Jeff is an evangelist for Amazon Web Services. During a 4-day trip to Utah, he found 19 separate opportunities to evangelize. Evangelism is similar-ish to PR, marketing, business development and sales – only farther-reaching and more powerful than any of the above. As an example, Jeff had a discussion with BYU professor Phil Windley about using EC2 in BYU’s curriculum; this would make Amazon a key part of many, many future users’ computer science education. (Amazon already has an educational partnership with the University of California, Santa Barbara.) Jeff also made a presentation to Phil’s CS students (along with 5 other audiences) and recorded two podcasts.
Did anyone at your company achieve Jeff’s level of outreach last week? The new ad you made might be on display at every seemingly synergistic venue you can find, but how many viewers has it built a lasting connection with? And the press release you sent out might have appeared in inboxes at thousands of media outlets, but how many reporters did it make an impression on?
I think S3 and EC2 are totally awesome, but I would argue that these technologies are less important than the way their value propositions are communicated. I know of several hosting providers who are working hard on developing Amazon-like pay-per-use offerings. Unfortunately, if coupled with traditional marketing, I’m afraid they will be disappointed with an un-Amazon-like lack of buzz.
