STC Meeting
The West Island meeting last night was a presentation about white papers given by Gordon and Gordon. It was pretty good. This was their run through for the STC conference in Chicago. They talked about the lack of standards and criteria that make it difficult to write a white paper. Basically they came up with a definition that combines the technology with marketing and stressed that it is a pre-sales tool. They said that successful white papers come from collaborative efforts and a strict schedule. The type of white paper will also depend on the product and the audience. If you're selling a fairly techy product to engineers, the white paper will look much different from one with a product that's not as high tech or directed to upper management people who need to know why this is a good idea. There was the usual "things that go wrong" portion of the evening, but I think that's true of any project, perhaps white papers are more heated bones of contention because they represent potential sales and more upper management people are involved in their creation. They should be putting up some information about their presentation in a couple of days.