Forum status update

[Tony Gravagno]

At this time we have 38 members and 8 managers. Note that anyone can
read and anyone can post, so we can't judge readership or
participation by the membership.

Non-member contributions are screened on an individual basis. If you
are registered and your contributions are held for moderation, please
contact me about getting unmoderated status.

Aside from a healthy discussion about the value of Usenet and
questions about censorship, there doesn't seem to be substantive
objection to this forum as an addition to the community or as a
replacement for CDP. We will gain some people who are not interested
in CDP, we will lose some people who are not interested in this forum,
some people will use both. That's life. The bottom line is that this
forum will not be perfect but I think it will be better than what we
have now. All we can do is strive for better.

I've posted notes to platform-specific forums, inviting DBMS vendor
technicians, vendors, and others with knowledge to contribute. With
luck we will also get an influx of people who registered for another
(though failed) community forum some years ago. I expect we'll do
better here.

For a "larger picture" explanation of why I'm doing this, please see a
new blog entry:
nospamNebula-RnD.com/blog/tech/mv/2011/12/cdp2.html
(please remove nospam)

I am hoping that some of you who have registered here will post about
Why you decided to register here, and what you hope to gain. Feel free
to email and I can post anonymous notes or simply discuss the matter
off-list if you wish.

Dave Ruggiero, who originally founded CDP (see cdp1 blog) has
generously offered his support for this initiative:
https://twitter.com/#!/ThatSeattleGuy

And Thanks to everyone here for your support!

[Dan McGrath]

Thanks Tony.

I've always tried to hang around the various MV focused areas online.
I normally just lurk, but I will chime in every now and again where I
think I can add something of value. :)

[Rob Allen]

Like Dan, I usually lurk. I was around for the beginning of cdp and
will continue to read that group also. I may be the last person at ADP
who tries to keep tabs on the Pick world. The Google Groups interface
has become familiar enough; I'm one of the many who hasn't seen an
NNTP server in years.

Rob

[eppick77]

Rob,

I stopped using NNTP when my ISP stopped providing one and it was just
too much effort to go looking for providers.

What is going on with Pick and ADP?

Eugene

On Dec 30 2011, 12:40 pm, Rob Allen <robertwallen2...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

[Tony Gravagno]

Update:

Thanks for all of the notes of support and thanks. It's good to know
we're on the right path.

We now have over 100 members.

Announcements have been posted to the QM and Caché forums, though many
people in both already know we're here.

Glen Batchelor is now a group Manager. Thanks to Glen for offering the
little time he has available for a community effort - and for doing
this kind of thing for the last 13 years that I've known him.

[Tony Gravagno]

I'm not sure why but we just had a surge in membership today, now up
to 140. I'm guessing people are just getting back to work from the
holiday and maybe just processing their digests from other forums.

It looks like everyone here is valid but we really never know just by
looking at names and email addresses, mostly gmail. Postings to this
forum are moderated for anyone not approved for unmoderated access. If
you'd like to avoid what can be a delay of a few minutes to perhaps a
few hours, please email me from your company account or some other
address that I'd recognize, and confirm that the gmail or other ID
that you've used here actually belongs to you. I will be happy to
process these requests as fast as possible. Please include something
simple to help identify you quickly. Just consider that anyone can
create an email address as mr.ni...@gmail.com and send me a note
that says "Hey Tony, I'm Mr Nice Guy!" Please give me something more
to go on.

Thanks for ongoing support and patience as we grow this community.

Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com/blog
Visit http://PickWiki.com! Contribute!
http://Twitter.com/TonyGravagno

[Dawn Wolthuis]

Oh maybe I should have mentioned that I was sending something to U2-community. I suspect my little marketing effort accounts for some of it. Smiles --dawn

Typed on a mobile keyboard

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to
> the "Pick and MultiValue Databases" group.
> To post, email to: mvd...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe, email to: mvdbms+un...@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit http://groups.google.com/group/mvdbms

[Tony Gravagno]

LOL, Oh so YOU are to blame, once again!
Great job Dawn, keep it up! Thanks!

