David McGavran Interview

C4Dzone staff is proud to show you the interview with David McGavran, new Maxon's CEO.

Hi David, first of all thanks for your time, we are excited to make this interview with you. We know that you are the new CEO of MAXON company. Would you like to tell us more about you?
Thank you for this opportunity to talk to the C4D Zone community.
A bit about me ... I graduated with a computer science degree from the University of Maine a long time ago. At school, I had the extreme fortune to join a student group called ASAP Media Services. This gave me the chance to meet people at Apple on the QuickTime team and I was hired as a QuickTime programmer.
After a couple of other jobs, I landed a position at Adobe and found my way onto the Adobe Premiere team as the Mac QuickTime programmer. I spent 20 years at Adobe, 19 of which were in the video group. I went from programming in Premiere to After Effects and then into management.
I loved working in the M&E segment and I had an amazing time at Adobe. I got to work closely with industry-leading editors, directors, compositors and learned how the best productions come to life.
During my years at Adobe, I met my wife who is German and had two amazing kids. Some years ago, we decided to move back to Germany. Fast forward, and with an amazing stroke of luck, MAXON contacted me about the CEO position. The headquarters office happens to be close to where we wanted to live.
So here I am getting to work with an amazing company I knew as a partner, with an amazing product, working with an amazing team of employees and a very similar set of customers. I couldn't be happier.

Adobe's David McGavran shows how Apple's Metal technology gives Illustrator a fluid new zoom ability.

You know that Cinema4D is very appreciated during these years by Motion Graphic artist and the most of them love new tools. What are Cinema4D's strengths and weaknesses for you?
Maxon's greatest strength is its ease of use and its fit with the other tools artists use in their pipeline. Our integration with Adobe's suite of tools is unmatched in the industry. The reason why Cinema 4D is the 3D application of choice for motion graphics artists is largely due to MoGraph - our procedural content creation and animation toolset. And, though not a feature of Cinema 4D, our community is definitely one of our greatest strengths.
In fairness, I think the weakness is that it isn't the easiest product to buy. It depends on the region and the reseller how you get your hands on Cinema. We want to make that much easier.

Past years we heard from big software houses as Adobe, Autodesk and other companies about licenses method and new way to sell the software world wide. We are talking about yearly licensing versus perpetual licenses. What do you think about this new way to sell software and what will do Maxon regarding licenses?
I think the most important thing for any software is that is easy and pleasant to acquire as a customer. MAXON currently offers short term rentals, perpetual and a service plan that allows you to stay up to date. We are excited to be giving our customers these options. Going forward it should be easier and faster to purchase Cinema4D. That is something we are working hard on.

MAXON's Executives

As MAXON’s CEO how is your typical business day at office…after the first morning coffe?
Generally after the first coffee I quickly get a second cup! It has been quite busy since I have been here. As you can read from our announcements we have been rolling out a world wide organization. That means I have met most if not all the employees so far. I have traveled to the Canadian office and the US office. Finding out what makes everyone passionate and why they want to be in the MAXON family. So I have been spending most of my time in meetings, getting to know everyone. As well, I have been spending a lot of time getting to know the product better and the customers. Finally I have a lot of learning to do, so I have been learning how the company runs and learning about the other companies in the Nemetschek group.

BodyPaint, historical and revolutionary Cinema 4D painting module is very old now and its development seems to be stopped, but we know that something is moving. Do you have any news about this great painting module?
While I have no concrete news to share today, we love BodyPaint and the amazing work done by our customers using it.

You know, Maxon is present on many part of the world with reseller and rappresentative offices. Do you think the online shopping will be change the way of the software distribution? Does the future direction will be online sales only?
Obviously online shopping has already changed the way software is distributed. That is nothing MAXON is going to influence as it already happened. I think customers will always want to buy online but also talk directly with a real person when it makes sense. Supporting both models is how we work today and I anticipate seeing that going forward as well.

What are your passions outside of professional career?
Obviously in the roles I have had, work takes up a lot of my time. When I get off, I try first and foremost to spend time with my family. I have an amazingly supportive wife and two great kids. We take as much time as possible to travel all over with the kids to give them an open view of the world. If there is extra time I try to keep in shape with trianing for triathalons. That comes and goes though.

How do you see changing Maxon in next three years?
Hopefully I will only change the things that I can help to improve on. Maxon has amazing software, amazing customers and a great communication between the two. I hope to not change that at all. My main goal is to help Maxon operate on a larger stage so we can work with more customers all over the world and help us move faster. I think I have learned a lot in my previous roles that I can use to help.

What is the most important thing you are working on at Maxon?
Thats easy ;) The next thing. I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise though.

How does the Maxon team choose new upcoming Cinema4D features? And how does Maxon collect users suggestions?
Maxon has various ways of collecting feature input. Visiting customers, talking to various people at events but also accepting direct feedback from our website and e-mail channels. The features will be validated by the product management team and prioritized. That will result in them landing in the roadmap and backlog.

Thanks for your time David and it was a pleasure make this interview. Is there anything you would like to say to our C4Dzone users?
Thanks for believing in us and partnering with us. Keep in touch as we are always listening.