This article possibly contains original research .(May 2012) |
A technology evangelist is a person who builds a critical mass of support for a given technology, and then establishes it as a technical standard in a market that is subject to network effects. [1] The word evangelism is borrowed from the context of religious evangelism due to the similarity of sharing information about a particular concept with the intention of having others adopt that concept. This is typically accomplished by showcasing the potential uses and benefits of a technology to help others understand how they can use it for themselves.
Platform evangelism is one target of technology evangelism, in which the vendor of a two-sided platform attempts to accelerate the production of complementary goods by independent developers [2] (e.g., during its early years, Facebook worked on creating an ecosystem of 3rd party developers, encouraging them to create games or develop mobile apps that could enhance users' experiences with Facebook).
Professional technology evangelists are often employed by firms seeking to establish their technologies as de facto standards. Their work could also entail the training of personnel, including top managers so that they acquire skills and competencies necessary to adopt new technology or new technological initiative. [3] There are even instances when technology evangelism becomes an aspect of a managerial position. [4]
Open-source evangelists, on the other hand, operate independently. Evangelists also participate in defining open standards. Non-professional technology evangelists may act out of altruism or self-interest (e.g., to gain the benefits of early adoption or network effect).
In Christianity, the word evangelist comes from the Koine Greek word εὐαγγέλιον (transliterated as euangelion) via Latinised evangelium as used in the canonical titles of the Four Gospels, authored by (or attributed to) Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (also known as the Four Evangelists). The concept that sharing particular established standards to help others to adopt them is similar in the technology-related field.
The term "software evangelist" was coined by Mike Murray of Apple Computer's Macintosh computer division [5] in the early 1980s. [6] It was part of Apple's drive to compete with IBM and it specifically described the initiative to win over third-party developers rhetorically to persuade them to develop software and applications for the Macintosh platform. [7] In Guy Kawasaki's own words, it meant "using fervor and zeal (but never money) to convince software developers to create products for a computer with no installed base, 128K of RAM, no hard disk, no documentation, and no technical support, made by a flaky company that IBM was about to snuff out." [8] The first so-identified technology evangelist was Mike Boich — who promoted the Macintosh computer. [9] The job is often closely related to both sales and training but requires specific technology marketing skills. For example, convincing a potential buyer or user to change from older methods to new ones. There is also the case of adopting new products such as green IT. The marketing aspect involved in technology evangelism was strongly influenced by Geoffrey Moore and his books concerning the technology adoption lifecycle. One of his positions maintain that the role of the evangelist becomes critical when addressing what he identified as the "chasm" that exists between early and mainstream adoption. [10]
Technology evangelism is sometimes associated with an internal employee assigned to encourage new practices within an organization. Methods of evangelism available include a modified STREET process (Scope, Track, Rank, Evaluate, Evangelize, Transfer) and the process that takes advantage of the hype cycle. [10] Evangelism can also assume the form of a learning process and employ tools such as the Learning Management Systems (LMS). [11]
Technology evangelists usually take a leadership role in organizations. They are the respective leader ensuring the success of others. Their action needs to be taken in a legitimate manner. [1]
The purpose of objective that technology evangelists attached to usually generate positive effects to help people feel better or impressed. To promote the technology product or idea, technology evangelists usually requires a commitment to the management of the corporation. Different fields of skills can be used by technology evangelists, includes but not limited to technology, marketing, psychology. A specialized understanding of technology is required, being a generalist will reduce evangelist's credibility. [12]
From study by Frederic Lucas-Conwell, [1] the principal characteristics of the technology evangelist role include:
Notable technology evangelists [12] in the commercial arena include Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.), Vint Cerf (Internet), Don Box, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Crawford, [13] Alex St. John, Robert Scoble, Myriam Joire (Pebble), Christian Allen (Epic Games), Mudasser Zaheer (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), and Dan Martin (MasterCard).
Court records [14] [15] indicate that James Plamondon was a leading theorist, strategist, and practitioner of technology evangelism at Microsoft during its establishment of Microsoft Windows as the de facto standard PC operating system.
Kawasaki, on the other hand, was credited for the remarkable growth of the software developed for the Macintosh, jumping from a few dozen products to more than 600 in less than a year of spreading the so-called Macintosh gospel. [7] He claims, "Evangelism isn't a job title, it's a way of life."
Taligent Inc. was an American software company. Based on the Pink object-oriented operating system conceived by Apple in 1988, Taligent Inc. was incorporated as an Apple/IBM partnership in 1992, and was dissolved into IBM in 1998.
ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. Microsoft introduced ActiveX in 1996. In principle, ActiveX is not dependent on Microsoft Windows operating systems, but in practice, most ActiveX controls only run on Windows. Most also require the client to be running on an x86-based computer because ActiveX controls contain compiled code.