As a follow-up... In my last note here I encouraged people to email me
to change their status, but on checking for myself I don't see a way
to see exactly what our status with the forum is, moderated or not.
This information isn't available under "Edit my membership".

So, to check for yourself, click the "new post" link you see on Google
pages. Don't send anything, just look at the page. If you see a button
that says "Send to Moderators", you're in moderated status. If the
button says "Post message", then please don't send a test message,
thank you very much, just exit the page. Only email for unmoderated
status if you are moderated, and please don't post messages to the
group in an attempt to determine your status. :)

Thanks again,
T

[sdavmor]

On 01/10/2012 03:28 PM, Tony Gravagno wrote:
> I'm not sure why but we just had a surge in membership today, now up
> to 140. I'm guessing people are just getting back to work from the
> holiday and maybe just processing their digests from other forums.

[snip]

It's very good to see people getting on board here.
--
Cheers, SDM -- a 21st Century Schizoid Man
Systems Theory project website: http://systemstheory.net
find us on MySpace, GarageBand, Reverb Nation, Last FM, CDBaby
free MP3s of Systems Theory, Mike Dickson & Greg Amov music at
http://mikedickson.org.uk

[Tony Gravagno]

Update:

An invitation has been posted to one of the LinkedIn.com Pick
discussion groups.

Many people might not know what LinkedIn is. It's described as a
business network where people post their professional history, and
where they exchange notes in industry-related groups like this one.
One could consider it a more business-oriented social network like
Facebook or Google+. For many it has varying degrees of value, for
others not.

For those already in LinkedIn groups, this might be just another Pick
group that they don't need - or it might be a new venue for learning
and sharing.

For MVDBMS people here, registering at LinkedIn might be too rigorous
a process just to get access to groups, and it's primarily for this
reason that I did not suggest a migration over there.

In summary, this is to advise the membership that the effort is
continuing to bring in new colleagues, and I encourage everyone here
to try to bring in others, including end-users, VARs, and
representatives from the DBMS vendors. I also encourage people here to
check out LinkedIn - it's more than just a forum and not as socially-
oriented as Facebook.

[Tony Gravagno]

As of this Feb 01, 2012, we now have 180 registered members and a
"never to be known" number of non-registered viewers. This month I'll
send out a few more notices around the industry and I'm sure we'll
soon push past the 200 mark. However that number pales to the 1000+
registered numbers for some other industry forums.

While registration is not required for viewing, I hope that more
"lurkers" will lend their support to this effort simply by registering
to give us a better idea of actual readership. You can set the
delivery method to No Email and you won't get bothered by postings. If
there are other reasons for not registering, please email me off-list
and I'll be happy to respond to concerns.

The following will only be of interest to moderated members, those not
yet approved for unmoderated posting. If you don't know your
moderation status, see one of the quotes below.

Many of you are subscribed with an address other than your business
address or other common public addresses. Because we don't recognize
you, we can't authorize you for unmoderated posting. So any post you
make must be manually verified before it goes public, and that
requires the time and availability of one of our 9 moderators.
Yesterday I manually confirmed public addresses with a few well
recognized colleagues, and then set their accounts for unmoderated
posting. It would help if more of the moderated users would confirm
their identity off-list so that we can clear their moderation flag.
Email me or one of the other moderators as described below and we'll
take care of that.

On Jan 10, 3:28 pm, Tony Gravagno wrote:
> It looks like everyone here is valid but we really never know just by
> looking at names and email addresses, mostly gmail. Postings to this
> forum are moderated for anyone not approved for unmoderated access. If
> you'd like to avoid what can be a delay of a few minutes to perhaps a
> few hours, please email me from your company account or some other
> address that I'd recognize, and confirm that the gmail or other ID
> that you've used here actually belongs to you. I will be happy to
> process these requests as fast as possible. Please include something
> simple to help identify you quickly. Just consider that anyone can

> create an email address as mr.nice.guy -at- gmail.com and send me a note

> that says "Hey Tony, I'm Mr Nice Guy!" Please give me something more
> to go on.

