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User Forums - is online really better than face to face ?

I spent the whole of yesterday, with the UK based MVP community who were at campus in Reading, and I was keen to know their views on how they feel about how Microsoft interacts with the IT Pro's, and to capture some of their thoughts.  Most of the MVP's I spoke to seemed to be happy with their involvement through newsgroups and other online user forums, but none of them interacted with their contacts in a face to face user group or forum environment.  So this got me thinking.  Are user groups happy to interact with each other primarily through the newsgroups, or do they feel that there is benefit from regular face to face meetings?  I had a quick search on the web for some UK centric User Groups or Forums in the messaging or management technologies areas and found very few IT specific user groups for platform people (as opposed to developers who seem to have lots).

Why is this?  Don't the IT Pro's have the same sort of challenges as developers?  Don't we need to have user groups in the UK?  Or are we happier in front of our PC's with blogs and newsgroups?  Is this a UK specific issue, or is it just down to the good old UK weather?...

Published Friday, November 05, 2004 2:58 PM by Eileen_Brown
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Comments

Friday, November 05, 2004 5:19 PM by Richard

# re: User Forums - is online really better than face to face ?

I think in some ways it is a reflection of traditional USENET ideology viz. "No, your question will be answered only in the newsgroup that way anyone can se it and everybody benefits". I view this as transferring onto the relationship between Microsoft and its interacting with the IT Pro's.

I also wonder if there's an element of good British cynicism attached. Where, they don't need to trek to a face to face meeting as it'll be light on content and high on hype - not that I'm suggesting that's valid. I do believe though that face to face groups are notoriously hard to run as the audience will not all be desiring the same content or methods of delivering it.
Friday, November 05, 2004 8:55 PM by Eileen Brown

# re: User Forums - is online really better than face to face ?

Good thought provoking comment Richard. The problem seems to me that newsgroups seem to cater for solving a particular problem. "How can I get this to work?" "How do I do....?" and other types of support questions. So how does the user community gain an insight into direction, competing product comarisons, strategy and futures without attending events hosted by the vendor? How do these IT Professionals give valuable feedback to Microsoft, or another vendor? Not everyone chooses to, or may not have the IT budget to attend events like TechEd or IT Forum, so how do they keep up to date? Trade shows are a good forum for getting targetted technical information to the audience, but is once or twice a year enough?
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