It's hard to believe I've been at Avid a month already.
When I was a kid my dream job was to be a major league center fielder. Like the rookie being called up from the minors, coming on board here at Avid has triggered a range of emotions. First there's the adrenaline rush of the initial call up, quickly followed by the realization that this is the big leagues and they throw 97 mph and the curves fall off the table. It's been humbling. There are a lot of big brains here. A lot of stuff goes by me at 97 mph.
For those who don't know me... Most of my professional life has been spent in television post production, as an editor and a post production director at WGBH in Boston, and a freelance motion graphics artist. I also have a business background - working as a creative director in a large professional services firm, and as a founding partner of two smaller firms.
Perhaps I'm best known in this space as longtime contributor to DV Magazine and prolific blogger. Over the years I've written a lot about Avid, some of it positive and some less so. That experience led me to believe that I had a pretty good understanding of Avid - the challenges it faces and what it needs to do. Now on the inside, I realize how much I didn't know.
One month in, some of my most closely held beliefs about Avid have been disproved. We can call these personal Avid Urban Legends.
Urban Legend #1
Frank was hired because Avid realizes its editing tools needs to move in a new direction, and Frank will shake things up.
Like many urban legends, this is partially true. Avid does need to move in new directions, but it was committed to doing that before I was brought on board. I'm here to support and complement my team's efforts in bringing new capabilities to a venerable line of editors. I'm not here as a revolutionary leader, just a member of the movement.
Urban Legend #2
Avid product designers, engineers, and marketers live in an ivory tower, oblivious to market realities and the competitive landscape.
Right up until the day I started in Tewksbury, I was making a living using a variety of tools - including Adobe's CS3 suite and Apple's Final Cut Studio. Though I may be among the more experienced FCP jockeys at Avid, I'm far from the only one. I've been pleasantly surprised at the depth of knowledge of competing tool and the acknowledgment that the competition is does a lot of things well.
We take pride in what we do and the value we deliver to our customers, but the antipathy to solutions "not invented here" that is so prevalent throughout the high tech sector is not evident at Avid.
Urban Legend #3
Avid is slow and lethargic, lacking in energy and direction.
Anyone who has spent even an hour in the office here would be struck by the palpable sense of urgency on the team. Avid's a big company. From a distance a change in direction may appear slow, but once momentum is built it is unmistakable. Avid's change in direction will be apparent in the coming weeks - first with the release of the 3.0 editors, then with subsequent announcements and releases.
Urban Legend #4
Current customers are frustrated with the pace of Avid development, and are looking for reasons to switch to the competition.
Customers have been frustrated, but I've been blown away by how much customers want Avid to succeed. They are not looking for a reason to jump to another NLE so much as a reason to stick with Avid. While we think the next release goes a long way towards reassuring customers that Avid is serious about remaining the gold standard of editors, we also know that we need to keep moving forward. Avid has committed the resources to the editors group to keep the momentum going. Avid's current customer base is its greatest resource.
Urban Legend #5
Avid is ready to acknowledge the NLE is a commodity product.
A few variations on this theme are in circulation. One of my favorite bloggers and a close personal friend has declared, "Avid will be a server company in two years." (You know who you are.)
In its simplest form, as a stand alone application working in isolation, one NLE can be very much like every other - a commodity. But for the vast majority of our customers, the NLE is the nerve center of a complex, collaborative creative environment that can't be commoditized. Not every editor needs ScriptSync, Animatte, or asynchronous head and tail trimming, but those who do definitely don't consider the NLE a commodity.
While I'm quite obviously not at liberty to divulge everything we're working on to maintain Avid's leadership position in NLE market, suffice it to say that if I wasn't convinced that Avid is committed to future NLE development I just made among the stupidest career moves imaginable.
Avid's Biggest Problem
It's been an interesting month. I've been able to meet scores of customers at NAB, at user group meetings, and one on one on-site meetings. Editors and facilities managers present us with their needs. Perhaps the my most surprising discovery is that quite often the software already can do what they need it to do. They just didn't know the feature was there.
It's painfully clear that we sometimes do a pretty poor job of making the case for Avid to our existing customers. This blog is part of the solution to that problem. Face time with customers, participation in online forums and user groups, and availability to users, customers, and editors will help too. This is not marketing's problem. It's a shared responsibility.
At the end of the day, it comes down to establishing trust. If customers believe that we understand their needs, then they will assume we're addressing those needs. Right now, for too many customers, the assumption is we're not doing that. That's going to change.