In business, diffusion is the process by which a new idea or new product is accepted by the market. The rate of diffusion is the speed with which the new idea spreads from one consumer to the next. Adoption is the reciprocal process as viewed from a consumer perspective rather than distributor; it is similar to diffusion except that it deals with the psychological processes an individual goes through, rather than an aggregate market process.
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers or simply Crossing the Chasm, is a marketing book by Geoffrey A. Moore that examines the market dynamics faced by innovative new products, with a particular focus on the "chasm" or adoption gap that lies between early and mainstream markets.
Guy Takeo Kawasaki is an American marketing specialist, author, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He popularized the word evangelist in marketing the Macintosh as an "Apple evangelist" and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism/platform evangelism in general.
CodeWarrior is an integrated development environment (IDE) published by NXP Semiconductors for editing, compiling, and debugging software for several microcontrollers and microprocessors and digital signal controllers used in embedded systems.
An enterprise service bus (ESB) implements a communication system between mutually interacting software applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It represents a software architecture for distributed computing, and is a special variant of the more general client-server model, wherein any application may behave as server or client. ESB promotes agility and flexibility with regard to high-level protocol communication between applications. Its primary use is in enterprise application integration (EAI) of heterogeneous and complex service landscapes.
4D is a relational database management system and integrated development environment developed by Laurent Ribardière. 4D was created in 1984 and had a slightly delayed public release for Macintosh in 1987 with its own programming language.
The Apple community is a group of people interested in Apple Inc. and its products, who report information in various media. Generally this has evolved into a proliferation of websites, but latterly has also expanded into podcasts, either speculating on rumors about future product releases, simply report Apple-related news stories, or have discussions about Apple's products and how to use them.
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) is a discontinued source control program oriented towards small software development projects. Like most source control systems, SourceSafe creates a virtual library of computer files. While most commonly used for source code, SourceSafe can handle any type of file in its database, but older versions were shown to be unstable when used to store large amounts of non-textual data, such as images and compiled executables.
The technology adoption lifecycle is a sociological model that describes the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation, according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups. The process of adoption over time is typically illustrated as a classical normal distribution or "bell curve". The model indicates that the first group of people to use a new product is called "innovators", followed by "early adopters". Next come the early majority and late majority, and the last group to eventually adopt a product are called "Laggards" or "phobics." For example, a phobic may only use a cloud service when it is the only remaining method of performing a required task, but the phobic may not have an in-depth technical knowledge of how to use the service.
Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word-of-mouth marketing in which companies develop customers who believe so strongly in a particular product or service that they freely try to convince others to buy and use it. The customers become voluntary advocates, actively spreading the word on behalf of the company.
Aldon is a business unit of Rocket Software. It develops, manufactures, licenses and supports software change management products for the enterprise application lifecycle management (ALM) and software change management (SCM) markets.
The Macintosh Way was the first book written by former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki. Subtitled "the art of guerrilla management", the book focused on technology marketing and management and includes many anecdotes culled from Kawasaki's experience during the early development of the Macintosh.
The Pippin is a defunct open multimedia technology platform, designed by Apple Computer. According to Apple, Pippin was directed at the home market as "an integral part of the consumer audiovisual, stereo, and television environment".
Platform evangelism is the application of technology evangelism to a multi-sided platform. It seeks to accelerate the growth of a platform's commercial ecosystem of complementary goods, created by independent developers, as a means to the end of maximizing the platform's market share. This initiative focuses on providing developers the resources to innovate, participate, and provide feedback to grow the platform.
OpenShift is a family of containerization software products developed by Red Hat. Its flagship product is the OpenShift Container Platform — a hybrid cloud platform as a service built around Linux containers orchestrated and managed by Kubernetes on a foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The family's other products provide this platform through different environments: OKD serves as the community-driven upstream, Several deployment methods are available including self-managed, cloud native under ROSA, ARO and RHOIC on AWS, Azure, and IBM Cloud respectively, OpenShift Online as software as a service, and OpenShift Dedicated as a managed service.
Mike Boich was a major figure at Apple Computer who was in charge of demonstrating the first Macintosh to software developers and potential customers. He is notable as a technology evangelist who persuaded developers to write computer software. He was instrumental in hiring Apple entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki. His name is listed — as credited — inside the original Macintosh 128k.
Developer relations, abbreviated as DevRel, is an umbrella term covering the strategies and tactics for building and nurturing a community of mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and developers as the primary users, and often influencers on purchases, of a product.
Ellen Petry Leanse is an American author, businesswoman, educator, entrepreneur, and online community pioneer. Leanse has spent 35 years working with leaders at Apple, Google, Facebook, as an entrepreneur, and with dozens of startups. She's a writer on topics of workplace dynamics and a Stanford instructor. Her work has spanned entrepreneurship, corporate leadership, investing, and strategy consulting.