90p Admin

What are your thoughts on opening up our technical sections -- specifically: - 90 Urgent Support - 90 MAS Tech Non-Urgent To new members who would not have to be geographically non-competitive. We'd charge a fee per year --- $200 - $250 --- with the goal toward building a group of another 30 to 50 paying tech only members who joined us in the two above groups. Since the 80/20 rule probably would kick in we'd expect 6 to 10 added active participants. These people would have full access to participate in the above technical forums with existing 90 Minds members. These people would NOT be 90 Minds members (no web site, no access to closed groups) -- but they would be folks we'd potentially recruit after we interacted with them (same concept as how we all came together). Our screening would largely be: - Must be a Sage partner or consultant in good standing (we're not operating as a Sage support replacement) - Must be competent and experienced (again we're not looking to support newbies) - Non-disclosure - Pay an annual fee that we determine -- probably $200-$250 for the first person and additional for every other from the firm. We would remove geography from our consideration of adding in people to this group which means that so long as the people meet the above requirements (Sage partner, etc) they could enter. Benefit to the group: - In a tech support area more brains is always better - More brains is better in areas such as upgrades where an early warning of a problem is highly desirable - Hedge against Sage's increased cost for support (reduced cases to partners) - Proving ground for future full members - Tech group members could subsidize or pay for 90 Minds expenses Downside: - We will remove the geographic limitations on participating in the tech group - We will probably lose a member or two who is upset about participating alongside someone they consider geographic competitors - Some added administrative costs to oversee this In my view the cost of not doing recruiting and adding in active users is that we have members who slowly start to become less active for whatever reason and 90 Minds withers over the next few years due to attrition, etc. Thoughts? Good, Bad, Indifferent?

I like the idea of opening up the technial support. I guess I wonder how it competes with the sage community boards that has more volume

We would not allow in customers/end users - strictly Sage partners and consultants

The question is would we require active participation or for those fees are they allowed to be leeches?

The fee would be a qualifier that would hopefully remove the lurkers who were not going to participate. We would not require participation but we could state that membership is up for renewal annually and renewal is subject to participation so we could remove people each year as they expire. The goal would be to greatly increase the number of people sharing technical information in a group setting. The 80/20 rule will likely apply. Add in 100 people and at most 20 are going to be active (each to varying degrees). With Sage making noise that they want to eliminate unlimited partner support we can either choose to make $150 phone calls to check and see if an issue is in the knowledgebase - or we can be more active at increasing our group of technical folks who share their experiences. No guarantees that this produces any great new potential members or that it does anything except add in a big pool of lurkers. We'd only find out by adding in people. We could also test this on a smaller pool of applicants (change the 90 Minds web site and make it clear what our fee schedule is). @JimWoodhead has an excellent point -- you could argue that this can be done in the Sage Community forums without us having to organize anything. I happen to like the thought of a private area which potentially has a lot faster response to our inquiries and no fear of speaking in a public setting with customers. The downside to this idea is that the technical area (not 90Minds just these tech groups) would be open to anyone. That means you potentially would see: SWK Blytheco Brainsell Should they decide they want to become members We might also consider greatly increasing the tech only fees for multi-office/consultant firms who are not already 90 Minds members. This could compensate for any of the larger VARS who want to tag along. So instead of a $200 to $ 250 price perhaps a multi-office firm pays on a scale like: 0 to 10 consultants $ 200 - $250/yr 11 to 20 consultants $ 450 21 and over consultants $ 1,000 On the minus side you could argue that in essence we are offering a bargain basement way for a larger firm to significantly boost up their support of MAS90 and that using those skills would in essence allow those firms to better compete.

There's also a chance that if we had a big enough technical group -- lets say 100 to 150 (which might be dreaming) that we'd then have an ability to charge vendors to hold web sessions for those in the group. I think we'd have a marketable core that third party providers would pay to reach.

