Who is Michel Fournier?
After having graduated in computer science in 1987, I moved from Petit-Rocher (New Brunswick) to Montreal for my career. I worked several years for the University of Quebec as the lead resource for the computer division of a department. In 1993, I started my company as I wanted to take some contracts on my own. This allowed me to travel a lot and do some interesting and challenging contracts for big companies such as Bell Canada, National Bank of Canada, Caisses Populaires Desjardins and Tal Investments. Either as a salary employee or as a consultant, I continuously work hard all week long. I always look for perfection and will always find something to enhance in a product. I never hesitate to travel to take the best training courses available to keep up to date with the technology and remain competitive. I like to present and write articles, however, during the last few years, I didn't have much time to do so.
We have seen you on conferences playing tennis. Are you a sportsman?
It's a family heritage. I guess I had the easiest part. My father could have played for the NHL and the MLB. Coming from East Canada, that was almost impossible if you go back in the 60's. In the 70's, our house's basement was filled of trophies. I stopped counting them after a while. <s>
I started to play hockey, baseball, soccer as well as some other sports at 6. This is all I was doing after school as well as during summer time. I pushed into soccer a lot. I had my good years in that sport. <s> I remember the day I scored 5 goals in 4 games in less than a few hours during the final qualification of our team for the Maritimes games. I also developed some competitive skills into tennis. During several consecutives years, I played six hours per day. I participated in a lot of tournaments. When I came to Montreal in 1988, I continued to play. The level was higher here. I played for a few years as well as having participated in a few tournaments. But, I had to concentrate on my career. So, I let those sports activities go in favour of the business.
Then, came a few DevCons and the occasion to play again was there. In 1998, I played a double match with Marc McCasland against Ed Leafe and John Petersen. A small coverage is available here. The year before, I played with Ed Leafe in San Diego. Some pictures are available here.
It is your first interview, why have you always declined to do it in the past?
It's mostly a question of time. When you work almost around the clock to follow a vision in order to keep enhancing such a product, you mostly concentrate your time on it with other related tasks. Spending some time to do an interview is something that I just don't have during these days. But, I figured it was time to do one. A lot of people have requested it in the last few months. I think this is a great occasion to do the point and to provide more information about the product to the community.
You seem to be always "politically correct". Don't you have any opinions?
Yes, I have. However, when I work on the Universal Thread, as the product owner, what I say has always to be taken with care in order to assure that it is written as best as possible. Neutrality is something that my messages will carry. In private, of course, I may express some opinions about various issues with my team but online, this is something we just can't do. Yes, sometimes, I dream about being a member and not the owner so I could go and express better some points that I believe in. Note here that I'm not necessary talking about policy issues but in the support in general.
On related topics, I would like to talk a little bit about some policy issues we had so far after several years. At first I can say that there is no easy one. Some members would like this place to be as some other Web sites where no policy would be in place. Having some guidelines is important when you offer such a service. This is what makes the Universal Thread unique. We invest a lot of time and effort in order to make this place as best as we can. Our members should be able to come to the Universal Thread, do their work and expect to do it within a friendly environment. In order for that to take effect, we monitor as best as we can. In request to most of the members and to summarize what we thought was best, we released some great filtering options such as allowing members to filter threads, members, sensitive messages, etc. Where else can you find nearly a couple of hundreds options for your account? Probably a few that you can count on your end. What we find extremely sad, and that happened at several occasions, is that a small group of members tend to focus on getting pleasure by trying to demolish our work. Smaller as they can be as oppose to most of the other Web sites, it still represents some additional work and time we have to invest in each of those situations that we would prefer to invest on something else.
On the good side, we took some good advices from some members who would be surprised that we would like to thank them for their suggestions. We applied most of them over the years. A good one was the creation of the Chatter forum where you can discuss about almost anything you want. That also allows us to move a thread into that forum assuming it is completely off topic to the current forum. The filtering options, despite the fact that it was difficult to make them fit within the infrastructure, is greatly welcome by most of the members. So, in regards to that, most of what the members asked was mostly done. What I found interesting is that as soon as those options became available, there was practically no use of it. But then, that was expected. Some of those things are mostly there as a reflection Just to know that so many options exist, makes people to toward their use into making this place a better one day after day.
Your company was named "Fournier Transformation". What does it mean?
