Hello and my thoughts

Good morning,

I just wanted to wave a "hello" to you and try to express
my thoughts about PHP evangelism. If anyone doesn't know me
and/or my PHP activities, please ask. My main task in the last
months/year has been pushing PHP in the E-Business in Germany (so
far regarding the company names of my customers it has been
successful).

Some kind of unsorted, brainstormed thoughts about PHP
evangelism. Mainly, as I'm German, many thoughts are
in relation to Germany, the German market and the way
how things sell in Germany:

- The art of selling products in USA is different than in
  Germany. Same for USA->Israel and Israel->Germany (especially
  thinking of Zend who've had (or who have) difficulties selling
  their products in Germany).
  
  In most companies, suits are former hackers/coders. So the
  boy/girl who decides about buying products was formerly a
  PHP coder. That means: many suits are community-driven and
  have an affinity to technical things.
  
- Building an evangelism site on .php.net is a very good idea.
  But be careful: things in Germany work in another way than
  in USA, Israel and the rest of the world and vice versa. USA
  (where Perl seems to dominate over PHP?) have other needs than
  Germany (where it seems that Germany is one of the biggest PHP
  communities in the world). It's like reading articles at clickz.com
  and trying to adopt the tips that were given there for Germany.
  
- case studies are a good thing. But we from ThinkPHP had another
  idea about so called "PHP Motivation Studies" (which we want to
  publish in the near future on our web site): companies don't have
  to make a case study about a project they've made in PHP. Instead
  we're asking the company, *why* they (generally) use PHP and what
  decisions they've made i.e. by switching from ASP/ColdFusion/Perl
  to PHP and if they changed to PHP, what amount of money (if they
  can say that) they've saved with that.
  
  I think case studies are mainly an issue for the community. Motivation
  studies are IMHO better suited for the suits and IT decisioners.

So far ... Björn.
  
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