Open letter to devialet - input from you?

[pscampbe]

I caught up with Olivier Pacteau briefly today over the phone. He describes his role as voice of the customer inside Devialet. He appreciated the feedback from us and wanted to reassure us that they were absolutely not abandoning Phantom and see it as an important part of their future. They are dedicated to Phantom. Olivier sits close to the developers and said he would pass this information across to them. Having a letter like this from us helps him get focus in the company. Unfortunately Olivier was unable to make any representations about what Devialet is doing and when. He said they are active on the forum, listening. He said they had made promises in the past around software with Expert which they delivered late on and sometimes failed to deliver all that they promised which wasn't pleasant. We agreed that this is sometimes what happens but he seems to want to avoid that in this case. I pointed out that not communicating at all looks like you are doing nothing, so I recommended that they communicate roadmap, plans and progress quarterly. I also said that they might be surprised to find their user base might be a bit more tolerant than they think to delays as long as they know what's going on. Olivier feels that it is probably time to communicate more but thinks it should come from the CEO or CTO. They are considering setting up their own forum too as hey have in the past around the Expert platform at some stage. Olivier will share the letter with the CEO and I encouraged him to be a louder voice in Devialet and get the CEO to actually say something to us. I can't report any time frames though there was a vague hint that some communications might come out this month some time - through the normal global channels. I again encouraged him to talk internally and get more specific, and get someone to tell us when we will receive an update. The challenge is Olivier is not a spokesperson for Devialet, but I'm hoping he can find one for us. So, we have found someone to listen and he does say Phantom is an important platform but now we need hm to get someone to talk. Any ideas?