Chopping off their own feet....
-
@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
Here is my question. Why does everything have to be sponsored? Its ok to get sponsors to help out on big events where major resources are required. Here is the thing that bothers me, Why are we having simple 30 minute webinars that are sponsored by someone. Really, how much do these webinars cost to run? $200 or less. That is pennies to the big behometh that website has become. It just makes you question the quality of the material. Are they going to cater the webinars to fall in line with a vendors product in the future?
Because of their staff size, it actually costs a fortune to do anything. It takes a lot of man hours to put on even a trivial event. Add to that that they are a business and all they sell is advertising, of course everything has to be sponsors. Why would they do something for free?
I have lots of complaints but that is not one. That's just business.
Now quality control, that is its own issue.
I disagree, Scott. I dont pretend to know more about business than you, but here is my take on it.
The whole feel of SW is changing from community driven to vendor driven. The webinars should be a way to attract new members to the community. Its a small price to pay compared to other means of advertising. I can tell you from the employee side of the coin, I am very skeptical when I see sponsored webinars. We get badgered by sales people on a daily basis and dont have anywhere near the budget to get involved in every new product we see. I am not 100% sure on this, but I would think MSPs are seen as more valuable to vendors and sales people since you can push their product to others.
Is anyone else skeptical when you see sponsored webinars.
I never see any webinars so.... Lol.
MSPs are seen as competition to the vendors. That's the issue going on now. They love vendors as partners but hate them in the community since they compete for customers.
I never quite fully understood why the vendors / msp's can't be partners. You would think vendors would sell the product, then point to MSP's in a user's vicinity (if one existed close) for further support, if that makes any sense.
With the ease and speed of remote support these days, why would they need an MSP to support their product? It would be cheaper and easy for them to have a centralized help desk to support it. On the rare occasion, that a tech needs to go on site, they reach out to an MSP/Partner.
-
@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
Here is my question. Why does everything have to be sponsored? Its ok to get sponsors to help out on big events where major resources are required. Here is the thing that bothers me, Why are we having simple 30 minute webinars that are sponsored by someone. Really, how much do these webinars cost to run? $200 or less. That is pennies to the big behometh that website has become. It just makes you question the quality of the material. Are they going to cater the webinars to fall in line with a vendors product in the future?
Because of their staff size, it actually costs a fortune to do anything. It takes a lot of man hours to put on even a trivial event. Add to that that they are a business and all they sell is advertising, of course everything has to be sponsors. Why would they do something for free?
I have lots of complaints but that is not one. That's just business.
Now quality control, that is its own issue.
I disagree, Scott. I dont pretend to know more about business than you, but here is my take on it.
The whole feel of SW is changing from community driven to vendor driven. The webinars should be a way to attract new members to the community. Its a small price to pay compared to other means of advertising. I can tell you from the employee side of the coin, I am very skeptical when I see sponsored webinars. We get badgered by sales people on a daily basis and dont have anywhere near the budget to get involved in every new product we see. I am not 100% sure on this, but I would think MSPs are seen as more valuable to vendors and sales people since you can push their product to others.
Is anyone else skeptical when you see sponsored webinars.
I never see any webinars so.... Lol.
MSPs are seen as competition to the vendors. That's the issue going on now. They love vendors as partners but hate them in the community since they compete for customers.
I never quite fully understood why the vendors / msp's can't be partners. You would think vendors would sell the product, then point to MSP's in a user's vicinity (if one existed close) for further support, if that makes any sense.
They can be. But they can't all be. And defining what is a vendor and what isn't is not possible. For example, as an Elastix support company, every phone vendor saw NTG as competition. But even if we sold Avaya, Cisco would not like it or whatever.
They want to services except their own discussed.
-
@Bill-Kindle said:
@RAM. said:
@Bill-Kindle I'm not trying to high light any major issues, I'm trying to keep it as vague as possible as there are some people who legitimately try and some of which I consider friends.
I understand your not. I'm just saying that I try really hard to not bring it up any more as I've gotten into some heated disagreements that felt like they turned into "well you can just leave then", which I was shocked by being told that. As Forrest Gump would say, "That's all I have to say about that."
Yes. The feeling is weird. It's "like it or leave it" and then if you leave you are treated as a traitor. The cult feeling is strong.
@Bill-Kindle said:
@RAM. said:
@Bill-Kindle I'm not trying to high light any major issues, I'm trying to keep it as vague as possible as there are some people who legitimately try and some of which I consider friends.