I wanted to obtain a name which was kind of innovative. I wanted it to represent changes. The idea came during a FoxGang party, at Martin Schiff house in Orlando, while he was discussing it with Ted Roche and Whil Hentzen, two well-known persons in the Visual FoxPro community, which were also attending DevCon. If you look at Whil's name, you can find the term "Work" in Hentzenwerke. So, we were looking for find a name that would have something in regards to that such as work, change, etc. Ted came up with "Fournier Transformation" which we found extremely good. In an upcoming change in our infrastructure, the name will probably be renamed Transformation. "Fournier" is somewhat difficult to pronounce in English. <s>
How did Fournier Transformation start?
After 7 years at the University of Quebec, where I was working as a computer technician, I decided to strike out on my own. This was driven by my desire to pursue new ideas and maintain high standards of technical excellence. Thus in October 1993, my consulting company was born.
How did Universal Thread start?
While doing some consulting, I wanted to share my ideas with other Visual FoxPro developers worldwide. I created my first site in 1993 under the name of the Visual FoxPro Yellow Pages. It was a site related to Visual FoxPro, which included latest news about the product as well as some classified ads. Quite quickly it became apparent that this was of interest to a large number of people. Suggestions to add more content came in from all over the world. There was then a need to turn the site dynamic. In less than a year, the site was superseded by the Universal Thread who became an entity on its own.
Does Universal Thread pump enough money to live by itself?
The Universal Thread is a commercial site, which focuses on living on its own while increasing its expansion. As any other company that expands, the related expenses to keep the related infrastructure competitive increase as well. We succeeded in the last two years to make it independent. Thus, it can live by itself. However, we should not be compared with big companies that would be able to put it a million or two to make it rock solid and push its marketing to the limit. That means we are extremely sensitive to any variations in the business and related events. The 9/11 event affected us directly and it took us about 8 months to fully recover. A release of the Visual FoxPro product, for example, when it occurs, also helps while a long period of no release will make it slower. This gives you some ideas about such factors.
So, in order to keep it running, occasionnally, when we face those situations, I have to increase my work time from 12 to 18 hours a day by increasing my investment on the product or to take on the side contracts.
As for being independent, I believe we have succeeded where many other companies on the Web have failed. I believe you can count on one hand the technical support engines on the Net which run by themselves. Most of the other renowned technical support engines are a property of a commercial company that focuses on something else to bring the money in. We try to convince regular members of the Universal Thread to purchase their membership or to have their employer to purchase a corporate membership. Despite the fact that some would say that they don't express the need to benefit of such additional/advanced features, while they spend about 4 to 8 hours online a day, for us, that represents a challenge to find the missing feature for them in order to have them onboard with the PUTM. Many who have that thought don't realize that the yearly expenses of the Universal Thread are easily over the six digits. So, a daily challenge for us is to focus on the release of some features, which would offer them a justification to upgrade to the PUTM.
Do you work full time on UT?
Since the last two years, yes.
After so many years, the Universal Thread has evolved a lot. Can you resume those years?
Recently, you have improved the look of some areas of the site. Do you plan to redesign the entire site?
Improving the look and redesigning the site are two different things. Recently, we have worked on enhancing some artwork, such as in the Dashboard, as well as some enhancements in some of the forms such as creating a new thread, replying to a message and viewing a message. I do not consider that redesign. In my POV, a redesign is mainly about changing the infrastructure of the way things are done. As for those improvements, we didn't touch that. We have presently a great infrastructure. However, once within a form, we wanted to benefit of cross browser compatibility at 100% while enhancing a few things in those such as playing with DHTML in order to dynamically change a lot of options in the form without having to force a reload of the current page.
While remaining mainly for professionals, I wanted the site to respond better to visitors and other people not necessary involved in the development of applications as well as newcomers. Several members have requested that. Despite the fact that most of them got used to the Universal Thread within a few days, at first, they had difficulties to find basic options. So, there was a need to focus in that area. I think we did pretty well. We already have a major difference as per what we had a few months ago. Enhancements such as the help within each form are a great plus. The ability to get context sensitive help and to go to related topics is helping many members. The ability to dynamically change colour themes, font definitions and related topics without having to round trip to the account setup is a real time saver.
I still think we are far from what the Universal Thread could be. Despite the fact that many would say that this site is unique, I personally think we haven't seen the tip of the iceberg yet. It's all a question of the supporting infrastructures such as monetary, resources availability, timeframe and support from the big names and the community.
What is under the Universal Thread hood in regard to bandwidth, memory and CPU power?
The Universal Thread has evolved since its beginning, in regards to bandwidth, from ISP hosting to local hosting such as ISDN 64k, ISDN 128k, T1 384K, T1 512K and full T1. The next step is at 10 megabits. Usually, the increase of bandwidth occurs every six months.
