I've Joined MACH Alliance Executive Advisory Board to Help Move Digital Experiences Forward

I'm excited that the MACH Alliance has chosen an independent, non-vendor Executive Advisory Board member like myself.

I'll be honest, when I first heard about the MACH Alliance, my first instinct was "This sounds like a lot of vendors and agencies looking for a new project."

Did I mention that I'm naturally skeptical of marketing? You may have picked that up from my posts in the past 😀

Fast-forward two years, what I've seen develop is a growing community of industry professionals working to improve digital experiences wherever they are. The fact that you have seeming competitors working together and finding common ground gives you that clue.

It's rare to see. And the fact that I can work on it with industry friends like Scott Silverman, Jason Goldberg, and Brian Walker is just a bonus. Looking forward to meeting the entire group too.

Want to know where I will push MACH? It's simple -- on their own mission to help improve users' lives. Witness:

"The MACH Alliance presents and advocates for composable, truly open and future-proof best-of-need architecture"

To me, the emphasis is on NEED. Where is the need for MACH? Personally, I think where there is the most acute need for MACH is in the upper-middle market and Enterprise realms. I define upper-middle market as $200M+ annual revenue to $1B, and Enterprise as $1B+.

Times where your needs are complex and diverse enough, that any one vendor is never going to represent more than 30% of your entire digital stack.

To me, the MACH principles are the start of the conversation, not the end. Architectural purity is not a worthy goal: customer needs, and business needs are.

The ideas behind MACH are not revolutionary -- they are, however a great reminder that the evolution of your technology infrastructure needs to be thoughtful. Object-oriented programming has been around since the 1960s, and even then, it's not the first time a separation of concerns in software development was deemed a good idea. No one wants a codebase that is "a big ball of mud."

Where can MACH go? To me, wherever it likes, but as an Advisor I have a point of view that is focused on not just the needs of the vendors, agencies, and consultants that are part of the community.... but more importantly on the needs of brands and retailers to serve their customers better.

It's still too hard to evaluate, adopt and procure "best of need" technology. That's another place the Alliance can be helpful that I will be focused on.

Having a pulse on this ecosystem is important, even if every project I personally run across doesn't need a headless approach -- that's OK too.

Because it's focused on the real needs of the business. "Best of Need" means helping businesses and users, not technology for its own sake... or finding the headless hammer for every nail out there.