How Many Experts is Too Many?
October 21st, 2008 by Julia Lim
This post essentially wrote itself earlier today when I got an invitation from IBM to attend their “Ask the Experts online Jam” (http://tinyurl.com/5jb3pm). First of all, “online Jam”? Really? Well, moving on from that, the invite states “The ‘Ask the Experts online Jam’ is a valuable opportunity for the Global Tivoli User Community (TUC) Members to connect with 57+ real world experts on a range of 40+ Tivoli products. These experts, many from IBM development, are recruited to answer member questions for a concentrated period of 12 hours.” This invite seems like it would be the answer to the Jeopardy question of “How do you know when a product is so complex that no one human (or one dozen) can possible understand it?”
I’m just not sure how a customer is ever expected to become an expert in the product(s) they’ve purchased, and hope to successfully implement, when the manufacturer requires nearly 60 experts on a call to answer questions. I understand that a customer generally won’t use all parts of the Tivoli suite of products, but how do you even figure out what to buy?
And let’s not forget…12 hours! That is one long support call.
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1. Doug McClure | October 21st, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Can’t disagree here. My approach would be a bit different and very focused to a specific community, market, technology or concept. I’m more for the intimate user group approach similar to LUGs with the goal of getting practitioners talking to practitioners. Everyone learns more from hearing about what others are doing to solve the same problems they likely have, not just hearing about how vendors think the problem can be solved.
Doug
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