I understand your not. I'm just saying that I try really hard to not bring it up any more as I've gotten into some heated disagreements that felt like they turned into "well you can just leave then", which I was shocked by being told that. As Forrest Gump would say, "That's all I have to say about that."
-
@IRJ said:
@RAM. said:
@Bill-Kindle I'm not trying to high light any major issues, I'm trying to keep it as vague as possible as there are some people who legitimately try and some of which I consider friends.
@IRJ One thing I disagree with you on is the fact you're going to require a staff dedicated to that purpose, or take them away from their regularly scheduled duties, and you'd have to decide whose job is the most worthless you can take them off of it to set up a webinar.
True, but in the grand scheme of things its a very small price to pay for advertising.
Sure IF you are charging for advertising which was the crux of the issue.
-
@scottalanmiller
I'm not even sure it's cult, some just seems like pent up rage and jealousy that's festered for a long long time just now coming to a head.. -
@Bill-Kindle no question that there is some pent up resentment going on all over the place. Small MSPs want the big ones removed. Vendors want them all removed. IT pros want the MSPs to stay and the vendors to leave.
The problem is that they need too much revenue to support the ecosystem and trying to get everyone to pay isn't going to work. The whole point is that the product is free. So people who don't want to pay is the common denominator.
-
@Bill-Kindle said:
@scottalanmiller
I'm not even sure it's cult, some just seems like pent up rage and jealousy that's festered for a long long time just now coming to a head..@scottalanmiller makes me jealous but I won't hold that against him
-
The scale is a major issue. ML has a part time staff of two mods and one guy ( me) handling some tech stuff once in a while. That's it. They have hundreds of full time people and big offices and huge datacenter needs. That's a lot if mouths to feed based on the same product (a free community.)
You can see the panic. Web advertising from a single site is a scary thing to depend on. If traffic decreases and anyone finds out, the vendors flee and the contraction rate will be scary.
That's why a lot if the issues exist. Encouraging traffic, making vendors happy... That's all that there is.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
@RAM. said:
@Bill-Kindle I'm not trying to high light any major issues, I'm trying to keep it as vague as possible as there are some people who legitimately try and some of which I consider friends.
@IRJ One thing I disagree with you on is the fact you're going to require a staff dedicated to that purpose, or take them away from their regularly scheduled duties, and you'd have to decide whose job is the most worthless you can take them off of it to set up a webinar.
True, but in the grand scheme of things its a very small price to pay for advertising.
Sure IF you are charging for advertising which was the crux of the issue.
I meant they should see it as advertising SW, not necessarily the vendor itself. I just believe the for the amount of cost, it takes to do this they will make more in the long run by attracting new members of the community. You said they have good numbers, but they dont have a strong percentage of experts. Aren't the webinars what brings the experts into the community? I mean if you are new to SW, and you see all these people asking dumb questions, isnt it going to turn you off? What value do you as an expert get out of SW?
I can find free webinars given by vendors all day long. Generally those webinars have another motive of selling you a product so I am weary of attending them. Why cant SW offer vendor free webinars to help attract the experts to the forum? After all that is what they lack, neutral experts.
-
@scottalanmiller I don't think the small scale of ML is going to be an issue for a while. The reality is that everyone who is here, is here for a reason, we have some form of disagreeance with the other site. We are either dedicated, or ignorant to a bigger picture, and the way I see it. Everyone who is here now, is dedicated.
-
@IRJ think about how advertising SW would work. Lots of money to get ten people who found the webinar through SW to find.... SW?
They'd get no benefit from that. It would be all people who are already customers.
-
@RAM. said:
@scottalanmiller I don't think the small scale of ML is going to be an issue for a while. The reality is that everyone who is here, is here for a reason, we have some form of disagreeance with the other site. We are either dedicated, or ignorant to a bigger picture, and the way I see it. Everyone who is here now, is dedicated.
It won't be. We designed the architecture to scale past the scale that SW sees without needing any additional resources from a human standpoint. Because we don't tollgate vendors and MSPs a lot of the overhead goes away.
-
@IRJ said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
@RAM. said:
@Bill-Kindle I'm not trying to high light any major issues, I'm trying to keep it as vague as possible as there are some people who legitimately try and some of which I consider friends.
@IRJ One thing I disagree with you on is the fact you're going to require a staff dedicated to that purpose, or take them away from their regularly scheduled duties, and you'd have to decide whose job is the most worthless you can take them off of it to set up a webinar.
True, but in the grand scheme of things its a very small price to pay for advertising.
Sure IF you are charging for advertising which was the crux of the issue.
