All One River GIS

I’ve been attending demos of mine modeling software lately. I do this a lot, sometimes in a pace of increasing intensity as the client I am advising is about to make a decision. Having been a Director of Product Development for a mining software company before, I am very familiar with the show and tell story. I learned a few things about this aspect of the software business: I do not enjoy the sales demos.

That said, I can’t help but imagine a reality television show with a panel of mining engineers, (clean and smelling nice) geologists (fuzzy and with dog hear on their socks) , and database nerds (with gel in their hair) questioning a line-up of potential software candidates (wearing pressed shirts with their logos: “MineMiracle”, “MightyMine” and “Gold-B-MORE”). This last week, I was sitting across from spanky-clad sales people who were saying yadda yadda and turning block models off and on, the fancy spinning 3D model in the air showing all the glorious drill hole traces with fat intercepts of mineralization. I would like to have yanked a salesman from the previous day and kept him in an imaginary cyber window to interject his own comments to counter what the current sales pitch was saying. Or, to step out of the demo like in a Woody Allen movie, and turn to an invisible audience to share my candid observations:

‘That is a lot of button pushing just to change the view, don’t cha think?’

In my reality TV show, the sales people would have video clips prepared to demonstrate the prowess of their dynamic code and visual graphics, all the while some input on an electronic meter from the audience responds to the display with statistical credits flipping forward and backwards. The camera would pan to cover the facial expressions of the other candidates as first one then the other sales person made their bold statements.

“So, you see, no other software really does this better than MineMiracle,” while the other sales reps shake their heads in disgust or slap the table.

Each candidate would be allowed a platform to expound on the merits of their product and be open to comments from the competitors.

“So, how do you handle sub-cells?” is shot to the rep from his competitor and he gives his yadda yadda to answer the hot question, which basically means, ‘uh, we don’t.’

 ”What if the data doesn’t have a key field?” More yadda yadda blah blah blah.

The panel of judges submit questions to get the action rolling, including trick questions designed to bring a grin.

“What if a rat eats through the dsl line and we loose our connection to the server?” This is a terribly stupid, totally unrelated question designed to throw the candidate off. There are other conversational digressions as the panel of engineers and geos make fun of each other and tell totally unrelated stories about something stupic they did this one time in band camp… (The database guy has no visible sense of humor.)

The summary of the show, is an undisclosed, previously submitted hidden quote for the product that had been concealed up until the last moments, when for the first time, each representative has to turn their card over and display for public review – their cost estimate for an implementation, training, maintenance, and support. The show ends with the panel of judges awarding points and the winner goes to the next round of negotiations.

I have imagined this scenario enough to consider making a pitch to the Northwest Mining Convention or PDAC to host a session along these lines. I have also considered inviting the software candidates to a gladiator-type competition where their sales staff has to run an obstacle course in little gladiator suits to submit their quote and give a demo. That show is still in design reveiw.

(BTW: Chapter IV of “The Igneous Rocks of Tampeapa” is up on InfoMine, on their library page.)