> they're more worried about messaging than being simple and useful
But useful means different things to different people. To a dev, Docker might mean you keep your environment clean, scripting of automated testing, and have platform agnostic deployments. To the CIO, Docker means your devs spend less time futzing around with their stuff and more time working on the product. Or that he can upgrade his infrastructure gradually and not have to worry about compatibility. Yes, it's the same thing, but different audiences need different messaging.
> To the CIO, Docker means your devs spend less time futzing around with their stuff and more time working on the product
The question is whether or not the CIO knows that the devs are in fact futzing around with ad hoc solutions to problems that Docker solves.
I think the parent is arguing that in the right flow of things, that awareness is going to flow up to them from the people closest to the problem (the dev/ops folks working with it) rather than from a vendor with a vested interest in adoption to an exec/manager whose understanding of the problems their staff face may well be a high-level view at best. And who are prone to make decisions off of social proof plus that good messaging rather than knowing how well the solution fits their problems.
(Not that having the engineering staff involved is any guarantee that decision won't be mostly made off of social proof plus messaging. It just decreases the chances. :/ )
From my experience, it's not either-or. First you need "bottom-up" adoption by actual practitioners (in the case of Docker, developers and sysadmins). Then you also need to understand the constraints and requirements of people who are in a position to say "no". Those include managers, but also procurement, architects, network engineers, security teams, etc. Those people aren't the ones championing your product (most of the time they don't have very strong opinions either way), but they have a job to do, and if a new dev tool affects their ability to do their job, they're going to say "no".
It's very common for developers or sysadmin to contact us and ask for a powerpoint deck, so that they can give a convincing presentation to their management about the virtues of using Docker in their new project. We even have specialized teams that go in and do everything they can to help Docker-based projects succeed.
But as you point out, it all starts with someone inside the organization who really, really wants to use your product. Otherwise no amount of messaging is going to save you.
But useful means different things to different people. To a dev, Docker might mean you keep your environment clean, scripting of automated testing, and have platform agnostic deployments. To the CIO, Docker means your devs spend less time futzing around with their stuff and more time working on the product. Or that he can upgrade his infrastructure gradually and not have to worry about compatibility. Yes, it's the same thing, but different audiences need different messaging.