I meant they should see it as advertising SW, not necessarily the vendor itself. I just believe the for the amount of cost, it takes to do this they will make more in the long run by attracting new members of the community. You said they have good numbers, but they dont have a strong percentage of experts. Aren't the webinars what brings the experts into the community? I mean if you are new to SW, and you see all these people asking dumb questions, isnt it going to turn you off? What value do you as an expert get out of SW?
I can find free webinars given by vendors all day long. Generally those webinars have another motive of selling you a product so I am weary of attending them. Why cant SW offer vendor free webinars to help attract the experts to the forum? After all that is what they lack, neutral experts.
I use it to get direct access to vendors and other IT Pro's. I also like to help people out as much as possible to "pay it forward" if you will. That's it.
-
@RAM. said:
@scottalanmiller I don't think the small scale of ML is going to be an issue for a while. The reality is that everyone who is here, is here for a reason, we have some form of disagreeance with the other site. We are either dedicated, or ignorant to a bigger picture, and the way I see it. Everyone who is here now, is dedicated.
Not all of us have a disagreement with SW.
-
@alexntg said:
@RAM. said:
@scottalanmiller I don't think the small scale of ML is going to be an issue for a while. The reality is that everyone who is here, is here for a reason, we have some form of disagreeance with the other site. We are either dedicated, or ignorant to a bigger picture, and the way I see it. Everyone who is here now, is dedicated.
Not all of us have a disagreement with SW.
No. However as part of NTG you were on their proposed banish list. So while you might be okay with them, they sure are not okay with you. You especially should be upset because you were one of the ones singled out, and still singled out, for special punishment.
-
I still like Spiceworks too. But many of the issues were around them not wanting us, not us not wanting them. We only looked for another place to post after we were threatened with not being allowed to post there anymore.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@alexntg said:
@RAM. said:
@scottalanmiller I don't think the small scale of ML is going to be an issue for a while. The reality is that everyone who is here, is here for a reason, we have some form of disagreeance with the other site. We are either dedicated, or ignorant to a bigger picture, and the way I see it. Everyone who is here now, is dedicated.
Not all of us have a disagreement with SW.
No. However as part of NTG you were on their proposed banish list. So while you might be okay with them, they sure are not okay with you. You especially should be upset because you were one of the ones singled out, and still singled out, for special punishment.
I was one of the people (if not the only one) that agreed that if an MSP wanted to be able to market in any fashion, they should be a partner of one sort or another. It would also open them up to be able to openly market to others.
-
@alexntg said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@alexntg said:
@RAM. said:
@scottalanmiller I don't think the small scale of ML is going to be an issue for a while. The reality is that everyone who is here, is here for a reason, we have some form of disagreeance with the other site. We are either dedicated, or ignorant to a bigger picture, and the way I see it. Everyone who is here now, is dedicated.
Not all of us have a disagreement with SW.
No. However as part of NTG you were on their proposed banish list. So while you might be okay with them, they sure are not okay with you. You especially should be upset because you were one of the ones singled out, and still singled out, for special punishment.
I was one of the people (if not the only one) that agreed that if an MSP wanted to be able to market in any fashion, they should be a partner of one sort or another. It would also open them up to be able to openly market to others.
Yes but were you aware that they were talking about banning most of NTG's staff even if we were a partner and that the cost to be a partner was many times the value potential? So regardless of your position and opinion, you were in their crosshairs. Had your supported idea had been approved, you'd have been banned.
-
Charging MSPs in a place where nearly all participants are other MSPs doesn't work. All you do is initiate a witch hunt. Already people are looking to lynch anyone that they don't like for recommending anyone who isn't a vendor.
It's encouraging a system where if you don't pay to advertise your product can't be recommended. If someone recommends product X or vendor Y and that company doesn't pay for ads, people jump all over even veteran community members and accuse them of working for that vendor.
It's like the red scare. Don't like someone, just accuse them of working for an MSP or vendor. That's all it takes. Just accuse.
There is no way to know who does and doesn't work at an MSP. So all that is going to happen is real MSPs will lie about who they are and honest IT pros will be threatened and beaten down unless they tow the line and only promote paid vendors.
That's what making MSPs pay to participate in the community is already doing.
-
Don't forget that the MSPs provide the bulk of the content that makes them their money. MSPs have always "paid" by giving away valuable content.
MSPs equally could ask why they aren't being paid to participate. Until recently it was symbiotic. MSPs give content in exchange for a minuscule amount of advertising. MSPs give way more than they gain. It was not the MSPs getting the free ride. The benefit was almost all one sided then then tried to take even more.
