Correcting a Misconception

I would have to guess that the real reason behind the move is the fact that Vanchau Nguyen had left the company in 2004 and someone from Java world took over. Or maybe he left because someone from Java world took over :) Either way, we've seen this before and it'll happen again, but I bet if he'd stayed on and pushed for a proper port to 7.x and WebToolkit, they'd be up and running right now on a new version right now instead of living in the "coming soon" promise land for months to come ;)

The truth is Vanchau was probably kicked out because he relied on Venture capitalists too much (and they now control Ezboard's board, in fact the wife of Ezboard's CEO is the COO of one of those Venture companies too; probably how their current CEO got his job...he was an advertising specialist (in direct marketing and internet research and "software solutions") without having been a top exec before; he claims he's been in software development, but he was an internet researcher with Gartner group...there's no real proof he himself knows a damn thing about software...I suspect he doesn't, unlike Vanchau).  Now Ezboard only cares about the bottom line, and by getting rid of Vanchau (who built the company and had the technical expertise to run the product) they were left without anyone who could fix things (they haven't had any major upgrades since he left).  They were recently hit with what they claim was a hack in 2005 (which is likely a botched attempt at converting to their new platform from Ezboard to Yuku), and now they are trying to sell their remaining users a bag of goods that they will have a killer app that nobody else can match.  It's not hard to see that they need scapegoats to blame for problems not fixed in years, and to offer rationales as to why they need to convert their boards to something else.  Smalltalk is getting a bum rap because Ezboard wants to reinvent itself and needs to divert attention away from their shoddy and shady business practices.

Couldn't have said it better myself...

Have you noticed how nothing is ever ezboard's fault?

The May 2005 data loss was allegedly a hacker attack. The alleged hacker was apparently able to jump networks and delete the "backups" too - pity they weren't proper, offline, offsite backups. None of that was ezboard's fault.

Their subsequent inability to sort the remaining message threads in date order again isn't their fault either.

Frequent "Server Maintenance Alerts"? Not their fault.

Continuing page request errors? Like the ones we all saw during the alleged hack? Probably not their fault either.

The reason they're moving to their new ad-driven solution? Smalltalk's fault...

January 2005 power outage which caused basically the whole thing to stop running for a few days:  Not their fault.

"Roll-back" of some board's data in 2004 (which is eerily similar to aspects of what occurred during their May "attack"):  Not their fault.

Spell-check feature suddenly disabled for what they claim are 3rd Party security risks:  Not their fault.

Adware picked up by some users specifically from accessing Ezboard (which now shows adverts in a ridiculously high amount unless you have paid for their "gold" services):  Not their fault.

Frequent issues with logouts of users:  Not their fault.

Servers going down on some occasions, blamed sometimes on hardware cable upgrades, but generally:  Not their fault.

Inexcusable behavior from their moderators who were in fact hired from former users who tow the company line (not trained Customer service):  Not their fault.

Inexplicable "nuking" of "dead" boards which had been left operational for years (most likely to pad their over-inflated stats to advertisers):  Not their fault.

Contradictory posts by the CEO during their May "attack" crisis which caused mass confusion:  Not their fault.

More posts lost AFTER the began their "restoral" process AFTER the "hack" itself began:  Not their fault. 

Now, porting of boards to Yuku which they insisted for a long time would not happen and that boards on Ezboard would remain separate if owners chose to keep them so:  Not their fault.

Mark my words.  Within a year, the company known as Ezboard will be gone.  Instead, they've shifted everything so that a "new" company, Yuku.com will emerge, but that is just a cover.  The same people who have run Ezboard so badly since 2004 (when Vanchau "left") are still running the show.  It's just that they realize the name Ezboard is mud now, and they need to reinvent themselves.  For them, it doesn't matter if smalltalk or anyone else takes the rap for what the situation they themselves created. 

Comment by Troy Brumley

Spotted this in a tag search: More ezboard Contradictions and Some Miffed Software Writers.... I don't know captainblue, but it's an interesting post for a couple of reasons. First, he's talking about the impact on EZ Board's customers and how EZ Board isn't on message, and second he notes the power of blogs--real blogs, anyway. Good job getting out in front of this, Jim.

James "... they built their own HTTP application server framework, and their own object storage framework using serialized object files. I can well believe that it is difficult to move forward"
As they say "ezboard was built on an older technology that has reached its end of life for web site development".

(I can't see where they so much as mention Cincom Smalltalk - so who's misconception are you correcting? Although given the complaints about ezboard in the previous comments it seems a strange choice of "success story".)

Isaac,

The reason James jumped on the story, is because people familiar with ezBoard and its technology, know that it was built in VisualWorks, thus their mention of "old technology" equals "VisualWorks" as far as everyone's concerned.

And yes, it was a success story, mind you certain types within the company have turned that around, didn't they? ;) 

"people familiar with ezBoard and its technology, know that it was built in VisualWorks"
And those people don't know "they built their own HTTP application server framework, and their own object storage framework"?

So we're talking about people who read the "success story" but didn't know the success ended 2 years ago.

One of the reasons they didn't stick to the Ezboard platform is that with Vanchau gone, they can't find someone with enough technical expertise to run it.

Hell, they are so cheap, they hired their chief programmer for Yuku (some guy name Ceco) from Yugoslavia or something as their CTO (I'd link to his bio but they've rewritten their management page so that their bios are now different...Labatt and Ceco aren't there anymore...though you can still find Labatt (the CEO) listed under their coporate team:

http://www.ezboard.com/corporate/corp_team.html

Btw, that is an OLDER page.  Their current one is here:

http://www.ezboard.com/content/view/35/

Labatt's bio is conspicuously missing from the new one, and there is zero mention of Ceco there. 

