Tech Whirlers - The Heretical model

["Steve Hudson" <adslyy5g -at- tpg -dot- com -dot- au>]

The Heretical Model
===================

Branding and ownership
----------------------

The Rays have established a quality brand. If we let it be 'purchased'
($2.00 suffices to sell an ongoing liability :-) ) by a single entity, we
run the risk of eventual radical changes to better suit the new owner, who
has their own business to run. Let's take worst case scenario, MS gobbles it
up. Struth, before we know it, discussions of Flamemaker are redirected to
NIL: automatically.

So a single purchaser is out of the question. To be quite honest, I don't
see a change of ownership is really required yet, stewardship from the Ray's
can ensure that the new Tech Whirlers gets off to a flying start in the
right direction, just they better have a clause in their will designating
the new list owner and make that decision privately now. (<Scary thought:
What would happen if Plato ended up being the new list owner? <Giggles>)

However, should the Rays really want to totally 'walk-away' from it, there
would need to be some sort of governing board to govern policy change and
thus staff. I don't see changes in policy as being an issue. Maintain the
status quo and move forward. The transitioning phase would see Eric as chair
with the power of veto until he feels happy that the board has the right
idea, all processes are in place and the entity is financially stable. 

Yes, a board slows things down, dilutes vision and so on, but it's also how
the democratic system inexorably grinds us towards the existence of a Tech
Whirler site. With that in mind, you would need to ensure that if the vast
majority of site users get behind their reps and authors, they could block
an undesirable change. This suggests something like 7 seats for sponsors, 4
seats for authors and 3 seats for general readers. Proposed changes to
policy would need to be available via the site for three months and
announced monthly in order to give all readers ample opportunity to consider
the consequences, answer polls etc. A separate mailing list can handle
discussions on policy change for those interested.


Decreasing costs
----------------

Not mentioning names, but there are more than several 'public/free service'
sites hosted benevolently by corporations with enormous bandwidth excess.
With the inclusion of ad-space, I am sure the number of available sites
would rise. Smart business planning would see a fully redundant site ready
to go somewhere else for free as well.

The _willingness_ of someone with the task list to delegate parcels
downwards to volunteers would also help reduce total costs.


Increasing revenue
------------------

This is by now means a popular suggestion, but those that know me also know
it is by no means out of character. <Takes a deep breath>

Admittedly I defined the stakeholders in the intro. Pending changes from
peer review it may invalidate this argument. In the meantime...


Use Case - Word Dogma Dot Com

A strange little business owner has developed a brand new product called the
Technical Writer Information System and Trainer, a nice TWIST on your usual
business plan. Now, they want to have a user help forum like MS etc do, and
recognise good posters with products, freebie hair-do's etc. They don't do
that for a living. They don't have a tech writer cause a) their product
replaces them and b) with good code, who needs one anyway?

So they would ideally like someone with all the pre-req's to do that for
them. Matter of fact, by consolidating their costs, the very existing
sponsors of raycomm could stand to profit from this. By outsourcing their
user feedback / support forums they reduce the required diversity of skills
required within their business to focus upon the battle at hand, whilst
ensuring that service is delivered with a high precision of focus from a
team that specialises in it.

>From this small start, it is quite possible we could see all sorts of
feedback mechanisms come into play; again, those that know me know I was
raving about professional gamers well before EQ went EBAY. Professional help
has already been implemented, poorly, several times.


Use case - Big Dropkicks Inc

A very large multinational has many dozens of employees who access Tech
Whirl for help and support. They are receiving a tangible benefit for free
and make mega bucks as a result. Filtering subscriber email addresses for
commercial organisations and requiring a small yearly fee is not a great
deal. It is usually pretty simple. If Steve's, Andrew's and Dick's email
addies are from sexybits.com, and www.sexybits.com turns out to be some
business selling spare parts for marital aids, then surely a small annual
fee for commercial subscription is due. Rather than block them, you can
simply delay all their posts and email receives for a day or two until they
cough.

Where there is merely one or two subscribers from a domain, the argument
arises we should support our lone writer brethren and acknowledge the
benefit gained for the business is minimal.

A licensing model with increasing costs / seat as the seat number grows
would see an effective revenue provider, as well as those companies using
the resource actively championing it internally to maximise cost benefit.

Extending this use case a smidgin (technically a smidgin is a touch less
than a pinch, practically it's the exact depth of the smudge left after a
pigeon is hit with a Caddy at 60km/hr) there are also these options:

* Hosting STC etc sites (content amalgamation / privacy / cross-referencing
optional as required)

* Professional job placement / training services via existing users,
qualified by board

* (Dreaming) Online agency representing the diverse requirements of tech
writers globally and able to represent them as per std IT job agencies. 


What can READERS do to help this model
--------------------------------------

If you have gained significant commercial advantage from Tech Whirlers, err,
that's asked a hairy question and got a timely accurate response of value
(I'm sure they DO occur!), why not size your manager up with a square
question "100 bucks a year, our team, and others who want it, gets access to
this wicked stuff man, like we can score by the MINUTE!" {OK, OK, not such a
square question, paraphrase to your heart's content). A few dozen of these
kick in, staffies get paid, site moves forward, we get work done.

If you are working within an R&D etc dept, champion [creating and ]
outsourcing your feedback forums.

If you belong to a writers group, suggest they host here.

When you have a beer, ask if they can bill it through ... ummm, sorry.
Getting too far ahead of myself. That's stage 29 of the world takeover plan,
not 1. 

I'm sure there is more than enough here for ire already and I need another
beer!

Steve Hudson, Word Heretic Inspiring Replies Lest Everything's Read



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