Hectic work weeks, blogger meetups, and MT3
I've been in massive crunch mode for work this week, which is why I haven't posted anything about the blogger meetup wed. night (or anything else, for that matter). I'm actually still in crunch mode, but now I'm stuck waiting on specs from other people, who also happen to be in crunch mode.
All that to say, the bloggers meetup was a lot of fun. It's a diverse and interesting group of people. Plus, it's always good to learn more about the personal contexts behind some of the blogs. I'm looking forward to the next meetup.
In other news, as it stands now, BaltiBlogs will not be upgrading to MovableType 3.0 in the immediate future. We'll see what happens with the post-Developer Edition release that should come out in the next couple of months, but, for now, there aren't even license options for non-profit usage with more than 10 authors. And extrapolating from the commercial license options, my guess is that upgrading to 3.0 for all of Terrablogs would put costs in the thousands of dollars. That is simply not feasible.
I'll be talking more with Josiah about this, but for now MT2.661 is working well for us. Perhaps we'll be able to do some improvements of our own in the next couple of months.
For the record, I do not share the vehement hatred for Six Apart that's been expressed in the blogosphere lately (see the massive amount of trackbacks at Mena's announcement, or read Blogdigger News). They've put a lot of work into MT, and deserve some decent reimbursement for it. Whining because what once was free now costs seems juvenile.
At the same time, the new pricing structure does seems steep. On a personal level, there's very little software I pay more than $70 for - it either needs to be critical to my job, or be able to actually save me money (saving me significant amounts of time counts in that category). Blogging software just doesn't fit that criteria.
Even on a corporate level, this is pricey. I've been talking with my boss about using blogs more often to facilitate better documentation and project management. But to do what we want with MT3.0 would quickly put us in the $600-$700 range. To a small company, that's a lot to pay for software that is neither mission-critical nor revenue generating, especially when cheaper options exist. Given the ASP background of my company anyway, I'm currently looking at .TEXT instead.
Ultimately, the market will decide whether or not MT3 is worth the new cost. Perhaps this is all a moot point anyway if the non-developer release is less expensive. It'll definitely be interesting to see what happens, especially since Six Apart could demonstrate the financial viability of blogging-related businesses if they are successful with this.
May 14, 2004 10:21 AM