McCafferty is a rockstar. And thanks for the recognition

It's always fun to see what people are saying about Vyatta out on the web. Most of the time, it's very complimentary, but it typically is discussion of the product or the overall concept of Vyatta itself. We just stumbled on this blog post the other day, and it made me smile.

Marketing is a tough job. The engineers will never admit to it because their job is hard, too, and everybody needs somebody to sneer at. (In marketing, we sneer at the sales guys, but that's another discussion. :-) ). The engineers are somewhat right, however, because most technology marketing sucks. At Vyatta, Tom McCafferty and I have tried for the outset to keep it real and connect with everybody in the community. At the end of the day, we have always believed that Vyatta is a collaboration between our employees and the community. On the communications side, nobody wants to read lots of vacuous marketing copy that drones on and on without saying anything.

When we created our Vyatta corporate newsletter, we had a choice. We could do what most companies do and simply talk at you, or we could try to give you something that would be entertaining and interesting at the same time. Most corporate newsletters are BOH-RING, and they get deleted from everybody's email box without even being opened. So, we went the latter route and tried to keep it real, and fun.

It was fun to see the blog post above recognize that. Tom is the force behind the newsletter every month. He's a rockstar. He took over the text-only monthly email that I had been writing previously and developed a nice HTML format. Each month, he writes the copy, collects all the links, and comes up with the ad concepts. And each month the result is good.

Because of Tom's great work, we are constantly getting compliments about the newsletter. People laugh and send us back responses to something we have included. At trade shows, people are constantly stopping by and saying, "I love the fake ads!" In fact, we get submissions of fake ads or concepts from our customers and community members all the time. And, most importantly, we have an unsubscribe rate to the newsletter that is practically non-existent.

If you haven't signed up for the Vyatta corporate newsletter, you can do so right here. Check it out. Odds are that you'll chuckle every month, you'll get informed about what's happening with Vyatta, and you won't want to unsubscribe. The choice is yours.