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

[David Smith]

	I'm sure most people here have heard my rants about presence,  
messaging, system integration, etc...

	I'm not sure Adium is what I've been ranting about. We could go in  
the direction of being a system service + a shiny UI, but I really  
don't think we have the leverage to do that. Apple could push in that  
direction; something like ChatKit might have been able to.
	Given that, I think our goal is to continually raise the bar for IM  
applications. If someone builds a compelling people-as-system-service  
framework, we can move to it. The front end is our core competency  
(uh oh business buzzword) anyway. Currently we're getting some scope  
creep. By integrating VV and full group chat support we're redefining  
our idea of IM from the old ICQ concept to "common synchronous low  
latency forms of communication over the internet". I think we can do  
this, but any scope creep beyond that and we're going to be in trouble.

													David

On Oct 18, 2007, at 10:41 AM, Chris Forsythe wrote:

> 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
>
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