In fact, should we have a users meeting that is voice based? Would any of you make the time to join in?
Julie

Hi Julie,

good to hear that something is happening, at last


Good idea.


I think some forums would benefit a lot by input from EMC! Lani is contributing heavily
in WDK forum, and I would like to see more EMC post in i.e DFC/BOF/WS/Administrator.


Which non EMC forums do you have in mind?


Good question Maybe you should consider the old idea of having a group of designated "super users" with permission to mark questions as answered, and also to
reward the points, except for themselves, of course.



All sort of rewards are always nice



I am not sure about implications for such a move. As far as I can see, the search
problem is bothering most of the people, and this has certainly to be adressed
somehow.

Regards

Joerg

Sounds good, but based on traffic to the other new categories, I wonder if it would be used much.




As Joerg said, Lani's contributions have been invaluable, and I've seen Linda Wong answer some tough questions on the WDK side. I would love to see more of this in general, but especially around the CTS products, BPS, Captiva - in other words, some of the periphery product offerings where not many of us have exposure.




Only if you guys manage to open the boards to general use. I'll address in the last question about opening up the forums.




Definitely worth it, I know at Momentum we talked to EMC about adding a "Answered" question checkbox that would only bring back search results that were marked answered.

I think the bigger and better solution would be to allow non-owners of a thread to mark answers with points or ratings. Then anyone who was helped by an answer would contribute to the rating and lend credibility to a specific answer.




Education points and Momentum attendance would be really nice.





Ok, this is the big question. I have believed for some time now that EMC needed to open the forums, but I think there are some key drivers at work that make this the right moment for EMC.

For a little historical perspective, let's go back to 2003 when Documentum setup the forums. At the time, Blue Fish's dmdeveloper forums and the Yahoo groups were very active, (and had to be) because there was no information coming back from DCTM about how to solve common issues.

I think DCTM felt that giving away this type of information would cannibalize their Enterprise Support revenue, and maybe it would have to an extent....but the truth of the matter is that DCTM was losing its relevance. DCTM's reputation as the experts and sole source of information was in serious jeopardy, to the point where an external company would have been perfectly positioned to provide external first/second level support to customers and developers.

So, DCTM threw its hat in the ring, and setup a forum. Traffic on the dmdeveloper board and Yahoo groups slowly diminished as the critical mass of the forums brought in more and more developers. The point/reward system brought people to the boards, as well as the fact that you had internal support notes and documentation that was not available anywhere else. And of course, you had the fact that it was the DCTM name....so long story short, DCTM reestablished itself and its reputation as "the" source. The very fragmented world of DCTM support was once again brought under the DCTM name.

Jump to today, there are some very interesting trends that mirror what was going on back in 2003, but with a different spin. Once again, the DCTM self-support options are becoming more diverse. Dmdeveloper is getting more traffic and contology.com has become very active which leads one to ask what the motivating factors are behind this fragmentation.

I believe it comes down to openness. People and customers are demanding open systems and information, the traditional paradigm of information control is being swapped for the ability to integrate, the ability to search/retrieve/manipulate information in ways never imagined by the original source. This vision has already been embraced by companies on the cutting edge of information, such as Amazon with its web service interface/API, or Google with its mapping API that has spawned thousands of custom applications all created by enthusiasts. As a leader in information, EMC should be leading this charge, not only delivered from the pulpit of the marketing and sales department, but internally as well.

(Enough talk!) Let me enumerate some key reasons for opening up the forums:

* Consolidate the developer base - As I stated earlier, some of the other forums are growing very quickly and this is in no small part because they are open. Some users participate in open forums because they believe in the principle, others because they are not registered powerlink users or in between contracts, others because the search ability is far more advanced than powerlink. Whatever the reason, a knowledge base (such as the forums) is more powerful and useful when it is solidified, and bringing people back would be a boon for all the end users. From the EMC standpoint, it is of course desirable to be seen as "the" place to go for questions. To illustrate my point, think about the VMWare forums, how embarrassing would it have been to that company (pre EMC) if all their end users used an external message board...I can't think that EMC would have seen it as a plus during the acquisition.


* Global Search - The opening of the forums would allow external search engines to index our threads and bring back results. While that may sounds scary to some, consider our "cousins" who use VMWare. When you research a problem on Google, you get back personal blog posts, official release notes, and forum responses. Exactly what you need to solve the problem, and what the customer and market demands.


