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                         The First 100 Days


Many people, we included, thought that the Clipper community should
give CA a honeymoon period.  This would allow them to assimilate
Clipper into their organization before we started blaming them for
all the faults still left in Clipper.  The period of time mentioned
most often was 100 days, similar to that supposedly given to a new
president.  Well, the 100 days are up on September 17th, and here is
the NanForum Gang of Four's take on it.

In our original report, it was mentioned that Technical Marketing was
intact, and Brian Russell would be used as a company wide resource.
Since that time, nothing else has been heard about Brian, and most of
the Technical Marketing staff have moved on to other positions within
development or testing.  While this would normally be none of our
business, it has resulted in less communication with the development
community than there was before.

In their Statement of Direction (SOD), CA promised betas of Clipper
5.2 by TechniCon (which at the time of the writing was assumed to be
mid-October), and of Aspen by Comdex.  We don't have any information
to say these dates won't happen.  A very bright spot in all this is
that bug fixes for Clipper 5.01 (called 5.01a) have been released!
Not only that, but they are available as patch files on CI$.  So, on
this front, CA has accomplished more in 100 days than Nantucket did
in almost 100 weeks.  Granted, a lot of the work on the bugs was done
by Nantucket, but there was no indication that it was being done, and
certainly no commitment to issue patch files on CI$.

Some clarification is probably necessary here.  Clipper 5.01 is the
currently shipping version.  5.2 is an upgrade that will contain all
the bug fixes to 5.01, some enhancements, and all new documentation.
This is what CA has promised to start beta testing in October.  5.X
is the full object-oriented, DLL aware, DOS based version that
Nantucket has been promising as the next step.  CA has said they will
complete and release that version, but no time table was given.  The
product that Aspen becomes is the Windows(tm) based, object-oriented,
integrated development environment that Nantucket first showed back
in 1990.  More information on these distinctions is available in the
SOD.

At our meeting, there was a lot of talk about development
partnerships.  Nothing else has come out about that.  However, that
may be one of the things that CA wants to stress at the upcoming
TechniCon.  They also indicated that they were going to be active on
the dBase standards committee, but since nothing has been done on
that issue from anywhere, we shouldn't expect to have heard any more
about that.

CA said that each user's group would be contacted, and a CA
representative would attend meetings to answer any questions.  Of the
four of us, only Kansas City has not had such contact.  There have
been reports ranging from someone interested only in selling Clipper
developers other CA products to reps trying to give straight answers
to straight questions and learn more about Clipper and the people who
use it, with the latter greatly outnumbering the former.  There was
also a lot of talk about training materials and other support for
user groups.  As far as we know, there has been no further contact
about what is needed or how to produce it.  In fact, the user group
coordinator forum that CA sponsors has been eerily quiet until just
recently.  Most of the talk now centers on CA's plan to let each user
group coordinator get in free to Technicon.  While this is an
improvement over Nantucket's policy of letting them in for half
price, CA is not allowing an alternate to attend.  Needless to say,
this is upsetting to those groups whose coordinator cannot attend or
is already getting in free as a speaker.  Another case where CA made
a policy before checking why it was done the way it was before.

One of the things that impressed all of us at the original meeting
was Charles Wang's "bull-by-the-horns" attitude, especially about
authorizing new Clipper training centers.  Nothing has come out of CA
on this, and no new centers have been authorized, even though it was
reiterated at PC Expo that this was a high-priority issue.  However,
we have all received an interesting mailing from CA that they now
offer Clipper training.  It has become somewhat clearer now why
nothing has gone forward about authorizing new training centers (or
supporting the old ones, for that matter).  In fact, Clayton received
a phone call from a CA rep the _day_after_ he got that mailing,
asking him if he had any questions about Clipper, or if he needed any
training.  What was particularly strange was that the caller didn't
seem to realize the significance of the fact that he had called a
TechniCon speaker.  He did, however, promise to let some other
department know that Kansas City still hadn't been contacted for a
user group visit.

Now we come, unfortunately, to TechniCon.  There was a lot of heat
generated over both the temporal and spatial movement of the
conference, most of which was uncalled for, we feel.  After all, CA
had said early on that they would _try_ to leave the date/place
alone, but that they wanted to expand it.  That they didn't announce
earlier that it was definitely moving, even though they weren't sure
when or where to was a mistake, but 20/20 hindsight and all that.
Moving it to NY and election week may be an inconvenience for many of
us, but finding space for such a large event on short notice is not
an easy task.

