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| GeoCommunity Mailing List |
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| Subject: | RE: GISList: Compressed Terrain Data |
| Date: |
01/07/2003 11:20:56 AM |
| From: |
Dimitri Rotow |
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> So, assuming you have been churning away at this capacity (and it is
> pretty nice, $13.5M per year gross) for seven years, and have never sold
> to the same person twice, that would put the total number of users at
> 385000. Right in the meaty part of the "hundreds of thousands" figure
> you are so vociferously disputing.
>
> One would think having "only" hundreds of thousands of users was a bad
> thing, the way you talk :)
I guess it is to the likes of Microsoft :-) but very appealing for us. As
you've pointed out in your analysis one doesn't really have to sell very
many units before the money starts piling up in worthwhile amounts.
Look, my whole intent in all of this is trying to change the mindset of the
GIS industry, to help people wake up to what is going on around them. I
lived through the annihilation of minicomputers in the late 1980's and I
could see the real pain that the extinction of minicomputers caused for my
friends who were working in those companies. I also saw the
self-marginalization of a lot of really talented technical people as they
responded to the PC challenge by turning away, by cocooning themselves in
UNIX dreams, by finding refuge in ever-dwindling sales of very expensive
stuff to ever smaller numbers of minicomputer buyers.
I don't want that to happen to the people I know in GIS. There is a lot of
accumulated experience and ideas that I would like to see transferred to the
new wave of products and methods. Part of that is waking people up who are
in GIS today to think about the big scale of what's really going on. That's
necessary if the people who read this list are to migrate to a central role
in the GIS world of tomorrow, instead of it being defined by the people who
read the MapPoint and DeLorme lists. If you think I'm kidding ask yourself
how it is that today all those people who learned in UNIX to say "directory"
and write paths with a "/" character now get to live a life surrounded by
"folders" and writing paths with a "" character instead, because it was the
DOS and Windows masses who ended up setting the standards 94% of the world
uses. [For the record, I am one of the guys who still wishes I could write
paths with a "/".]. If you ignore the masses, better be ready to practise
saying the word "pushpin" a lot.
Anyway, part of that mindset in GIS that needs to be changed is the
expectation of small unit volumes sold at stratospheric prices. That's a
formula for marginalization and for keeping out of the mainstream. I was
writing in opposition to the "hundreds *or* thousands" phrase used in the
previous posting (not "hundreds of thousands"). That the phrase would be
used by an experienced GIS person shows how small the expectations are for
unit volumes in classic GIS, where it is still routine to have packages that
sell only a few hundred units for $50,000 or $100,000 each. We need to
change that to where all of us *expect* hundreds of thousands of units and
where the high-volume attitude I'm preaching is business as usual for
everyone, not a radical exception. That is the way to get reach into
mainstream markets. That will be good for GIS and very lucrative for
everyone reading this list regardless of how those higher volumes get
divided up into our personal revenue streams.
As they say, "A rising tide lifts all boats," so let's get out of this small
numbers thing and start pushing GIS out into mainstream numbers. The first
step in that process is that we GIS people reading this list lead the pack
in demanding affordable, high quality, professional GIS applications
delivered at the price/performance ratios people take for granted in
mainstream markets. It can be done, so take a leadership position in
demanding that it gets done when you talk GIS, when you plan GIS and most of
all, when you buy GIS.
Regards to all,
Dimitri
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