Some benefits of PTC/USER

[pbartlett]

Hello adepters,

After I left PTC/Arbortext, a couple of the guys at PTC/USER asked me to
remind you that they're willing and able to serve as a channel to gain PTC's
attention to customer concerns. (Many years ago, PTC customers organized
PTC/USER to act as an independent voice to represent users' interests.)
While I encourage you to continue to interact directly, frequently and
fearlessly with Arbortext employees, you should take advantage of PTC/USER
as well.

I've had many interactions with the guys from PTC/USER and I've found them
to be very interested in serving the needs of the Arbortext community too.
For example, PTC/USER volunteered to host the adepters discussion group
after PTC's IT department told me that they would eventually transfer
adepters to a less-capable server, and I'm sure you'll agree that PTC/USER
has not only preserved everything we liked about adepters but has also
improved it. (Remember all those "out of the office" messages we used to
get?)

In addition, PTC/USER hosts Technical Committees ("TCs") that meet regularly
with PTC product management. During my last few months at PTC, I started
bringing Arbortext product management on board with this activity, and
feedback from Arbortext customers who were involved in TCs was very
positive.

Finally, PTC/USER meets annually with PTC's C-level management to get their
attention to the most important issues. You CAN have an impact on this
agenda!

All of these guys are readily accessible. You can see their pictures and
get their email addresses at

[naglists]

Hi PG,

There is a lot we past and future attendees can do to maintain and improve
the quality of the conference. There's not as much we can do to affect the
number of attendees. At least there isn't much we've come up with in our
conversations. What do you think we should pressure whom to do to try and
grow the Arbortext attendee base?

[ebenton]

I don't necessarily expect you to know the anwer to this, PG. In any
case, having dealt with Arbortext in the past (when it was just
Arbortext) and experienced Arbortext's excellent customer service and
responsiveness to customer issues, I was wondering why someone and/or
everyone felt that it was necessary to have "an independent voice to
represent users' interests". What was it about PTC's attitude or
behavior that caused PTC/USER to be formed to be "independent", versus
having PTC handle things in-house?

[pbartlett]

Hi Paul,

Ahh, a marketing question -- maybe a first for this list.

There are two aspects to the answer. First, improving the quality of the
conference for Arbortext attendees is something that you can affect, both
directly by offering presentations and indirectly by pressuring PTC to make
sure that all the right Arbortext people show up too.

Second, we need to get the word out. Because of its word-of-mouth nature,
this list is the best way to reinforce the benefits of going to the
conference. But lots of customers don't know about this list! At last
year's conference, I asked the audience how many of them were subscribers to
adepters and only half of the hands went up. Just before I left Arbortext,
I suggested that they add sign-up information for adepters to the Help menu
of the product -- so you may want to apply some pressure to Arbortext
product management to make sure this happens.

Another possiblity is to get ptc.com to refer Arbortext customers to this
list, but I never got around to looking into it before. So I just went to
the Forums section of ptc.com and was surprised to see that there is an
'adepters' hosted there as well. This was not a pleasant surprise. [Rant
deleted.] I suggest you pressure PTC to shut down their adepters list and
refer customers to this list. In the meantime, you might want to go over to
the PTC list and round up the lost lambs. They will thank you, I'm sure.

Finally, you could talk to the guys at PTC/USER -- in particular, Kevin
Johnson -- to find out how well they're marketing to the Arbortext customer
base. I'm sure they're relying on the PTC mailing list and I don't know how
complete it is, but perhaps PTC/USER will agree to some Arbortext-specific
marketing to the Arbortext customers.

Thanks for asking!
PG



_____

[pbartlett]

I appreciate your positive words.

Perhaps your question is rhetorical. But if you really want an answer, I
suggest that you contact someone at PTC/USER.

[ebenton]

I have no complaints about PTC/USER. I was just curious about their
history. Anyone out there from PTC/USER know the answer?

[ptc-953343]

What sort of services do they provide? Is there a similar forum for
asking questions about the product there? It seems like there are two
different worlds where the Arbortext users were/are happy with this
forum and getting things done and maybe there wasn't something
similar on the PTC side and the external organization was created.
(just speculating there).

The one thing I would hate to see is there become two different
places to monitor and ask/answer questions from.

..dan

[ptc-1787870]

Hey PG,

Good points, as usual. Your passion goes on even if your name isn't listed
on the payroll!

Thanks for pointing out the Adepters forum at the PTC site. While I like
the forum software there, I agree that splitting our user population among
multiple forums/lists is not good.

I posted a message there encouraging folks to visit the PTC-User forum.

Regards,
Jason





"PG Bartlett" <->
08/17/2007 11:29 AM
Please respond to
-


To
-
cc

Subject
[adepters] - RE: Some benefits of PTC/USER






Hi Paul,

Ahh, a marketing question -- maybe a first for this list.

There are two aspects to the answer. First, improving the quality of the
conference for Arbortext attendees is something that you can affect, both
directly by offering presentations and indirectly by pressuring PTC to
make sure that all the right Arbortext people show up too.

