Gimmick List, Pt. 2 - SALSA Revisited

SALSA! Six months after I left SALSA and Wall Data (1996), I went back to their web site and wrote this email to Jim Mothershead and Mark Ferkingstad. After a long absence, I went (where?) hint:::::::::::a monkey, a murder, a chili:::::::::to the SALSA web site!!!!!!!!

Some subtle but interesting changes have taken place there. No, they didn't spray a three inch banner across the top that said WE ARE UNDER CONSTRUCTION AS WE TRY TO GET A CLUE AFTER BLOWING--what??--FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS

1) They jacked the price up to $350. Other people have done this successfully. But they had something really great. What can you say about the sheer brilliance of that? This has two great benefits: A) nice way to RATCHET up those gross margins! and B) They have proved for once and all that they are not in competition with Access. Increasing the price of marijuana 3000% didn't hurt sales!

2) They don't do much bragging anymore on the web site. I couldn't put my finger on it, but the volume has been turned way down and the arrogance has all but disappeared.

3) You now almost get the idea from the web site that they are trying to sell you something. Nice work marketing! But they still have the comic, and the whole a murder a chili a monkey thing going.

4) There used to be a page that went into great detail about the developer's accomplishments, many of which occurred at least A DECADE EARLIER, in Unix or COBOL before that fancy-pants operating system Windows took over. This page in particular always had me fighting to keep my lunch down. We had a bunch of hapless developers that couldn't even have qualified to run the Tilt-A-Whirl in a traveling carnival. They were directed by a snarling pack of management weasels that would f*** up a two-car funeral. See next item.

5) There are no longer any names or biographies associated with the product. For a while there (you know, like about that two week period where it looked like we'd all get rich), every person in Wall Data tried to associate themselves with SALSA, or horn in on the action. It used to be that every exec., manager and director were fighting to get their Bios and Headshots on that page. They've been disappeared! Like people sent to the gulag in the USSR.

Perhaps the most intelligence we have seen thus far is all the people in suits tripping over each other as they run for cover. Then there's the CEO, his pants bunched down around his ankles trying to escape the frenzied shareholders, running for the expressway clutching golden parachute and leaving the rest of Wall Data holding the bag. This company has more Vice Presidents than AT & T (well, 18 VPs in a company of not 600 folk), and we no longer see one of their names.

6) Dr. K's name, of course, is still splashed everywhere, but he is like the doomed Fugu chef who snarfs up the rest of the blowfish when a patron keels over. . .or the captain of the Titanic who might as well go down with the boat, since he'll never be let out on the open sea again in anything larger than a dinghy. He had the social skills of that kid on the porch in Deliverance, and the warmth of Joseph Goebbels. He is now treated a little less seriously than the folks who claim to have been abducted by The Greys.

PART II: The NEW SALSA Well, I keep hearing about The New NEW SALSA(tm). . .rumors, floated trial balloons, etc., Yeah, they keep going on hammer and tong about some sort of Internet breakthrough, and some 32 bit gibberish. As far as I'm concerned 32 bits is just 16 additional bits for for them to screw up. The Technologist of the Year, Fishhead, The Reverend, and the rest of those hapless goobs and misfits sit around in high-tech circle-jerks, dreaming about such absurdities as Linux web servers on their desktops, Perl-scripted test automation, and even SALSA derived Operating Systems. And the biggest dream:::::the world is apparently once again demanding--more vehemently than ever--The SALSA(tm) Solution.

GET A CLUE! They didn't want it when it came in a box. They didn't want to waste their precious minutes on this earth downloading the demo. They didn't want to read the book about it, see the video about its resident genuis, or visit its lovely but murky and arcane web site. They didn't buy the slogans and they didn't buy the software. They're not going to want it served piping hot over the internet either.

The high-concept packaging and web site didn't help sell it, the special introductory offer didn't sell it, free apps didn't sell it; Sam couldn't sell it, even when he primed the marks with free dinners, all the scotch they could slam, and threw in a free trip to Lady Madeline's Sporting House--he still got stiffed! Even with the help of a full time system engineer--whose head was so far up his ass that he had "ring around the collar." So, what's the deal? They figure if they lay low for a while and come out with a new version that people will forget the bug-riddled dogshit they cynically tried to foist off just a year or so before? Well, perhaps.

With the right kind of marketing, a little luck (and some watches and vibrating pillows), anything can happen. Remember The New Nixon? He was elected. But the New Coke and the Arche DeLuxe did not fare so well. A whole new generation of software buyers is out there. Eventually, maybe the bad taste will leave people's mouths, and they will give SALSA another shot.

It's a relief dealing with Access and SQL. I have out it all behind me. I am no longer angry. I learned more there about WHAT NOT TO DO than I could have ever learned in ten years. My experience with other databases post-SALSA is like Sven's Dog, a joke they tell around Snoose Junction in Seattle (that is, Ballard):

Torval and Sven were sitting in a tavern.
Tor asks:
"Sven? Why is your dog licking his ass? Does He have worms or something?"
Sven turns to him and says:
"No. . .he's fine. He just ate some lutefisk and he's trying to get the taste out of his mouth."