‘The Blubrry Way’
A critical observer can recognize the intentions and values of the artist by studying the artist’s work; this is called intentionalism. This is also true about creations beyond traditional art mediums. As our readers know, Blubrry just released an update to its PowerPress Plugin. Surrounding that release, there was significant promotion plus a good deal of published notes and supportive documentation in which ‘The Blubrry Way’ is a recurring phrase. But what does that mean? By taking an intentionalist approach from the world of art and applying it to Blubrry’s recent release of PowerPress 8.3, you can learn a great deal about “The Blubrry Way.”
Right now you are one click away from PowerPress’s Full Documentation. Feel free to read the entire document, but below is a WordCloud image made from the text on that page (with the terms Blubrry and PowerPress removed). The image shows the words that are most frequently used. You can see that the words “Premium” and “Plugin” are emphasized and the WordCloud is chock-full of individual features. Using intentionalism, you can deduce that Blubrry values premium technical services that are feature rich.
There is much that can be learned from the release history of PowerPress (make sure to click through and read the companion change log as well). You can see for yourself that PowerPress’ original version 0.2 was released in August 2008 and since then has had 130 updates. Some of those updates include a long list of new features, the smallest update simply included, “images that were missing in the Getting Started section.” What can we read as the intentions included in this long release history? Two words come to mind: Commitment and Professionalism. Twelve years of documented efforts prove Blubrry’s commitment to PowerPress and to podcasters. Also, such thorough documentation of Blubrry’s development history demonstrates the team’s technical professionalism.
Lastly, if you look on PowerPress’ ‘sales’ page, you will find the service’s price in only two places. PowerPress is free. Without a doubt, podcasters would pay for PowerPress. Why not charge? Inversely, why not insanely promote that podcasters can use this premium service for free, Free, FREE? A strong argument could be made that since Blubrry is not charging for PowerPress and also not seeking recognition for offering PowerPress at no-cost, their intention is simply Service. Service to podcasters and the field of podcasting.
This intentionalism exercise does not fully reflect ‘The Blubrry Way.’ With this exercise we have created a list of Blubrry’s values by looking at the recent PowerPress update, including:
• Premium Technical Services
• Rich Features
• Professionalism
• Commitment
• Service
When you get a chance, ask a Blubrry employee about any of these values. The conversation that follows will lead you to a fuller understanding of the intentionalistic values of “The Blubrry Way.”