Flip Page technology will save us!

Ok, Mr CVB expert at the council meeting. Here's my input:

1. You don't email a digital brochure to 100k meeting planners. You send them the link and they pull it off the website as needed. To do otherwise is annoying and wasteful of our bandwidth.

2. Next time you think you want to make something "jazzy" go visit Google. Go ahead, do it now. I'll wait. There is a reason that Google is the most visited, most useful page on the internet. Look at all that blingy jazzy crap! Wait, there is none. It's simple and straightforward. Blingy presentation for the sake of bling is the mark of a man who is in over his head / unsure of his content. Look! Shiny objects! Must collect that foil and blue hairpin! Caw! Caw!

3. I wanted to barf when you said that the ludicrous flip page technology was "huge for us", "will save us a lot of money", and will give people instant access". Someone has swallowed a load of corporate duckspeak on that one. You already have a cheap, effective, cross-platform and free technology called HTML. Use the 2.0 dynamic stuff if you must, but this page turning crap is a stunt. And it's a stunt that costs money, distracts from content, and is very likely to annoy your development staff. Trying to make the web look like print is a classic rookie mistake, the mark of a man who is in over his head / unsure of his content. See a pattern here?

There is an IT term for BS crap like this: AMS (Airline Magazine Syndrome). An exec is on a plane ride and reads some softsoap article about an expensive, useless technology. Returns to the office and starts raving about it. Rams it down the throats of customers and developers alike and will not listen to reason. Two years later the project is dropped as an utter failure and the exec starts his new round of misguided windmill tilting.

Oh, don't even get me started on the viewer plugin that users will likely be required to see this abomination, or which OSes will be supported.

[spit]

$20 gimme shirts

A "gimme cap" is a cap with advertising that is given away to a customer. I will borrow that term and refer to a tshirt with advertising as a gimme shirt.

Here's my rant: if you're going to sell a gimme shirt, do it at cost. The customer is doing you a favor by directly advertising your business. They will also engage in discussions with folks that see the shirt and are either like-minded or curious. Heck, you should probably be giving the shirts to your loyal customers.

Under no circumstances should you sell an uninspired, garden-variety gimme shirt for $20. Seriously. This is an admission that You Just Don't Get It.