* Integration abilities not yet imagined - An example is an RSS feed. I would love to have an RSS feed that gave me the latest
threads from the forums, but since the site is not open this is not possible. How many other great applications could be developed with the information we have all contributed to the boards? A graph report showing which product areas had reported the most issues/threads? This would be a great app for product managers who wanted to monitor the effects of a new release. A meta search engine that would use Google to search across the forums and the developer network to try to find a code sample for your question? The possibilities are endless.



To finish off a very long-winded response, I think it is easy to find examples of product companies that have been successful opening up their technical forums to the public. Customers/End Users/The Market...call it whatever you want, there is a demand for information to be available, not only to for use as explicitly specified by the owner, but also to those creative enough to compose something new.

Julie,

Very excited that this is being looked at. I would like to 2nd Fabian's thoughts and add some specifics. I am going to respond to your points in the order of importance.

- Making the forums public: YES!!!
I like being able to search forums and service notes at the same time, but having the forums open to the general public would be great. It would allow Google to index, and when people do Google searches, and keep getting forum hits back, then traffic can expand even more. There are independent contractors that have to fight to get access sometimes, and they are valuable contributors.

2: Having more EMC people browse and answer some questions would be great. There are a lot of little annoying nuances to the products that a couple of posts would save a lot of time for everyone. Maybe having a specific EMC employee assigned to monitor each forum.

4: Maybe after a user posts a question, they are presented with a screen reminding them of previous questions, asking them to award answers. "Your Other Questions". Unless you can create a lower, 3rd level point award (1pt for useful), only the asker should award points. It could lead to abuse. Another thought, if an EMC employee is assigned to a forum, they could award points if they see answered posts go unrewarded.

5: All awards should be over a set period of time, say quarterly. No user should be eligible for an award if they have one one in the past year (The Johnny Gee rule). As for awards: Presenter slot at user conference. Membership on Forum Guidance Committee. Access to pre-release versions of products.

3: Marketing only works if the forums are open.

1: Off-topic forums only work if they are open and actively moderated.

I think a call would be a great idea, though I would extend membership only to those that post in ths thread AND that are active in the forums. (This would rule me out, but it is a good rule.)

Very well put Fabian. I couldnt agree with you further. Julie, it might make sense to set up a conference call open to discuss this further with anyone who's interested.

Good point. It would be nice to rub shoulders with some great minds.



A definite yes. However, I think the EMC personnel might not be inclined because a)their word might be taken as official EMC word ("According to EMC....")
b)They may make mistakes and the fear of embarrassment (being an EMC employee) might be keeping them away. Regardless, it would be nice to see greater input from EMC to share some knowlede rather than only funnel that through consulting services.



Well, I think even a moderator per forum might not be the complete answer. it has to involve the actual user also. Some means of reminding users that they have 10 open questions and either they close the threads or they will not be able to open new threads. Also another option during closing the thread such as "Answers did not help, but close this thread/inactivate this question" would provide users with more options. Finally, a moderator should also be involved in awarding/closing threads if the users ignore reminders. It would be ideal if the forums were based on "quid pro quo" where people reward others for helping them out.



I like all of the above recommendations. Furthering skills via education/user forum would benefit EMC by keeping the technology open and motivating people. Rewards should start a lower levels too and not be limited to the higher ends (perhaps a graded system)



Yes, please. God know how many times, one has been frustrated by the weak search capabilities of powerlink. Although others have harped about it, not much tangible architectural changes have taken place. Other boards are never this complicated to search. And that personally is what drives me to the check out other boards. Perhaps opening up the board might make search more easier to use.

From my perspective I think EMC person should do that. Many people involved in forum traffic will probably note that forum moderator could be job as any other and free involvement probably wouldn't be supported by their companies. But on the other hand moderator should simply take care that threads in right place and sometimes jump in with KB search results which original poster would forget to take a look - so perhaps people will find that job appealing.

To be honest I'm not sure... My view of moderator is someone who would be there and jump in with many answers others could not to. And there is no better person than EMC person who would probably have tools to search for information required and help person asking question. Of course, there is a problem here. There is also something called EMC support so there would be question raised where is the line. Is it after hint? How deep in details should that person go? Obviously moderator which is outside EMC would have less resources than the one coming from EMC waters.

