Craig Shoemaker.GeekCred += 7

Posted under Blog Posts, Software Design

Craig Shoemaker, fellow developer and father and producer of PolymorphicPodcast.com, announced that he is now working for Infragistics as a technical evangelist. 

Check out his job title: “New Media Evangelist“  Nice work, Craig!

Craig’s humble and easy-going style sucks you into his podcasts.  His sincerity is genuine, and I find him instantly likable.  Also, I get the feeling that he is horrible at lying, so that makes me trust him even more.  Now that he works for Infragistics, I trust him to differentiate between “the marketing” and “the message,” and I hope the folks at Infragistics really grok this whole new media thing.

You might know that I have some history in the podcasting world, and that I am a militant advocate of ‘new media.’  This is a brilliant move by Infragistics because smart companies hire domain experts, create conversations, and keep themselves in the middle of those conversations.  It’s interesting that these conversations do not need to be (and should never be) about overt product evangelism;  The conversations should be about customer evangelism!

If you are starting a new media relations division in your company, or your current efforts are yielding zero (or negative) results, here is the ancient Chinese secret:

Your involvement in conversations should have the very general missions of 1) “providing a service to the customer community“, and 2) “generating good will and establishing a positive reputation in the community.” 

Notice that I never say that “increasing sales” is one of the missions of new media.  “Increased sales,” and “increasing customer lifetime value” are natural long-tail byproducts of the effort.

Infragistics just got my attention.  I’m a software architect that has so far avoided/refused to use third-party UI tools in my systems.  They might not change my mind about third-party UI tools, but Infragistics will own a large percentage of my mind-share if I ever do change my mind.

Way to go, Craig!  Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. You can check out Craig’s podcast here: