I know that I make some tech companies nervous. They see me as being unpredictable, with no guarantees regarding what I will say, in a world where the message should be tightly controlled. I feel it in the silence from many of the folks that are paying attention to me at large companies, and I’ve heard it specifically from some of my friends who aren’t concerned with telling me personally. These concerns keep them from working with me on storytelling projects, and prevent them from telling me stories about what is happening internally behind their firewall. It often doesn’t stop employees from telling me things off the record, but it does hinder official relationships, and on the record stories from being shared.
I just want folks to know that I’m not in the scoop, or gotcha business. I only check-in on my page views monthly to help articulate where things are with my sponsors. I’m more than happy to keep conversations off the record, anonymize sources and topics. Even the folks in the space who have pissed me off do not get directly called out by me. Well, most of them. I’ve gone after Oracle a couple of times, but they are the worst of the worst. There are other startups and bigcos who I do not like, and you don’t ever hear me talking trash about them on my blog. Most of my rants are anonymized, generalized, and I take extra care to ensure no enterprise egos, careers, or brands are hurt in the making of API Evangelist.
If you study my work, you’ll see that I talk regularly with federal government agencies, and large enterprise organizations weekly, and I never disclose things I shouldn’t be. If you find me unpredictable, I’m guessing you really haven’t been tuning into what I’ve been doing for very long, or your insecurities run deeper than anything to do with me. I’m not in the business of making folks look bad. Most of the companies who are looking bad in the API space do not need my help, they excel at doing it on their own. I’m usually just chiming in to help amplify, and use as a case study for what API providers should consider NOT DOING in their own API operations. Sure, I may call you out for your dumb patents, and the harmful acquisitions you make, but anything I rant about is going to already be public material–I NEVER do this with private conversations.
So, if you are experiencing reservations about sharing stories with me, or possibly sponsoring some storytelling on API Evangelist because you are worried about what will happen, stop fretting. If you are upfront with me, clear about what is on the record, and what is off, and honest about what you are looking to get out of the relationship, things will be fine. Even if they end up being rocky, I’m not the kind of person to call you out on the blog. I may complain, rant, and vent, but you can look through seven years of the blog and you won’t find me doing that about anyone I’ve specifically worked with on storytelling projects. I don’t always agree with why corporations, institutions, and government agencies are so controlling of the message around their API operations, but I will be respectful of any line you draw for me.
