More and more I get respect for the marketing guys and architects of product companies that pay the Analyst firms to get interviewed by the analysts. Why, start reading.

Last week I experienced the stress of the night before and today I felt the disappointment of the week after.

What happened? I was asked for a duo interview and I have to admit I felt proud but also a bit insecure because I have learned the hard way that “the more you know, the more you know you don’t know that much“.
I blocked my agenda, booked a nice room, went to the hairdresser, got my best suit cleaned (there would also be a photographer) and then I received the mail with the questions they would like to discuss.

PANIC, the questions did not even touch my knowledge expertise but where about vague items as Governance and how to implement it to create more value out of architecture, IT Architectures and their influence on IT Rationalization and a lot more of it.
It took me a while to get my act together and started my quest for answers because I would of course never show that I had no clue what they meant. So the mighty Google and Wikipedia should help me to survive this interview. After some browsing and reading reality kicked in and I came to my senses. What I’m doing I working my ass off to satisfy someone I never met, who wants to talk with me because apparently he heard something good of me and I study things I do not want to talk about anyway. I’m loosing my authenticy and freedom here which are actually my strengths that brought me where I am now.

CALMNESS came over me and I closed down the browser sessions, got rid of my notes and went to bed and slept like a baby. That morning I drove whistling to the office, did some mail and then the guests arrived. The architect with whom I should have this conversation was nice but not as brilliant as I thought the night before. The interviewer had no clue what he was asking but the conversation went really well and I enjoyed it a lot. We discussed topics like SOA, replacement of Legacy, Software as investment, the comparison of BPM to a route planner, etc.
Today, the article came in for review. I read it and my first reaction was one of disappointment. Not only where the sentences assigned to the wrong person (it hurts if you see you genius statements put in the mouth of someone else 🙂 but above all there where some statements made and put in my mouth that I would fire myself if this became public. I could better write it myself but why? He’s getting paid for it, not me. But it’s my reputation on stake but also my recognition what to do? So, we will have another interview tomorrow and I pray instead of Google that he will now understand the message.

More and more I also declare the same product companies that pay the Analyst firms INSANE for paying and investing a lot of time to educate the analyst and invest a lot of time in getting the right recognition and tune the perception of the reader that their products belong to the top right quadrant.

So what did I learned last week? If you want to get recognition, start writing your own articles and don’t step into the trap of trying to know everything because it’s impossible to know everything but what you know is most of the times enough for others otherwise they would not read it.

If you want to spend a lot of time and money and get disappointed many times do what I have done and made an appointment with analyst or reporters.

The night before and the week after (a real story about an interview)

2 thoughts on “The night before and the week after (a real story about an interview)

  • February 6, 2008 at 11:56 am
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    Thanks,
    it inspires me to go on with my quest 🙂

  • February 5, 2008 at 10:34 pm
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    I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.

    Allen Taylor

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