As for the hardware infrastructure, it started at first with one server. Then, we added a server dedicated for the search engine. An additional server is expected to offload some of the running components. On the side, we have other server components waiting in stand by. All of our servers are always running on double CPU and mirrored, as far as sharing the same hardware, thus easier for the maintenance. Of course, we have RAID solutions, full remote management as far as software, power, etc. and a lot of memory. Our server life duration is extremely short. We never reach 20 months. So, everything has to be done fast otherwise we'll never reach the cruising speed. We have a pretty good software and hardware provider with a wonderful support.
Can you talk to us about the Universal Thread software infrastructure?
The software infrastructure started with Fournier Transformation's tool. At the time West Wind Technologies released their first version, we were also running on our own. But, the maintenance for that was too big. As we had to concentrate on the development of the product, we had to rely on a more stable and more powerful infrastructure. We started to work for two years on a product which was ok. But, as the Universal Thread was evolving pretty fast, it was time to go in the big leagues. We opted for West Wind tools and it was a big decision for us. As, at that time, Fournier Transformation had developed a Web framework on its own, it continued to use it under WWC. The combination was excellent. Of course, we adjusted it to fit well with it. We also shopped a few functions in order to take them directly from WWC. But, one of the most powerful tools we have is the list module, which allows us to do RAD development as far as Web development.
What was, in your opinion, the major factor of the Universal Thread success: the messages area, the features of the site...?
As for what we deliver, the messages area is what the Universal Thread is known about when people speak about it. Its unique infrastructure for that powerful threading environment contains all the basic requirements any similar engine should have combined with the addition of sophisticated tools to ease the member's session. Combined with the fact that the member's profile contains a few hundreds settings, that makes it quite unique.
As from the community side, we were lucky to benefit of the best developers community worldwide. The Visual FoxPro community is a strong one, and as our product was originally focusing on it, it helped a lot to get a good start.
From the infrastructure side, so far, one important factor was certainly the ability to deliver the product on a solid reliable hardware and bandwidth technology. I keep receiving comments from members who benefit from 10+ megabits line at their office telling me that they obtain their pages as soon as they click. I don't even have that in my home office. <s> We had some situations over the years such as the ice storm and the Montreal downtime construction failure which occurred last September, but other than that, it's been having a real success in that direction.
Do you have some support from Microsoft for the Universal Thread ($$, software, tips...)?
Microsoft support mostly relies to the management of the Toledo Wish List - which is now recognized by Microsoft as the front end for submitting wishes - the release of some specific tools for their own monitoring purposes such as the MVP program and an ongoing relationship, which relates to other technical topics.
Do you think Microsoft can do more for Universal Thread?
Definitely! Assuming I would be in charge of a big company, I know how much power I would be able to obtain from a product such as the Universal Thread. But, we have to remain realist here. Despite the fact that our yearly budget keeps increasing which goes in parallel with our yearly expenses, the various possibilities offered to us are quite limited. R & D investment, constant renewal of hardware and around the clock monitoring are just some items we have to deal with on a daily basis. When you have a small infrastructure, you just can't expand as fast as you'd want it to. Small companies can have a real success in their lifetime. It's just a matter of gaining benefit of every little opportunities when they become available - which is different from a big company.
Do you think Microsoft can do more for Visual FoxPro?
Definitely! Basically, the answer is really easy. A company can do whatever it wants for a product of its own. So, for example, I believe a company can decide to pick one of its products, as little as it can be, and make it a winner. IMHO, Visual FoxPro is already - was always - a winner. But, as judged from the community in the recent years, it seems Microsoft could do a lot more with this product.
In regards to that point, see our Universal Thread Visual FoxPro Community survey result. One of the question was about the ability to let the community decide what they'd do if they'd have a fairly large amount of money to market the product.
The last community survey shows that the Universal Thread helped greatly to save Visual FoxPro. Since only Universal Thread members participated in the survey, that has certainly induce a bias in favour of the Universal Thread. Knowing this, how do you interpret this result?
I interpret this result with a very little error margin such as 1.5%. So, the results, IMHO, are pretty exact. We cover the biggest market for Visual FoxPro support. So, those who took the time to participate are Universal Thread members, yes, but they also represent most of the regular developers who contribute a lot to support the Visual FoxPro community at large.
Also, in most of our questions, the results are quite demonstrative. So, including more participants wouldn't change that much. After a certain number of participants, your error margin decreases and remains pretty much fixed.
Note also that this survey was requiring about 10 minutes of the participant's time. So, the number of participants is lower as oppose to a popup survey with just one question. A few hundreds participants have participated in that one. So, we are extremely satisfied with this result, especially with the fact that we didn't benefit of Microsoft help nor to any other big names from the community for its marketing.
