Since my last column, I've had the pleasure of speaking to four users groups about the state of the MultiValue community, both internally and against the broader market place. While the full content of the talk would require several columns to even begin to lay out, the general thrust was contrary to water cooler wisdom regarding the death of Pick, the broad Pick marketplace is growing at over thirty percent per year. It is also becoming more open and more competitive with other data base alternatives. Several interesting things happened as I laid out this message.

First, I noticed the end users were much more vocal than the VARs in defending Pick. This seemed strange to me because the VARs are the ones who make their living from Pick, not the end users. I've concluded the users generally agree with the premise that Pick is still very competitive. Many of the VARs seem to be on the fence.

Another part of my message was my perception there is a growing spirit of cooperation within the vendor community. I see the joint projects between Pick -Sequoia and Pick - GA as very positive. Vendor investment in third party add-ons such as the UniVision Wintegrate and System Builder deals is also great, especially when these products are still available to others (Pick's deal for Wintegrate). Many positives flow from this kind of openness. The Vendors as a group also seem more willing than ever before to treat each other in a friendly fashion and to look outside our little enclave to find new customers and competitors to play the role of villains. My trip to Australia to talk to the Melbourne and Sidney users groups was funded by Sequoia Systems, but they asked me to speak about the general Pick market directions, not their specific piece of it!

Now, one of the huge problems in the recognition of Pick (in the broadest sense) as a major player in the database arena is the markets inability to see us as a group rather than individual companies. So I started thinking how we might take advantage of this developing spirit of cooperation to send the message that the Pick market is much, much bigger than any of its components.
One way is of course for the vendors to work together to tell that message. Some of you may remember the last time we tried to foster a spirit of cooperation with the group that became known as the Spectrum Manufacturers Association. It worked fairly well from the technical end to create a least common denominator technical standard, and was well on its way to developing some more positive and meaningful new material when the organization came apart at the seams. Why did the SMA stop working? Well there are probably many reasons, but my personal perception is it stopped functioning when the vendors were asked to begin to put serious money behind marketing a common message. Not enough vendors were willing to kick 50 or 100 grand into a common pool to promote the market (instead of the specific vendor's product) to carry the plan.

So here we are about a decade latter with a budding spirit of cooperation developing again. Where will we go today? I think the economic issues have changed little – vendors are quite willing to spend some engineering energy and perhaps some token money to promote unity but please don't anyone ask for significant cash commitment or the spirit will fracture again. While this is my personal view, I'd love to be proven wrong on this guys!

If I'm right, is there anything the rest of us can do about it? I think there is! AS I see it, the problem is two-fold. MONEY and UNITY. We need the perception of UNITY in the market to allow our various vendor contributions to be seen as part of a bigger whole – in effect to get the respect we deserve from the trade press and the marketplace. The conventional wisdom says it takes serious MONEY to advertise and promote this name recognition, therefore its the vendors problem. I say we can't rely on the vendors to do this for us! When money is involved, they get all proprietary on us, so I'm left trying to figure out how the rest of the VARs and end-users can help promote the market without spending serious money.

This is when, in the middle of a users group discussing this, I said "Eureka"! The answer is User Driven Marketing. What if there were a vehicle to create a series of Pick marketplace success stories and present them with a unified image to the outside of Pick trade press? It's important that this be to the Outside of Pick press. It seems the world computer trade press is always desperate for success stories. After all, you almost never see failure stories, and we know there are more successes inside the Pick market than anywhere else. Over time, many of these stories would undoubtedly get free space in these magazines as news stories. This couldn't help but raise the awareness of the Pick data model (in all its glorious flavors) as a viable and competitive database solution.

The next obvious question was, if we can't count on the vendors, what could that vehicle be??? I was about to ask the users group, when I said "Eureka" again! Why not ask the Users Groups? They are already representing multiple vendors users and are concerned about how to help members educate their upper management in the value of the Pick model! If it didn't take any serious money, would a users group be willing to research and write one or two professional, unified success stories a year? With nearly fifty users groups in the Pick world, we could flood the press with our successes.

Now the only remaining question is, are you the users (and therefore the users groups) interested in this idea? Many of you have complained to me about the historically poor marketing of Pick – here's your chance to have a hand in changing the situation. A low energy, low cost way to dramatically put the Pick data model on the global map. One professional success story a year per user group (or VAR!) is all I ask. If this idea has appeal, please write me care of News and Review and I'll attempt to help coordinate a unified design and distribution channel. If on the other hand you're not interested in this idea, please write and offer a better suggestion!!!