RE: i NATION ListServer Confusion/ownership

Buck,

Don't know as I have any answers, but here's my best guesses.  (>>)

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-midrange-l@midrange.com
[mailto:owner-midrange-l@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Buck Calabro
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2001 3:02 PM
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: RE: i NATION ListServer Confusion/ownership


>>Waiting for IBM (or my employer!) just
>>hasn't worked that well in the past.

>Has iNation been established long enough to
>legitimately complain like this?

Great question!  Let me counter with another (or two <grin>): What's IBM's
intent behind iNation? http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/nation/

>> A lot of people attribute near-demonic motivations to IBM's actions.
Sometimes you can over-analyze things (speaking from experience).  IBM wants
to sell more computers at a profit.

>> I wrote them their goal _should_ be to achieve a near-monopoly in the
server market, since they have the two best servers on the planet (both made
from the same chip).

Have IBM succeeded?

>> IMHO, _way_ too early to tell.

Are they intending to reveal some new things every week
until the entire plan is laid out before us?

>> What plan?  As far as reveal new things each week, I would have no idea.

>> However, they had no changes for about a month, and last couple weeks
there are fairly regular changes.  If you go by history (and I normally do)
which do you go by?  IMHO, you go by the trend, and the trend is towards
more changes and enhancements.

Are they intending it as a
marketing vehicle?

>> Absolutely.  They say that consistently.  MHO is that this is just a
facet, where most see this as the only thing it will ever do.

It's difficult to say from the less than lofty position
I occupy.  My comments aren't a complaint as much as a rallying cry.

>> That's how I took it...  I would think others would.

John Carr has tried in the past to get people here to send email to various
non-AS/400 publications, to simply get us some exposure.  I daresay his
efforts haven't borne as much fruit as he'd like.  If we gripe among
ourselves, we're just griping.  If we have constructive comments, we should
pass them on to official IBM - right now, iNation.  They are listening!

>> I agree with every bit of this 100%, exactly!

>> I would add, though, that if you really want to help the iSeries and it's
Community, you would also want to send these things to the press.  I believe
John would agree with that too.  I was probably preaching to the choir but I
wrote IBM that "I think the press sells as many computers as advertising
does."  (Wrote that on IGNITe, too.)

>> I believe I misspoke because I'm sure, now, that good press sells _a lot
more_ computers.  How many ads for a pSeries or xSeries have you seen?  I've
seen plenty.  Never bought a one of them.  And if I did, I would first read
reviews about them and talk to people that had one.  I wouldn't buy one
based on an ad.

>> From what little I know, which is very little, marketing folks will say
ads are great for building "warm and fuzzies" and that's necessary.  But I
don't necessarily believe that the "impressions" and "page-views" they go
for necessarily translate into sales.  I think most companies agree with
this opinion, and that's why they're cutting back on web banners and such.


>What would the world be like if iNation
>didn't exist?

Right now, today?  iNation could evaporate off the web and never be missed.

>> Absolutely...  (Well, I'd miss it.)

That's why we need to make ourselves heard.  Go post  some feedback today!
Tell IBM what you love about the box, what you want added, kept, removed:
tell them everything!

>> Well, my experience with trying the feedback page (how do you say...?)
sucks.  Around COMMON, I sent in feedback to ask if they could list the
names of the people in the Freedom Council.  I don't care that they never
did it, but yes, I do think it sucks that they couldn't at least reply.

>> I sent them notice yesterday that they had a busted link.  (You couldn't
get to the "Press" section off of "Voices".)  Glad to see they fixed the
link, but am more than a little indignant about the fact that they couldn't
send me back any reply.  Doesn't matter if they had already fixed the link,
when they got my feedback.  If nothing else, they should have some kind of
auto-reply set up.

>> I take it that my feedback means that little.  How else could I take it?

>> Is this constructive criticism?  No, this is a rant.  Constructive
criticism, by definition, needs to be offered to someone who can change
things and who's willing to listen.  Of course, since there's no way to have
a dialogue using the feedback page, you can't give constructive criticism
about the fact there is no reply from your feedback.  (Shew...! That is one
Catch-22.)

>> BTW, if anyone's read some of my other posts and thinks I'm blind to
IBM's problems, well...  I wouldn't necessarily assume that.  I've never
found where it pays to be blind, but of course I still am at times.  But I
do try to be blind even-handedly.

I believe that our inaction will doom iNation to become an online sales
brochure.

>> I don't know if this is opinion or fact.  In my mind, it's an absolute
fact.  I guess I see it that way, because I see that the primary value of
the iNation _has_ to be the actions of it's Citizens, not IBM.  If nothing
else, just based on the massive numbers of Citizens.  (Which, curiously,
they no longer post on the site.  I'd guess around 40,000 by now, plus or
minus.  I thought about sending in some feedback, at one time, but I'm glad
I didn't spend the effort.)



Buck, thanks for the comments and the questions ! !

jt

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