If you would close the Universal Thread tomorrow, do you think Microsoft will drop Visual FoxPro?
Only Microsoft could answer that one. As for my personal feelings in regards to that, one of the questions was dealing with a similar topic in order to know the feelings about the community as to know if we saved or greatly contributed to save the product. I believe a 65% result in that question is a pretty good sign of the recognition of the community to what the Universal Thread succeeded to achieve in the last six years.
So, as to know if Microsoft would drop the product, it'd be certainly be a big surprise for them and I would probably hear a lot from them as well as from the entire community as I don't think no one wants that to happen presently.
Can you explain why you seemed to have put a lot of efforts on the .NET portion of the site?
Another simple answer: Expansion! <s>
Don't you think the fact that the site runs on a Visual FoxPro engine will have a negative impact on your attempt to attract .NET developers?
First of all, I believe .Net developers, as well as many Visual FoxPro developers, are not necessary aware of our database engine. As to know if that would change something, I would say not. If I would go to a site to get some content, I wouldn't care about what's running on the backend. As long as I find what I'm looking for, that's good enough for me.
To add more to that, there are .Net developers who use Visual FoxPro for their database engine and some others that use something else. It's just a choice of the development infrastructure and that shouldn't be a factor to decide where to get support.
Do you plan to introduce some .NET applications on the Universal Thread?
I don't see any use for it right now, as far as the main engine goes. We have a rock solid infrastructure. It took us six years to develop it and it's still under way. I don't see why we would change it. After all, I don't see how it could be faster than what it is right now as we deliver on request. As for the development environment, Visual FoxPro is a full OOP environment and that's what we need. At short term, if we'd implement some .Net related features, it'd be to make our Web Service to run as is with that as well. That's mostly what I can see at short term.
The Universal Thread has a read only Web service. Can we expect posting via the Web service soon?
Unless specific application needs such as ESPN GameCast and applications like that, I don't expect to make the Universal Thread Web Service to allow the ability to post to the Universal Thread server. After all, why would we reinvent our entireengine into a Web Service? Web Services have their own special needs. Most of them are only exposing a few methods and that's mostly what they're there for. As for us, we are already over the average, IMHO, by delivering a few dozen methods in it. But, we focus on delivering methods that will provide valuable content locally. We don't want to reinvent the wheel to redo the entire product in it. The R & D as well as the maintenance for such application is just way too much for our infrastructure. A lot of members are requesting a lot of features from us, which are not even supported by big companies. As I said earlier, we have to remain realist.
The Dashboard was appreciated by all PUTM. Do you plan to add something to it?
We added recently the ability for a member to show the last 10 private messages in it as well as the ability to get access to a message directly. That's pretty much what it'd cover. The Dashboard is a great feature. It provides instant click to specific options. I believe all members should make good use of it. As for PUTM, it may have helped a little bit to get more members but that didn't change that much. However, there was a need to do it and if that could help to get more PUTM, we'd all be happy about it.
What can we expect from the Universal Thread for the upcoming years?
Ongoing evolution in various areas such as a better documentation, simplifying several parts of the site, faster access to important content, a greater recognition of our magazine, increase of bandwidth, enhancement of the product towards new technologies (SOAP 3, VFP 8, etc), more services, etc.
How do you see Universal Thread in 5 years?
It evolves too fast thus it's almost impossible to imagine it on a one year period. I just hope we would get the recognition that we deserve. Presently, it's not the case. I don't believe we are respected as we should be. We need to increase our image thus would help to get the recognition and respect.
The UTMag/Rapozine magazine has one year this month. Why have you started this magazine?
A portion of it is in regards to the previous question. We needed something professional to add to our value. The magazine was a good initiative. Our content, artwork, regular delivery, interfaces availability and renowned authors, all that combined together, goes into the other portion. We deliver what the community needs. It's now getting closer to reach its professional recognition and that'd be a major plus for us. We are still encouraging writers to continue to submit us their ideas and articles about the evolution of the industry.
After one year, the magazine has changed a lot. Can you resume that year?
What can we expect to see in the UTMag/Rapozine for the next 12 months?
A greater recognition, more writers, a lot of technical articles on SOAP 3, Web Services, XML and related topics
Finally, you find a bottle in the desert, open it and a jinni grants you only one wish. What is this wish?
My wish would be to have several wishes. I would then be able to wish to remain in good health, find some time to sleep and take a one-day vacation. Not to forget - worldwide problems to be solved!
