Re: Fwd: "State of the Midrange" by Don Rima

I was thinking about usa today.  it's not as financial or business
oriented, but it does have a big reading.  i read it all the time when
out of town. 

i've had no experience in keeping contributions for something like this,
but i would imagine some kind of record of contributors and amounts done
in a spreadsheet would work.  If you really wanted to do it special, a
bank account could be set up specifically.  and before money is sent,
would a pledging type system be in order to see if we have a prayer of
meeting the goal?  we could volunteer to handle the financial end if
you're taking names.

for ideas on gathering contributors, there are several other as/400
related newsgroups.  would places like news/400, midrange, and
source/400 be willing to put up a blurb to go to, say a website to
solicite funds for this?  


we need to look at this as our one bullet to get:

- the attention of ibm as to the opportunity they are missing to capture
market share on a great system 

- the attention of the business community that the as/400 is a great
system, and they too are missing out.  

for example, last week i was visiting my dad and his wife, (who live in
tennessee) and they have a company that writes and markets a p/c
application for job contractors.  they started in commercial basic for
dos, and rewrote it for windows in visual basic.  they were moaning
about the support nightmares they have and most of them are p/c related
(specifically windows), and how hard it is to draw the line on what you
can and can't do.  

i told them we almost never have these kinds of problems, and they were
surprised.  they've known i'm true blue ibm midrange, and in fact,
katherine (dad's wife) worked long ago on 34's.  but they have been with
p/c's so long, they now accept general protection faults, files
trashing, etc, as a normal part of doing business.

nj


DAsmussen@aol.com wrote:
> 
> Folks,
> 
> I found Don's article to be quite insightful, and the "eunuchs" reference to
> be rather funny to us AS/400 folk rather than an affront to other system
> proponents.  Considering the fact that most UNIX professionals, even on AIX,
> earn an average of 20% less than do AS/400 professionals, this should be
> _YOUR_ concern as well.  AS/400 professionals earn more, obviously _NOT_
> because the system is harder to use, but because we generally understand
> business processes that most computer professionals of other ilk do not.
> 
> I somehow doubt that those of us that participate frequently in these lists
> be able to come up with the cash necessary to run a full page ad in "The Wall
> Street Journal"; however, we probably _COULD_ come up with the funds for
> publication in a similar national forum.  Frankly, if we had WSJ money, I'd
> be more than peeved that David has to beg for donations every year for the
> maintenance of these lists.  If you'd like, I'd solicit "the trades", as
> including publications such as "USA Today", to see what they'd charge for a
> full page ad.  IMO, less than a full page ad would be ineffective.
> 
> We could solicit "open letters", vote on the results (if David were amicable
> toward such an arrangement), and vote on the publication in which to post
> based upon advertising rates.  What we _NEED_ is someone to research, or who
> already knows,  how to place donations for group advertising in an account
> for which contributors would be reimbursed if we didn't meet the advertising
> dollar target.  We'd also need a method by which to offer amendments to the
> "open letter".  But, finally, we'd need a method by which to solicit
> donations from persons and enterprises other than those that are members of
> midrange.com lists in order to receive the necessary financing.
> 
> I'm game, is anyone else?  Any alternative plans or ideas that would enhance
> this one?
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