Wow thank you all, I have a bit of work to do to make this ready for the meeting.

1. I'll follow up this it can't hurt but it will depend on people using it. Is this the time to start having a non EMC person with moderator powers? Any takers?

2. I think that this is also - better management of some of the forums with more EMC involvement in providing answers. Big project.

an extra question here - when a forum clearly hasn't built up a natural community already what should we do? - I'll start a new thread on that.

4. I suspect we're going to need a new platform to cope with the threads answering thing, but better community management might help.

5. I'll have to track down some way to fund more rewards. I'll keep note of the preferred ones.


Should going outside wait until we have our house in order?

also another new thread.

Thanks its great!!

And I'll get an act together to have a real voice meeting - I'll just invite everyone who contributes just to this thread.

I think everyone in this thread wants to be a moderator!




I think recruiting a skilled moderator and a DCTM engineer/product manager to jump in on the hard questions could go a long way toward bootstrapping the new forums.

Offtopic or Open Talk should be fine.


Yes, I think it is important for people using forums to have someone with EMC background to be there and monitor answers and participates.


Not sure I understand this one - can you explain?


No idea... but I see many avoiding that. I guess it is worth it otherwise whole score game doesn't make sense.


iPod for me. My Creative Zen NX (4 years old) is no longer supported by Microsoft WMP11 and Creative doesn't plan to release updated firmware


My understanding is that all EMC customers and people involved in EMC business have access to PL. Thus they have access to forums. Opening it up would simply increase spam I believe so I do not support that idea.

Respectfully, I actually think that there is no one better to moderate the EMC forums than forum contributors who have answered thousands of similar questions.

Also, no one understands the forum community like a contributor. Whether we want to admit it or not, this little social microcosm has its own laws and norms that are foreign to anyone not involved.

I actually have to disagree with Fabian here. Except for the off-topic forum when implemented outside of Powerlink, I think all forums should have an EMC moderator.

Why? One, it will maybe get some more EMC feedback responses posted. Second, by giving it to an EMC employee, you have someone that has a vested, job related, interest in checking it at least once a day. Mind you, I have no problem with the assigned EMC moderator delegating to a forum participant when they went on vacation, but the EMC moderator for that forum would be best suited to identify that person.

I think Fabian could moderate quite well if he was permitted, but I would rather the responsiblity rest on EMC as it is their forums.

For the off-topic forums though, I think if the goal is to build community, then it would make sense for non-EMC moderators, assuming and EMC person peeked in to make sure that nothing got out of hand.

Well put Fabian...guess its not too late to jump in



I think we should have general off topic, coffee room type forum, however, it would have to be moderated more then other product forums.




Every now and then we get some requests in forum on behalf of product managers asking about enhancements, issues, etc. But soon after that thread I don't see them contributing here. Lani has been invaluable to WDK community, but other areas are pretty much left behind.



Instead of someone marking questions as answered, I would like to see a rating system. Once a post receives say 25 positive ratings, then the thread is marked helpful. Now the question remains about the posts where more then 1 user respond correctly (it usually happens when they post concurrently). May be rating at the post level may work.

Having this approach will ease out the guesswork on picking a single post. User community would do this task. It may need a jump start from top contributors though



As far as rewards are concerned, everyone has there own preference. What I would suggest is to have some kind of reward points (not another credit card offer ), where for every 100 forum points, you get x award points. This would give users flexibility in picking the rewards, as well address issues pointed by Shoeb about reward points slab.

My own personal comment on this is as follows:

I only post to this forum because the EMC Support Forums are not visible to the outside world. I know a lot of people are comfortable with making their personal information public, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who is leery about sharing their information outside of a regulated environment.

I understand the benefit of the Google search tools - as I am also extremely frustrated with Powerlink's search capabilities - but I'm willing to sacrifice that to be able to be part of a forum I can feel safe using.

Since I have only been using the Forum for a little over a year, maybe my opinion doesn't hold as much weight as comments made by seasoned veterans, but I felt that this perspective needed to be heard.

Thanks,
Jennifer

I like this approach. It is step forward towards already expressed idea where users (others than original posted) could mark thread helpful. However same problem remains - having users marking it. Perhaps a popup (which people hate anyway) when changing page/closing tab/window asking them to mark it would way to go in case you wish to push this marking policy.