However, that doesn't explain why the people that put in proposals
for speaking and were not accepted for one reason or another were
never contacted.  They either learned through the grapevine or by
seeing others talk about having been contacted and they weren't.  As
of this writing there still isn't any official mailing listing who is
talking and what the sessions are on.  Also, CA seems to be spreading
things very thin.  Many speakers are talking on two subjects, often
giving each session only once.  This does not bode well, considering
the fact that they number of time slots available for sessions was
_expanded_ by the conference move.  In addition, the kits describing
the requirements for the speakers did not arrive in the speakers
hands until mid-August, after some of the supposed deadlines for
turning information in.  Further, for those trying to oblige, a call
to the contact at CA who all these materials are coordinated through,
finds that person on vacation until the NEXT monday.  Also, there was
a non-negotiable deadline for conference papers less than 10 from the
date that the speakers received the request.  This deadline was
subsequently pushed back by one week.  Be that as it may, the papers
are requested to be 20 to 30 pages in length.

We firmly believe that the speakers involved have enough pride in
their work to produce the serious technical papers that have been the
hallmark of Nantucket's Developer Conferences of the past.  None the
less, the short deadline and lack of CA availability is a seriously
unfortunate indication of CA's lack of consideration in execution.
The lack of a mailing yet is especially disturbing, since they have
managed to put out a mailing on Clipper training (costing almost as
much as the TechniCon, but for fewer days).  It seems their resources
are set to a different priority than Nantucket's were.  Although it
has been stated that the brochures will be mailed out this week, we
have heard that song before.

While a lot of this may seem like minor points in the grand scheme of
things, it points to some disorganization in CA's first big chance to
present itself personally to the Clipper community.  There is already
talk that it will turn into a week long sales pitch for CA's other
products.  While this is somewhat unfair, given the type of sessions
that _will_ take place, the frequency of those sessions in the
expanded schedule is alarming.

This leads to CA's statement that they would set up a DevCon steering
committee. This committee has not only not been formed, but no
further discussions have taken place.  Some of our fears at meeting
one of CA's top sales people in the hall who was "very involved" with
arranging DevCon seem to be coming true.

CA also said that the old Nantucket booth at PC-Expo would be given
over to third party developers.  This seems to have worked very well.
In addition to some AccPac, dBFast, and Realizer people, dLesko,
SuccessWare, SofDesign, Black & White, Pinnacle, and other Clipper
vendors were there.  There seemed to be a lot of interest at the CA
booth, and most of Tech Marketing were there showing off Clipper.  CA
seems to be doing some work to get Clipper shown, but it's hardly the
jewel in their crown.  With 30+ micro products, Clipper has a place,
but it's not like it was at Nantucket, where it was the ONLY product.

As we stated in our original report, the thing we stressed the most
was getting out a bug fix for 5.01, and they seem to have done that.
Whether they can live up to any of their other promises, we'll just
have to wait and see.  However, as Jo French so aptly put it "The
free ride is over."

On a more personal note, we have all received various messages that
we went to Islandia and rolled over for CA.  To say that we resent
such statements would imply that we take them to heart, when we
don't.  None of us want anyone to think that we are boobs that can be
snookered by slick talk.  However, we went there with open minds, and
liked what we saw.  The nature of the beast was that we had to take
CA at their word, since we had no history.  In fact, most of the
messages we received regarded how CA was changing the way things had
historically been done.  We would like to point out that posting bug
fixes on CI$ had not historically been done either, and most other
things pale in comparison.  Even if TechniCon is a total bust, that
won't impact nearly as many people (despite the bad press it would
generate) as getting out 5.2, 5.X and an Aspen-based product in a
timely fashion.

Finally, we are somewhat disappointed that, as a group, we have had
no further contact with CA.  While it was never stated outright that
there would be more than one meeting, that was definitely our
impression when we left Islandia after the first meeting.  Perhaps
that was a case of the best laid plans, and perhaps it wouldn't have
made any difference.  However, _we_ would have felt better knowing
that someone in CA had heard NanForum's views. We still invite your
comments and complaints.  It was exactly these messages that prompted
us to make this follow-up report.  Also, it never hurts to have
another point of view, and each of you has information unique to your
situation that we may not have considered.

Communication with CA (other than a technical support presence on
NanForum) seems to have completely broken down.  CA seems reluctant
to take advice from anyone, even if they have already walked that
mile.  Unfortunately this means CA is probably going to make most of
the same mistakes that Nantucket already has.  Let's hope that they
learn fast, before the lessons get too repetitious.


The Nanforum Gang of 4

  Clayton Neff             72007,302
  Kent Kingery             70476,1403
  Samuel S ElyacharShuster 72657,1121
  Don Caton                70007,5454



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