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End User Revolt: Time for a Universal Platform

April 24th, 2021 by Michael Dyet

Hmmm, will you join my end user revolution?

In the last year up to and including the next month, I will have been compelled to learn no less than 10 new web-based programs including half a dozen virtual event platforms. Some of these involve modest learning curves while others are mind-bendingly complicated. My brain is overheating, my reserves of patience run dry and my repertoire of four letter words is growing.

Enough is enough! I am hereby issuing a directive to developers around the globe. All of you are to gather virtually and develop a universal platform on which all your programs will run as distinct but compatible modules. This universal platform must be dead simple to learn, use no confusing terminology and be 100% bug free.

I anticipate a number of objections arising which I will address here at the outset.

OBJECTION: What you are asking for is not feasible. Our programs are proprietary and inherently different. They cannot have a universal platform.

RESPONSE: Overruled. Your problem, not mine. Your job is to make my life easier, not more difficult. That is why you are paid the big bucks. Figure it out.

OBJECTION: We have invested large sums of money developing our program. Recouping our investment in a cost-sharing model with a universal platform is difficult if not impossible.

RESPONSE: Overruled. Your problem, not mine. Your job is to make my life easier, not more difficult. That is why you are paid the big bucks. Figure it out.

OBJECTION: There is always a learning curve with new technology. Inventing new terminology is what we live for. We see no possible way to make the learning process dead simple.

RESPONSE: Overruled. See above.

Furthermore, I will be retiring in just shy of two years in early April 2023. Between now and then, I am instituting a moratorium on any new programs that I might conceivably be required to learn. In addition, you are not to change the interface to your program nor issue any major updates that require me to relearn the 10% of the program I have occasion to use.

Once I have retired, the moratorium expires and you can knock yourself out with new tech.

I anticipate an objection arising which I will address here at the outset.

OBJECTION: Our business model is based on issuing new versions of our program every six months with assorted bells and whistles. The model does not work under a moratorium.

RESPONSE: Overruled. See above.

Web-based technology is a wheel that never stops revolving. I am throwing a wrench into the spokes of that wheel. You may ask: How are we supposed to continue to generate income? My response: Figure it out.

~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.

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