Or , another idea, maybe this should be very expensive for larger non-90Minds members to participate in -- but affordable for the average VAR. Sort of a way to level the playing field. The fee could heavily favor the typical VAR with under 10 consultants (remember there is no impact on existing 90 Minds members who would not be subject to the same fees). Maybe 20 and over consultants is a much bigger number - $3,000 to $ 5,000 - or some such screen which essentially will keep the large VARS out and probably keep the smaller VAR happy.

I'd make the fee something like $200 for the first person from a company and $100 for each additional. That makes it expensive if an entire company wants to use it. The other side of that would be having multiple people sharing one account, so maybe it would be $200 - $250 for the first two people and $100 for each additional.

I think we should level the playing field and if a Blythe or Brainsell or WAC wants to join it should be in the $3,000 range. There certainly is value to them. Keep the fee affordable for the small var - though I do not want to bring on incompetent small partners who think this is a substitute for Sage v

Wayne, that makes sense.

I think some of the biggest negatives are: Opening it to anyone who is a Sage reseller/consultant who puts in their $200 (both weaker VARs and the Bly / SWK issues). However by opening it to anyone you get the opportunity to allow the cream to float to the top and potentially be recruited into 90Minds. Something of a duplication of efforts with the Sage Community - I think the difference here is that partners would like a Sage Community where it was Sage Partners only. Where you could somewhat more freely discuss issues that you might not say in public. Some of the pros: It's a platform for recruiting. Access to resources we may not have within the 90Minds group. It gives an opportunity for more Sage partners to get together and speak in public. It is a place where consultants who are interested in joining 90Minds but no one knows and can vouch for them can be referred.

Something going on with SC? Everytime I click on the ""view all comments"" link, instead of displaying everything, all the comments disappear. I refresh the page, get the two most recent comments again. Click on View all and then all comments go away. And it is only this post...............

Not that I know of

Try the standard refresh, clear cache, log out/in.

Just did it again!

I use Google Chrome. I was able to get into this on both my home and office machines. I am not sure what might be at work here. Can you try a different browser? If you are accessing with IE try Firefox or Chrome?

Also, wouldn't this need to be a separate Support section from the support sections of 90 Minds proper?

I can only see the last two comments. #$@#$@# Socialcast.

I think it's a great idea. I apologize for any redundancy here but I can't see the previous comments. Create a separate kb / support ticket system that can be shared with a larger community. SocialCast / forums are 90 Minds only benefit.

BTW, I blatantly stole Peter's concept of charging newbies outright for admission. I've sorta mashed up the way we'd admit them so that the concept is: - The new people would pay an annual fee TBD (we think $200-$250 ea and perhaps $3,000 for large firms) - existing 90 Minds people are a different fee schedule TBD - We'd license Socialcast or Yammer - Only open to Sage Partners or Sage Consultants - No end users - All of us (90 Minds) plus new folks would be in the tech forums. - We'd still have private 90 Minds areas for admin, marketing, chit-chat --- but all pure tech questions and answers would be in this new forum which would have the new people as well Here's what I see as the controversial areas just to be sure everyone pays them close attention: - We're opening the tech areas up to anyone who is a Sage partner - no geographic protection - that means competitors could potentially join - We'll use $$ to segregate and if a Blytheco or large partner wants to come in they'll pay a much larger fee - We'd use $$ as the filter to let us ease back on participation requirements (# posts, etc) Ultimately why do this? - Recruiting - we can pick from the tech area to join the full grup - Replace members who are perhaps not as active - Beef up our ability to find new problems faster -- especially during upgrades, etc - Protect us all from Sage's doing away with unlimited VAR support Ultimately why NOT do this? - Competition - if we think we'd significantly enable our worst competitor - Pain in the ass to administer - if we attract a bunch of newbies or people who are semi-retired we could be flooded with ""Cliff Munyon's"" ...

Appreciate the feedback. I've decided to table this as a 90 Minds project.