RE: "Filibuster or letters to the editors

John, you are right.

<snip>

>OUR eagerness to point the finger to blame others for the markets
ignorance
>of the AS/400 is getting old.

It is getting old.

>How many of us who complain about how little coverage the magazines give
>to the AS/400 actually have written to the editors encouraging them to
>write about the AS/400??

At the risk of sounding pompous I have.  I will usually spend an hour a
week
looking for articles.  If I agree with them I tell them.  If I don't I tell
them too.  If I
get good information I will usually forward it on to the editors also.
Alas, I don't
get printed very often and have no idea of the impact it is having -
besides the
absolutely nothing that leaps to mind!  :-)

>If we feel the trade magazines are ignoring us,   I urge everyone who is
>reading this message to signon to WWW.COMPUTERWORLD.COM,  WWW.BYTE.COM
>and the rest of the magazines and say:
>
>"As one of your customers, I and many others at our company would like
>your magazine to increase your coverage of the AS/400, which runs our
>"Mission Critical" systems"
>
>
>BTW, (don't forget InformationWeek who has said to one AS/400 person about
>coverage,  "If you think our coverage is unfair, don't buy our magazine".)
>
>Don't you think the editors would be effected if they got mail from
>thousands of subscribers asking this??
>
>WRITE THEM TO DAY.  It is something constructive that you personally can
do
>that will have an effect.
>
>If we Just wrote as many letters to the editors as we have about other
>important subjects like;
>left hand indicators, or DOW/DOU or how many milliseconds a Z-ADD takes,
>Computerworld would be writing articles by now!!!

At the risk of sounding corny I will tell you what got me started.

I was at the AS/400e announcement in Indianapolis where Bob Tipton said
essentially that we as AS/400 customers should be proud of our machines
and our decisions - they are good, they are cool, they are slick, they are
not
stodgy....the way he said it clicked a little.  Then the soundoff at COMMON
in San Antonio occured.  Shortly after that I wrote a letter to Julie Furey
complaining about the lack of 'image'.  She was very nice and open.  But
she
said one thing that really got me thinking.  She lamented how she could not
understand why such a succesful machine with such satisfisfaction numbers
seemed to get so little vocal support from it's customers.

I've always prided myself on being a 'doer' but I found in this case I
wasn't.
I've never been one to write to the editor until a few months ago.  I do
now.
It is one of the benefits of living in a free electronic society.  You can
do it
and it's easy.  Heck, I've even written Lou Gerstner to tell him what a
good
machine it is....

It is not all doom and gloom out there.  Perhaps media coverage has
expanded.
Perhaps it will expand more.  There are now over 500,000 installed AS/400's
out there.  First quarter sales were up 12% from prior quarter
(unofficially of
course).  New customers were reported to make up approximately 25% of the
sales.  Stability is still great, price/performance is great,
functionality is expanding rapidly, and so on.

John, thanks for the note.  It has reminded me that there are positive and
constructive ways to tackle this issue.


Respectfully,

Michael Crump






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