The professional DVD authoring software that Astarte had created was called DVDirector, and although everyone agreed it was a good name, management felt it should get a new name when it evolved into an Apple product. The idea was to send the message that this was not simply the Astarte product put in an Apple box; it had gone through a significant rewrite and feature upgrade.
It was my job (with the help of others in the product marketing and engineering teams) to compile a list of name candidates, and then work with my boss to narrow it down to eight or ten which could be handed over to the legal team for preliminary trademark and copyright evaluations. The candidates which survived that process (never more than one or two) would be passed on to Phil Schiller and Steve, for their input.
We went throught this process twice without finding a name that satisfied Phil and Steve; and I was out of ideas. In a flash of inspiration, I decided to call on one of the most powerful forces in all geekdom: free pizza. I booked a large conference room for two hours and invited everyone who had proper security clearance to come to a brainstroming session that evening. I enticed them with the offer of abundant free pizza and beer.
The turnout was better than I hoped. I started things off by posting printouts of all the ‘good’ name candidates we had so far on one side of the big white board. At the other end I put up a short list of the key features and technologies of the application. I gave a little introduction to the product, for the benefit of the non-technical participants, then the fun began. We’d write down any idea anyone had, no matter how odd it might be. We filled up the board with names, then went back to each in turn to gauge everyone’s reaction. We erased, rearranged, circled, underlined, and prioritized.
By the time everyone left two hours later, there were a lot of great ideas on that board. I had only to transcribe them and distill it down to something I could present to my boss. I snapped a couple photos of the board to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.
Here’s what a load of pizza will get you.
The Finalists
DVD@Once Discus |
DVD werks DVDZ |
ProDVD Studio DVD |
A few days later we passed on a new list for Steve’s review. Ironically, he decided we’d use one of the names which had been on the very first list: ‘DVD Studio’ but with ‘pro’ added to make it harmonize with the Final Cut Pro name. All that good pizza used up for nothing…
Mike – 100 people working on Final Cut Studio? Wow. This includes Marketing folks etc, right? I was expecting it to be more like 15-20 programmers – too many folks and you are not getting anywhere, in my experience. How many people did actual full-time programming on something like FCP?