I’ve made it through the latest wave of comments on the PTC/USER – PTC Community forum merger from both sites. You are all very late in getting an update from the PTC/USER Board of Directors.
The Board and PTC are continuing our discussions to bring the communities together on to one platform. Our next face to face meeting is in November. I’d like to address several points that have been brought up. Please continue the discussion if there is anything to add to the points below.
I agree that email posting and responding to posts is an essential element of what makes the Exploders useful and valuable to our membership. That membership segment tends to be admins or users of the authoring applications like Creo and Arbortext.
Advantages are:
-No Login to post or reply. Information is exchanged with high velocity and immediacy.
-Ability to store posts in personal email clients for better reference and searching.
-Ability to interact with users from any device that can transact emails. Phones, tablets, and of course computers with minimal connection bandwidth or data charges.
-Email not restricted like websites in the workplace. Impossible to access otherwise for some.
-Passive notification of responses with complete information, don’t have to go looking for information.
If there are more points to add to this list in a succinct manner, I would like to hear from you to add to it.
The survey of our members overwhelmingly concluded one community was preferable to two. Specifically referring to PTC/USER and PTC Community. There is confusion about where to post, and the purpose of the two sites. As the representatives of the PTC/USER community we felt we had no choice but to take action and enter into discussions of merging the public forums. This is not a “PTC takeover” or absorption. Much like the conference discussions that started internally on the Board, this is the result of many hard fought discussions and is the right decision in the long run. PTC has a long range vision for the integrated community and its link to product support and enhancement that would be difficult to achieve by linking to a third party site.
“PTC/USER is the independent voice of the PTC user community.”
PTC has made a commitment to an open community forum, only regulated for spam and inappropriate behavior. As far as I know, they have held true to that commitment since the opening of their Community. If anyone has experienced anything to the contrary, I would encourage you to respond and let us know. This is an essential tenant in merger. There is considerable mistrust of PTC in the posts. Besides the worry of censorship, what is the value of independence to you in the hosting of these discussions?Solar Turbines Incorporated
