Aparjita, You are suffering from an effect which hurts the whole 4D world, IMHO.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't see any activities from 4D in the last, say, 2 years to gain some new customers. The 4D website is nice, works (mostly), but beside this, it is a well hidden secret. The last marketing activity I know about was "...we are doing adwords marketing on Google..." on one of the last US summits. Wow. At least some hope. Even from developer friends in other worlds (XOJO/Real Studio, FileMaker, PHP/MySQL ...) I get a "... this really still exists?". Customers searching for solution hardly find the 4D website. On regular base (1x month) I offer a free workshop for 4D (new users, interested ones...). The standard answers/questions I get is: "Great tool! Why there are no books? Why isn't it mentioned anywhere?". On the developer conferences younger programmers are hard to find, let's define "younger" as <40. There is no help from 4D for upcoming programmers, there is no educational program/software (anymore). Don't get me wrong - I still love my 4D and make my money and don't want to switch to anything else (at least, not really). In the moment I feel more like the dinosaurs we all replaced 20/25 years ago (Double Helix, Clipper, dbase...) and I'm ready to join the COBOL-programers club: maintain the old software no one else seems to know. I could go on with: 4D throws away money with no longer providing clients for old versions, but, that's a different topic. There is some relief in this market since I can now virtualize down to 4D 6.8 with VMware on a Mac. How to help Active4D (and you)? Waiting for 4D and some marketing rocket is not an option. I see only the marketing guys sitting on a rocket. :) So, how to make some noise? For a beginning, just talking more about (4D, Active4D), showing more little demos, easy starters (forget about FuseBox or I mention your outstanding video). Most inhouse programmers (and potential customers) need easy to handle solutions and they are not shy to use copy & paste. The middle management at 4D is about 15 years from retiring. That's a good estimate for a products life span, or? Am 10.01.2014 um 22:57 schrieb Aparajita Fishman <aparaj...@aparajitaworld.com>: > Hi all, > > In the last year Active4D sales (and to a lesser extent ObjectTools sales) > have more or less come to a halt. I'd like to know your thoughts on why this > might be so and I'm open to suggestions if you feel there is any way to > change it. > > Many thanks, > > - Aparajita > Greetings, [4D-Consulting.com]eK, Wiesbaden (Germany) Peter Schumacher -------------------------------------------------------- Web: http://4D-Consulting.com Web: http://4DToday.eu FreeCall: 0800 434 636 7 (Germany only) USA: +1 818 824 6078 International: +49 611 9406 850 iChat/Skype: PeterInWiesbaden 4D-Consulting.com eK - Scharnhorststr. 36 - 65195 Wiesbaden HR Wiesbaden: HRA 4867 * DUNS: 344215293 Member of the German Developer Network http://www.die4dwerkstatt.de _______________________________________________ Active4D-dev mailing list Active4D-dev@aparajitaworld.com http://list.aparajitaworld.com/listinfo/active4d-dev Archives: http://active4d-nabble.aparajitaworld.com/
