Doug wrote:
> I don't have a problem with members only balloting (and I am not currently a
> member) unless the ballot is actually commissioned by HP and/or is the most
> important factor that HP uses in determining future enhancements.
Other than individual enhancement requests and huge customers who can
demand things directly, Interex has historically been the sole channel
approved by HP for advocacy between the user community and HP. So at
least in the past, the SIB might come pretty close to being "the most
important factor that HP uses in determining...", at least for some
types of activity.
Interex is certainly free to run their organization however they choose,
and access to advocacy certainly seems like a worthwhile benefit of
membership. As long as Interex is able to deliver the best advocacy
channel for HP's purposes, it certainly makes sense for HP to only pay
attention to this one source, rather than having to individually deal
with a whole bunch of different groups.
As long as this works, everybody wins. Interex grows in membership,
Interex Members get the benefit of having their opinions perhaps carry
more weight than if they were simply called into the RC as "enhancement
requests" which might never get management visibility, and HP gets
Interex to do much of their customer survey work for them.
Where it begins to fall apart is if Interex no longer is able to deliver
the best channel for advocacy in a particular area (say the HP3000 for
example). Today there is a new user's group for the HP3000 that is not
associated with Interex. It is this list, HP3000-L.
Unlike the "batch mode" paradigm of Interex (monthly newsletter, yearly
conferences, etc.) HP3000-L operates in "online mode" with instant access
to information and ongoing discussions of the sort that take place in the
halls of an HP World conference.
Yesterday Jeff posted that there are now 1050 direct subscribers to the
list. In a follow-up discussion, he checked and found that about 60 of
these subscribers have "hp.com" email addresses. That implies that this
list now represents about 1000 people who, in one way or another, rely on
the HP3000 to make their living or to keep their business running. This
does not include an unknown (and possibly larger) number of people who
access the list via the newsgroup reflector or via one of the summary
services.
HP3000-L now provides a daily audience comparable in size to an HP World
conference. Statistically speaking, the readers of HP3000-L must now
represent a very broad range of HP3000 users. While perhaps some may
argue that the people who *post* to the list still do not well represent
the "average" user, I wonder if HP have noticed that the people who *read*
HP3000-L now almost certainly *do* represent a broad spectrum of users,
probably very close in makeup to the overall Interex membership.
So a question that Interex must ask themselves is whether they can afford
to exclude the nonmember denizens of HP3000-L from the SIB ballot voting.
If they allow everyone to vote, they are delivering both Interex and non-
Interex users opinions to HP, thus remaining the best advocacy channel
for HP. If they choose to exclude nonmembers, then at what point does
their survey provide less information than would have been gathered by
a non-Interex SIB type ballot done purely by volunteers working together
through HP3000-L?
If Interex becomes more exclusionary, at what point does the current base
of volunteers, SIG leaders, etc., decide that they will get a bigger "win"
by working outside the Interex framework? Can a traditional user's group
organization like Interex justify its communication and advocacy roles in
the Internet age, or are they relegated to the role of magazine publisher
and large trade show organizer?
Have we reached, or are we close to reaching this point already? A
question to Interex: What are the current membership numbers, broken
down by category (site/training versus "value" versus free, etc.)?
HP3000-L. The International HP3000 Users Community.
G.
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