----- 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
