SentiZen

​"Here for the first time on EOSHD we have seen the potential of a top management consultant for Apple! You should be paid millions! You're a genius!" "You are living in cloud cuckoo land." Well Mr. Reid, I supposed anything less from you would have been unacceptable. Instead of debating on substance, you ridiculed the opponent. That's brilliant. For the record, and unwittingly on your part, you were right. I was with a major management consultant firm, whose services were retained by Apple, Samsung, and many CE products and services that at varying times you had hyped beyond hyperbole on one extreme and savagely sagged on the other extreme depending on the day of the week, or sometimes the hour of the day. There were sporadic balanced and objective analysis and discourse, but that's fast becoming a tantamount search for Waldo in the entire western hemisphere. "So you suggest to any future Steve Jobs that by being more vague and sweetening feedback to employees, you will get better decisions out of them and a better conceived product?" "In engineering, if there is a design problem you don't sweet talk it until it goes away or make the designer feel good about his terrible mistake." False on both counts. I did not suggest that feedback to one's own employees or from third parties to camera makers should be sugar coated or vague, what I did suggest was that management and user feedback should be assertive and tactful. There is a world of difference between what I said and what you thought I suggested. Effective communication is key and too much easier said than done. You want to convey the facts of what's not working, what went awry, and what would be the best alternative/end state without humiliating and demoralizing. If you glossed over my previous post, then I understand the misconjecture, please reread. I don't know if you have to work in a corporate environment and/or team environment, and charged with delivering results--quality results--both individually and at the same time collectively. This magnifies when a multitude of cross-functional teams have to collaborate toward a common goal. Essentially you're managing, balancing, directing a multitude of personalities all of whom are quirky on some level, and how you accomplish that is effective communication and interpersonal skills, not verbal diarrhea.

​Utterly uncalled for. Why stoop this low just because you assumed a different viewpoint from someone else? I see preschool and grade school children that conduct themselves with much better manner and less reproach. I have seen a good number of genuinely kind and even altruistic gestures from the gamut of photo/video forums across the blogosphere, but occasionally it's posts like this that flies in the face of basic decency and humility. Not only that it does not adds, but I believe it is outbursts like this that has a deleterious effect to the visual artisans and technicians community as a whole. If this trend continues, then I think we will have much more to loose than gain in our common pursuit for knowledge and growth here. Perhaps the great veil of anonymity through the iron curtain of the internet is conducive to malicious behaviors. I can hardly imagine such things being said in the physical presence of another person with so many to witness. No one is infallible, I had my own blunders just as you had yours and everyone else here and elsewhere. If you're having a bad day or for whatever reason had succumbed to your own emotional impulse, then that's understandable (though not excusable). I think a simple apology maybe in order here, of course that's entirely up to you. I don't know Max, I have read some of his blog comments, and believe him to be a learned and cultivated man. Although I may not necessarily agreed with some of the viewpoints he espoused, I do feel that he was offering constructive and cogent feedback to Andrew for the betterment of the blog. Everyone can exercise and benefit from a bit more civility, especially toward another artist and/or technician who shared the same passion for filmaking. Lets hold ourselves to a higher standard. Vitriol and ad hominen attacks are better left at the landfill. ========================================================================================================================================= On to the topic at hand. I don't doubt that the FS7's menu layout and operations are atrocious, though I much rather that Steve Job was not employ as a reference model, not because he was incapable of conceiving some of the most functional and beautiful design in gadgetry that the world has ever seen and put to good use, but precisely because he may have accomplish more by being more tactful and less corrosive/coercive with his interpersonal dealings/interactions. It's one thing being assertive and quite another being aggressive, and for some, that's a fine line. Shortly after Job passed, one of the senior executive at a top management consultancy asserted that Job exhibited his personal traits and management style not because they were particularly effective, but because they required less skills--soft skills that is. Agree or not, there is no denial of the man's legacy in technical and design prowess and the success that persists to this day. Personally, I think a more apt example for us here in the community is none other than James Cameron, whose personality is very much fungible with Job's, but has gone through a long evolution through his time spent out in the field in scientific explorations and expeditions. Cameron has recounted and acknowledged his shortcomings early in his career in directing the performance and work of his cast and crew. He readily admitted that a more collaborative approach, one that he had cultivated through his work with countless teams of scientists, deep sea explorers, and technical personnel would have suited him better as a filmaker in those formative years.