Here's the MOST interesting thing relating to Small Talk though:

http://www.yuku.com/homepage/jobs/t/Yuku-Jobs.jsp

They know they are going to switch to Yuku, but they need someone to maintain Ezboard until then (though not upgrade or fix bugs that have plagued owners for the past few years).  Yes, they are trying to HIRE someone who can do Small Talk, for "long term availability at least one day per week."  They also state clearly the position will only be needed until 2006 ends (when, as you know from the announcement) they convert to Yuku.

This information is not widely known to the majority of Ezboard owners.  In fact, many don't even know about Yuku (they used to have a "global announcement" feature that they would send important updates to all their message boards with; this feature has "mysteriosly" broken since the "hack" at the middle of last year).  Some boards are going to be in for quite a shock! 

A quick glance at the page you've linked to shows that it's the board of directors, and with another click you can see the at a glance page which lists both Robert Labatt and Ceco Gakovic.

http://www.ezboard.com/content/view/33/

There are no linked bios from there either though.

I fail to see how this is a misconception in any way. The intial post from the CEO that you've linked to does not mention smalltalk at all. And I doubt that that average user of the system - and the intended audience of that message - are even likely to be familiar with the technological side of ezboard.

Do you have a problem with the fact that one of their team is from Yugoslavia? I don't see the relevance of that unless it's an issue for you.

I think if the CEO's Blog's "intended audience" was its users, ezboard would have made that one of their Global Announcements that show up on all their users' message boards.

That fact that ezboard chose to make those statements in a blog area, well away from the rest of the site, means that was specifically targetted.

In fact, try a little experiment: go to www.ezboard.com and try to find the CEO's Blog entry in question.

As to the management team, http://www.ezboard.com/content/view/34/ lists Steve DeMello as VP, Operations. He's left. Ceco Gakovic is listed as "Director of Development and Systems" and yet isn't listed on the Board of Directors page, even though clicking his name on the former page takes you to it. On the "At a Glance" page, Gakovic is listed as a member of the Management Team, and yet the "Management Team" page doesn't list him.

It's under the What's New link: just the one entry. Do I win a prize? :)

I will admit to expecting to find a link called CEO's Blog or something and maybe to find some 'proper' news under a What's New link - like server status issues, customer service reaction and resolution times, but there you go. A look at their server status and bug base forums possibly indicates why they wouldn't want to make much out of that...

What I do find amusing is that someone who's so clearly not a blogger should be behind a firm promoting a revolutionary blogging system: somewhat unlike the Old Days, eh? Still, his advertising background provides the true motivation.

Is a poorly updated management list and announcement section relevant to the original issue, where ezboard is accused of making a statement that gives a false impression of smalltalk - when in fact the word smalltalk is never even mentioned?

The what's new section cannot be that hard to find if James just 'stumbled' over it either. And despite it being titled a CEO blog, the content seems far more suitable to be termed "what's new". Or perhaps it should be named "what's going on". It seems the page title is the incorrect part, since it doesn't appear to actually be a blog.

Your last comment rings a bit off to me. Do you know him personally - citing his advertising background? Did you previously work at an advertising agency with him? Why does this seem personal to you?

The trouble is, as people have already pointed out, those who know what the platform and system ezboard runs on will certainly know to which company ezboard is referring.

The board users are unlikely to know or indeed care. And they're unlikely to be in the market for Cincom's products or services so that does not matter as much.

What does matter is that potential Smalltalk developers will know and may be put off by comments made by ezboard, even if they come from someone without a technical background (hence the point about Mr. Labatt's background). It's not intended to be a personalised issue despite ezboard only have a dozen or so employees and staff, apparently.

"potential Smalltalk developers will know" that, for some unknown reason, instead of moving forward with their existing Smalltalk "success story", ezboard decided to replace what they had with a PHP system.

Isaac,

If you'd stop for a second and read what people are saying, you'd notice that "some unknown reason" is purely their cluelessness and not the poor technology excuse that they're trying to swing.

Boris, do you have the inside scoop from people who actually work at ezboard, or is that purely speculation?

Inside scoop is not a prerequisite of being able to assess the state of things in certain cases such as this. Not a whole lot of people have inside scoop within the U.S. government, yet heck of a lot thought that selling rights to manage country's ports was simply a stupid idea :)

So presumably he'll be amending his CEO Blog accordingly? Or issuing a correction?

Regarding Mr. Labatt's email:

 Is he now trying to blame the work of Vanchau Nguyen, who for years boasted the flexibility of his platform, how Smalltalk made realtime updates possible to the running code, that flexible fast code rewrites was the very core of how Ezboard became what it was? Everywhere he went Vanchau praised his software as "a product that is extremely configurable, adaptable, and scalable." So which CEO is right about Ezboard then?

So Labatt's first statement of Ezboard being "built on an older technology that has reached its end of life for web site development" is now changed to Ezboard having a "bad software design" because of "bad architecture decisions" instead?

Now this could be only a matter of interpretations but what about the initial statement that came just before the statement about Ezboard's technology: "there have been massive improvements in the technology and techniques used to build web sites.  Some of the improvements are faster web page delivery, faster product development and de-bugging".

Labatt is clearly not talking about design and architecture decisions that created Ezboard, he's suggesting a whole better 'technology' - types of software - out there to use. This is why James Robertson was quite correct in countering the false impression that was created.

 Now wouldn't it be nice of Labatt would counter the new false impressions he just created and just say that Yuku was made with LAMP because it was easier to find new developers for it? And refrain from commenting on work of the former CEO or the technology he used to make Ezboard as large as it is today?