Second, we need to get the word out. Because of its word-of-mouth nature,
this list is the best way to reinforce the benefits of going to the
conference. But lots of customers don't know about this list! At last
year's conference, I asked the audience how many of them were subscribers
to adepters and only half of the hands went up. Just before I left
Arbortext, I suggested that they add sign-up information for adepters to
the Help menu of the product -- so you may want to apply some pressure to
Arbortext product management to make sure this happens.

Another possiblity is to get ptc.com to refer Arbortext customers to this
list, but I never got around to looking into it before. So I just went to
the Forums section of ptc.com and was surprised to see that there is an
'adepters' hosted there as well. This was not a pleasant surprise. [Rant
deleted.] I suggest you pressure PTC to shut down their adepters list and
refer customers to this list. In the meantime, you might want to go over
to the PTC list and round up the lost lambs. They will thank you, I'm
sure.

Finally, you could talk to the guys at PTC/USER -- in particular, Kevin
Johnson -- to find out how well they're marketing to the Arbortext
customer base. I'm sure they're relying on the PTC mailing list and I
don't know how complete it is, but perhaps PTC/USER will agree to some
Arbortext-specific marketing to the Arbortext customers.

Thanks for asking!
PG

[ClayHelberg]

Hi Paul & PG--

That's definitely a very important point. We have to work hard to get the word out, especially about this list. Just a few hours ago I spoke with JoAnn Hackos--a very prominent member of the Arbortext community, someone who has presented at multiple AUGI and PTC/User meetings and written several books on content management and XML authoring--and even she didn't know about Adepters!

Of course, I raved about it and she's in the process of subscribing now. (If you can see this, welcome JoAnn!) But we definitely can't afford to leave people in the dark about it. The more Arbortext users we can get involved, the more value the list will have for all of us.

So all of you (yes, even you lurkers): go forth and evangelize! If you know of anyone who is an Arbortext user who doesn't subscribe to the list, please enlighten them. I know some people eschew email groups like this as taking too much time to follow. But let them know how much value you gain from this list. Personally, this is one of the best email groups I've ever belonged to. The time I spend reading messages here has paid for itself many times over in helping me learn how to do things better and saving me countless hours of frustration. Not to mention making some pretty good friends. 🙂

Let's go for the ideal of having every user with a vested interest in getting the most out of Arbortext products subscribed to this list. And don't make the mistake that I did, of assuming that because someone is very involved with Arbortext they must know about Adepters. If you haven't actually seen them post here, ask them about it, and if they haven't signed up yet, explain why it's worth your time--and theirs--to subscribe.

--Clay

[DavidS.Taylor]

Hello all,

I checked the PTC 'Arbortext Adepters' forum and noticed that Jason had
posted a message suggesting users should check out this forum as well.
I didn't recognize very many names there, indicating the posters are
likely newer Arbortext users.

I'd like to suggest that a request be sent to PTC by PTC/User to have
'Adepters' removed from the name of the PTC-hosted forum. This would
make the PTC forum name consistent in that all the other PTC forums use
the product name alone, and would prevent confusion among Arbortext
users when referring to either forum.

Adepters has a long history and a tremendous archive of information. It
would be regretable if its value is diluted in the future by the use of
the name on two different forums.

David

David S. Taylor

Project Manager, Structured Information
Institute for Research in Construction
National Research Council Canada
Bldg. M-23A, Room 239
1200 Montreal Road, Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6

[ajordin]

While we're on the subject of evangelising about Arbortext...

As a long time partner with Arbortext one of my perennial irritations is that the conferences are all US based, an it isn't always easy to get people across to events like AUGI.

There was an attempt at one point to get a European version of AUGI but it never seemed to get the same commitment.

With PTC being a global company is there any chance we could try again for a regular gathering on this side of the pond?


Adrian Jordin
Business Solutions Manager
Piper Group plc

Email: ajordin@piper-group.com
Tel. + 44(0) 1454 284900
Fax + 44 (0) 1454 284950

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[AndyEsslinger]

Adrian,

This would present a problem for those like me where my company will not
allow international travel to attend symposiums and seminars. It will
probably boil down to number of attendees available.

Good luck on the European conference. I really hope that PTC/USER will
have a big enough customer base to make it more feasible than you found
the AUGI.

-Andy
\ / Andy Esslinger F-22 Tech Order Data
_____-/\-_____ (817) 777 3047 LM Aero Box 748
\_\/_/ Fort Worth, TX 76101

[ebenton]

I work for the same corporation as Andy, and our company within the
corporation also makes it next to impossible, or at least similar to
root-canal surgery, to attend any conferences or seminars outside of the
US. This includes Canada. I think most employees of defense
contractors would have similar problems.

[ajordin]

I suspect European customers may have similar issues about US based conferences.
I was actually thinking about something over here in addition to AUGI rather than replacing or relocating it.


Adrian Jordin
Business Solutions Manager
Piper Group plc

Email: ajordin@piper-group.com
Tel. + 44(0) 1454 284900
Fax + 44 (0) 1454 284950

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[pbartlett]

Adrian,

PTC holds conferences across Europe ("PTC World") every fall and Arbortext
has been on the agenda since the acquisition. These events are organized by
PTC itself, not PTC/USER, but serve a similar purpose. (Similarly, PTC
holds conferences in Asia too.)

Unfortunately, finding information on PTC's website about these events is
not easy, but here's a link: