Take an active role in the future of IBM i

Richard you said:



"If you are offended by a little lively discussion, then you have the
power of the delete key available at any time.

Do not squash free speech or lively discussion just because it doesn't
feel right to you :-)

You can join in or tune out."



I couldn't agree more with you.



I also agree with your thoughts on advertising. I personally believe that
the iManifest should be more about collective dialogues such as this.
Definitely with more focus on the subject matter of helping to promote IBM
i.



For example we could have a live (and probably very lively) debate once a
month that each member hoists in turn. But on contentious and interesting
issues that there are known different schools of thought on. You have a
small but successful company. I am certain you have some useful views and
ideas that you may not be able to directly use for your own business, but
would certainly contribute towards evolving the intellectual, commercial
direction and knowledge of the platform in general. Why waste that
intellectual capital.



Business is about commercial ideas, and in my experience the smaller more
dynamic entrepreneurs like yourself, often tend to have more interesting and
relevant ideas, than the lumbering bureaucratic big corporate companies.
Unfortunately it's the big budgets of the corporates that allow them to hold
court and set strategy most often, and so they often stagnate an otherwise
vibrant and intellectually rich community. The iManifest is a way of pooling
resources and ideas to overcome this. Its different from COMMON in that's
its primary motivation is commercial, underpinned by technological
relevance. No-one knows this better than a small to medium sized tool or
software vendor who has to have something that people want, otherwise they
go hungry.



So I am all for the iManifest as way to provide a forum of commercially
driven ideas and innovations from the entire i community, not just the big
guys.



And BTW i though i was waiting for you to come back to me about X-Web J oops
sorry about that.







Cheers



Stuart