By now you doubtless find me an old nag who repeats himself unendingly. Nevertheless, it seems that I’m right about the SDN community and you do tend to reconfirm my accusations time after time. I honestly don’t know what drives this community anymore.
A perfect example is SDN at TechEd. You flunked the SDN clubhouse in Vienna. I can only speak for the SDN event in that city, but how can you do this when you didn’t even visit it? As said before, the attendance was low at times. Humiliatingly low.
Sure, some things could have been done another way. Sometimes things look better on paper than in reality. That’s the reason why Mark is asking for your ideas, feedback and other thoughts. What is he getting back? Nothing at all, except from the usual suspects of course.
Profiteer
As said previously, I don’t accept the excuse of not having time. After all, you did have time to read his web log (312 at this moment) and give the clubhouse bad marks, didn’t you?
There must be another explanation. Maybe you simply don’t care or are even selfish. Just so long as your problems are solved in the forums. Just hit and run.
On top of that SDN is for free, thus no expensive consultants or OSS is involved. However, don’t confuse the SDN forums with (free) support. The community guidelines are clear:
‘The forum's goal is to be a place that enables an engaging solution-oriented dialog between SAP developers. … We will not accept questions that go beyond the standard SAP solution and/or need comprehensive knowledge of the current customer situation‘ . But this is not the subject of this lament.
Maybe you take things too much for granted. Perhaps you find it perfectly normal that somebody else is, on a voluntary base, solving your problems and writing articles, web logs, tutorials, etc. Not forgetting of course that this platform is supported by a large SDN admin group, which also organises events like online meet-ups, SDN meets Labs, a clubhouse at TechEd. All for you, free of charge. After all, you pay enough for SAP licenses, don’t you?
Beneficial
Why should you bother to do something in return when asked for your opinion once a while? There is nothing in it for you after all. I agree that that’s true if you are thinking purely in terms of material things. You won’t get an iPod for submitting your thoughts. Nevertheless, you will benefit from it anyway. You have the chance to determine how the SDN clubhouse will look and how the SDN day will go. An event à la carte so to speak. Teched may seem far away, but NOW is the time to react.
You cannot complain that it’s not any good and then keep silent about what you would like to see changed or added. Or is your silence an indication that you don’t want such an event or clubhouse, or even want to pull the plug out on SDN?
SDN Clubhouse improvement suggestions and thou shalt be heard. Those who are absent are always in the wrong.
