(no subject)

From: Kurt Skifstad (kds@iware.com)
Date: Sat Dec 02 1995 - 01:25:06 EET


Andre' Dolenc writes
>Vendors participate by other means. I know they contact people in this list
>*directly*. I would like to see more announcements in the list. In this way,
>one could get updated on new products more quickly. Some vendors
>---and, eventually, all vendors---will have WEB home pages for that purpose,
>but many individuals still do not have access to the WWW. Besides, one would
>have to visit those pages, instead of having the news delivered to one's
>"door".
>

Joe Mooring (jmooring@mooring.com) of DTM Corportation writes:
>
>DTM Corporation publishes press releases on a regular basis that describe
>new product offerings, customer successes, and general business activities.
> If the members of this mailing list categorize information of this nature
>as advertising, then I believe publishing these releases would be
>inappropriate.
>
>If, on the other hand, members of this mailing list believe that official
>updates would be useful and informative, DTM Corporation would be willing
>to publish press releases to rp-ml.
>
>Please comment.
>
>

Imageware also publishes press releases, software update summaries, case
studies, white papers, etc... on a regular basis, which we would be more
than happy to share with rp-ml.

However, if you go back to the "Guidelines / Mailing List Etiquette" section
of the first mail you received after joining rp-ml, you will read something
along the lines of:
    "... advertising on this mailing list is not (considered)
     appropriate ... unless the message is INFORMATIVE,
     i.e. it contains information relevant to an issue being
     discussed, or it helps fullfill the purpose of the mailing list."

The problem is twofold (at least): how does one define "advertising", and
how does one define "INFORMATIVE"?

My concern is that I'm sure that there are a number of companies out there
in the RP hardware and software business which, like Imageware, have
prolific Marketing Communications departments. And, with the addition of
such contributors, and with the best of intentions, rp-ml would quickly
become flooded with "technical updates", "case studies", and
"press-releases" from the vendor community.

We all know who the vendors are and where their web sites are. If we want
to know what's going on with a particular vendor, we can look at their web
site, or call them directly. I already spend too much of my time deleting
email about cookie recipies, I don't need to see every press release coming
from 3D Systems, DTM, Cubital, etc, etc, ..., because I track their
information already.

Let's not focus on marketing collateral here, but rather keep the focus on
questions and responses to issues like "I'm trying to do XXX, has anyone out
there had any experience doing the same?", or "I'm interested in learning
more about XXX?", or "has anyone done a technical comparison of XXX to
YYY?", etc...

------------------
Kurt D. Skifstad Imageware Inc, 313 N. First St, Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Email: kds@iware.com Voice: (313) 994-7300 Fax: (313) 994-7303
URL: http://www.iware.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Wed Jun 20 2001 - 12:57:29 EEST