There was a bit of a bump in the road this past week for preDevCamp. The story goes something like this. The preDevCamp guys (@whurley, @giovanni, and @dancrumb) have been asking Palm if they would like to directly support them. So earlier this week, when Palm invited them to a meeting, the trio were more than eager to hear what Palm had to say.
The trio were given the usual non-disclosure agreements (NDA), so that they wouldn't talk about any super secret Palm secrets they might learn of. This is where the trouble started. See, NDAs are like fight club, you don't talk about them. Unfortunately, that's not quite what happened, the team tweeted:
somethin's a brewin' - call scheduled 4 wed w/ @palm_inc & @préDevCamp (@whurley, @dancrumb & @giovanni) shhhh....NDA's involved & all. :-)12:21 PM May 14th from web
Innocent mistake as it was, it seemed to be enough for Palm to claim breaking the NDA and subsequently canceling the meeting. This is where the confusion started, as it seemed to some that Palm was backing out of any support of preDevCamp. Whurley, Giovanni, and Dan each wrote their own blog posts on the issue, criticizing Palm's developer relations. To that extent, both Whurley and Giovanni backed out of working on preDevCamp and setup an "unregister" button on the preDevCamp website for those who wish to back out as well. In other words, Palm slipped up a bit and may have seriously hurt their relations with some of their most passionate potential developers.
We at PreCentral.net, wanted to hear both sides of the story, so we contacted Palm who told us the following:
Folks, we’re 100% supportive of preDevCamp and anybody who is interested in developing for webOS.
We just aren’t ready to pull the trigger on everything publicly yet. So it’s tricky for us to navigate around confidentiality and find a way to engage that works for everybody.
But we’re committed to continuing the conversation. Taking the NDA out of the equation was intended to open the door, not close it.
Since then, Palm did come out publicly at their Palm Developer Network Blog, writing:
- Palm supports preDevCamp 100%
- We overreacted to the whole disclosure issue. We’ve been in stealth and super secret mode for so long now, we needed a real world conversation to see how we needed to work things so everybody can operate in their own environment.
- As messy as it feels right now, the passion of the community is incredibly positive
Furthermore, Lisa Brewster, the developer heading the San Diego preDevCamp, "had a very productive phone call with Pam, @palm's VP of Dev Mkting" and Giovanni has written a more positive follow-up blog post. Thankfully, it looks as if everything is getting back on track.
If you think about it, it does make a bit of sense for a loose-knit group like preDevCamp to not operate under NDA -- developer communities work best when everybody is allowed to share everything they know in an open and transparent way (as anybody who remembers the @#@%% NDA for the iPhone's SDK can attest). Getting inside information is great, obviously, but it's not as great as a vibrant developer community with real support from the company who makes the OS they're developing for. That's the real goal here and by all appearances it's happening.
We all at PreCentral.net have been conflicted about the whole preDevCamp/Palm brouhaha and it's disappointing that these miscues happened, but we're glad to see relations normalized.
Oh, and for those wondering, preDevCamp has been officially scheduled for June 13th. If you haven't already, you can still sign-up at predevcamp.org. Let's just hope the SDK is out by then or it might be a little anticlimactic, eh?
Update: Giovanni responds below in the comments. Thanks Gio.
Comments
fist!!! :p
Fail...
Lollercoaster!
Jason,
For clarification, since the NDA is the main thing being discussed on most posts on the web. Your assumption that we had an NDA that precluded talking about the meeting is incorrect. Further, the Palm folks had specifically asked us to inform the community that they *were* talking with us due to a previous gaff involving their representatives. This wasn't the first snafu the community and developer relations teams at Palm had encountered in the short history of preDevCamp.
Seems humorous that everyone assumes that we (the preDevCamp organizers) are a bunch of over-eager, naive knuckleheads who have never dealt with a large enterprise before nor seen an NDA. I don't expect anyone to look at our resumes, but there was a reason why we posted three separate blog posts as individuals and one as a group regarding this matter. Basic skimming of the posts would inform any interested party of the basic facts. Seriously...does everyone think we're nothing more than a few backwoods yahoos from Texas who just lucked into organizing a world-wide event which spans almost 100 cities and 1,000 co-organizers and volunteers? Anyhoo, let's get to a summary of the relevant deets...
We were very specific and direct with Aaron Hyde at Palm before we signed the NDA that it only covered the release date of the phone. Nothing else. We had a couple phone calls on this specific point to make sure we all agreed and understood. The fact that the meeting was taking place or that we had an NDA was absolutely not part of the agreement. We're not new to this game. We understand what happens (you saw it over this weekend) when parties sign documents like this and don't discuss and agree upon what specifically the document covers. I don’t blame Aaron here. I have no idea what transpired internally at Palm to make them cancel the meeting and hit the reset button with us. I appeared to me that someone else got involved and freaked out when the post went out on twitter (see reasons for that, also driven by Palm, below) regarding the meeting. But again, I’m just guessing here.
Second point, Paul Cousineau and Chuq Von Rospach at Palm had asked us on a previous call to make sure the community knew they were talking to us. They were held under some tight restrictions about what they could say to the public, for obvious reasons, and had asked us to be sure the developer community knew they were engaged.
It appears that the two competing needs (communication to the community that Palm was talking to the independent developers via preDevCamp and secrecy) driven by separate camps clashed.
This, coupled with our frustrations based upon some other issues in our relationship with Palm led to the decisions by whurley and myself to exit the scene.
The worldwide movement we created under the preDevCamp banner is, by design, intact and all local groups, as far as I can tell, are still planning their individual events.
Last point, Palm gets it now...
Pam Deziel, VP of Developer Marketing, responded on the Palm Developer Network blog this morning about the situation:
"We overreacted to the whole disclosure issue. We’ve been in stealth and super secret mode for so long now, we needed a real world conversation to see how we needed to work things so everybody can operate in their own environment."
"I’m optimistic that we can find a good solution. And we’re going to keep talking. We’d love to get your two cents, concerns, and suggestions — feel free to join the conversation here, and be assured that even when we sometimes have to keep quiet, we’re always listening to your ideas."
Read the whole post here: http://pdnblog.palm.com/2009/05/a-predevcamp-update/
Whurley and I are here to serve the community, not the corporation. When it became obvious that we needed to make a bold move to get Palm's attention on behalf of preDevCamp, we moved. Whether you agree with our tactics or not, Palm is seriously paying attention to you now. Dan Rumney will insure that the movement has one single point of leadership to the extent that a large, worldwide movement needs it.
The end result has been a more active, genuine, serious relationship between Palm and its independent developer community. Everyone wins. This is what we, as leaders of the preDevCamp movement, hoped to create in the beginning. It looks like we're here now.
Anyone want to talk to me about it personally, feel free to catch me on twitter http://twitter.com/giovanni, email at predevcamp(@)gallucci(dot)net or leave a comment on my original post http://blog.gallucci.net/2009/05/palm-doesnt-get-it.html
I'm thinking it's water under the bridge now. Nothing to see here. Go forth and develop. I'm going camping: http://dallas.wordcamp.org
-giovanni
http://twitter.com/giovanni
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