----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 2:45
AM
Subject: Re: [mfg-smartcam] this mail
list
Well, I first bought smartcam production mill in
1989. I upgraded periodically, and in 98 bought up to freeform 11.5. All
in all, I have about $12,000 invested in smartcam. Then, I
was owner of a 6 man job shop, now I am a sole owner/operator of my
company. I don't particularly want employees anymore.
I don't use macro's, mostly because I was never
shown how, and I am busy enough as it is to not spend the time learning.
I guess they are great, but I am just a ham handed programmer that mostly uses
the program to do multi-position jobs and small parts.
I am happy that SmartCam is once again going to
progress, however I sure don't need to automatically have a bill show up for
the priviledge of still being on this group list. These guys are
tremedously helpful for the questions I seem to have periodically. This
program does all I want right now, and has for the last 4 years. I sure
don't need a $1200 bill for "maintaining" my old product.
Don't alianate your user base by starting with
charges. I wish you good luck on this project, and I look forward to
seeing future progress.
Jon Baker
Bag Parts Intl. Corp.
Portland, OR
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003
10:44 PM
Subject: [mfg-smartcam] this mail
list
Hello everyone!
I'm sure some of you were wondering if I really
existed or whether I was just a product of John Gent's imagination.
Its been great to see the response on this
mail list, and I thought the first thing I should share with you are my
thoughts on the list itself.
I've seen a couple questions on what's going to
happen to this list?
Well ... eventually MRS is going to have
to take over responsibility for the list So at the very least, its
going to necessitate a server change at some point. But we'd like to
take it further than that. Currently there are only 333 subscribers to
the list and not all of them are even SmartCAM customers. Even
so, that's only a tiny fraction of the number of people we
estimate who are still using SmartCAM in the world today. What
we'd like to do is make it a membership based list that's for active
customers and subscribers and other key SmartCAM community
members. That way we will be able to share more confidential support
information and business planning information with the list than I
feel we currently can give out, given the current
list membership. (I'm sure the gentleman from Gibbs who
is a current member of the list would understand.)
I see membership in the list being
included if you're a part of the 'current' customer base. That
means if you're on active maintenance or
have a current version from MRS that includes
maintenance you would automatically have free membership.
If you were a customer but not active, in other
words, you have an older version and you're not on maintenance,
then you could join the list for a small admin fee. If however you're
not really a customer, dealer or some other trusted member of the
community (but say a competitor for instance) you would not be
allowed membership to the list. I understand that things we
publish to the list will eventually get out if someone wants it bad
enough, I just don't want to mail it to them directly.
I'd like to see the list continue to carry the
kinds of technical discussions and Q&A that it currently does, but I'd
also like to develop it as primary vehicle for delivering company and
product announcements, tech tips, support info, etc. For it to be
truly effective however we need to expand it to include a much larger
segment of the customer base. This can have both positive and
negative effects. It makes for a much larger knowledge pool to tap
into, but it might also have the effect of lowering the standards for
communications on the list.
That leads me to list etiquette.
This list has always operated at a very high level. If the list
membership begins to expand, we would like to count on the original
membership to set an example and help maintain that high level of
integrity. We see the members of this list as probably being the most
representative of the type of customer we want to have and keep.
Surprisingly, when we conducted our survey last year, we discovered there
are still a small number of SmartCAM users who are completely
unconnected with no internet or email at work OR at home.
Unfortunately we may have to leave some of them behind. We aren't
going to have the resources to do onsite visits. We will need to
conduct a lot more business (product and services) over the phone and
internet.
Finally, I saw a comment in one of the earlier
responses to 'buy American'. I want to remind
everyone that SmartCAM is a worldwide product, and the membership of
this list reflects that. We all need to remain aware of that
as we post here. Now, having said that, I think I understand the
sentiment behind the statement, so given the global nature
of SmartCAM, I think the phrase 'support a living wage' conveys that same sentiment
and honors the global nature of this forum, and is something we support here
at MRS.
Thanks again for all the encouraging
responses,
--gregg
