have expressed interest in having 
voice/video, but not really focusing on it. My opinion of this is that 
what we're seeing is a different set of goals from each person, and 
without a clearly laid out plan/structure for what we are achieving, 
we're going to continue to have these types of discussions, which could 
degrade into any number of weird/odd or even bad situations.

    I've also been reading a lot of self help/marketting type books, 
some of you know why, but I can't go into it right now. These books 
however have drilled the point into my skull that this is something that 
we need to do, that we need to define what we're doing and where we are 
going with this. What makes us unique (our purple cow ( Seth Godin 
reference, better explanation: 
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/28 and 
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294 and his 
Purple Cow book are all excellent)) with Adium, what our goals are, and 
where we are going.

    I've been meaning to send this email for a while, I really think 
that once we define what we're doing and where we want to go, the random 
ambling we have will start to have a sharper focus and we'll get there 
faster. I also thinks that you're going to have to think about why you 
work on Adium in the first place, and why the others work on Adium.


Chris