[from another post]
> ... to check for yourself, click the "new post" link you see on Google

> pages. Don't send anything, just look at the page. If you see a button
> that says "Send to Moderators", you're in moderated status. If the
> button says "Post message", then please don't send a test message,
> thank you very much, just exit the page. Only email for unmoderated
> status if you are moderated, and please don't post messages to the
> group in an attempt to determine your status. :)
>

[JJCSR]

Tony:

I enjoy reading others' postings on MV-related subjects and,
occasionally, "non-MV-related" ones. As well, I like to lend my
own, personal experiences, relative to MIS as a whole.

The same things that were reported by other individuals, involving raw
language and insidious ads for watches, led me to stop visiting CDP as
often as I had been doing.

Now, we all have a forum that we can trust will be free of all the
afore-mentioned "garbage".

I echo the many "thank you" notes I have seen posted here by others.


Jim Cronin
Kittery Trading Post

[robvia]

Why I registered?
I'm a programmer working for a company that is slowly dying. We
distribute CD/DVDs (Music, Video, Blue Ray). The CEOs know our
brick and mortar model is shrinking, but they won't diversify and sell
anything else.

So it would be a good idea to let companies post want ads here.
The community is small in terms of companies hiring, and programmers
who are in the trenches coding. Not interested in head
hunters.

Here's a little advice for any managers reading this. You want to
keep your people? Stop putting them in cube farms next to noisy
departments. For some reason, managers think that just because the
programmers are in a different row than AP, they are separated.
Programmers need quiet. Yet they're usually put at a desk outside a
managers office next to people who talk all day. This results in a
33% drop in production. I tell everyone to stay away from IT
because of this. Put your programmers in offices, with walls that
go up to the ceiling.

Oh, and about that Spectrum conference in WPB, watch out for the radar
cops at the bottom of the hill as you leave the resort. The speed
limit is 15 going down the hill. I saw the cops sitting at the
bottom and knew to crawl. Not very nice of them to sit there
busting people for something so tacky. That's another reason
people may skip the conference.

[Tony Gravagno]

robvia wrote:
> I'm a programmer working for a company that is slowly dying. We
> distribute CD/DVDs (Music, Video, Blue Ray). The CEOs know our
> brick and mortar model is shrinking, but they won't diversify and sell
> anything else.

A lot of industries and companies are going through that. They can
adapt or die. Encourage them to shift focus from bricks to clicks,
with a healthy web presence and unique value-add and marketing that
will get people buying via the web. Your system and your job can be
saved with a bit of re-engineering for the modern world. Conversely,
that market is saturated, and realistically, like you say, without
diversification, their days could be numbered.

> So it would be a good idea to let companies post want ads here.
> The community is small in terms of companies hiring, and programmers
> who are in the trenches coding. Not interested in head
> hunters.

Ads for employment, situations wanted, and products are welcome here
as long as they are identified, and as long as they aren't "abusive".
That's not so much a "moderator" note as an interpretation of the
common preferences expressed through the years in these forums. We're
not censoring content, but we do want to balance that approach with a
respect for people's sensitivities regarding solicitations. Stealthy,
subversive solicitation isn't appreciated by anyone - open marketing
for products and jobs is good for the community. Personally, since we
can post job ads at PickWiki.com, I'd prefer to see small notices here
that link there - but that's just my personal taste.

T

[Eugene Perry]

From my viewpoint, I would love to see more companies come here and
look for talent. One of the reasons that I always hear for companies
leaving the market is that they cannot find programmers. Conversely,
programmers also have a hard time finding the companies using mv.

Eugene

[Charlie Noah]

Hi Eugene,

I'd like to help bridge the gap here. I have 34 years Multivalue experience, from Microdata Reality and Prime Information to Unidata, Universe, D3 and jBASE. I haven't had the opportunity to work with some of the newer implementations like Caché, MaVerick and OpenQM, having worked with jBASE for the past 12 years. Since I've been out of work for quite a while, I'd love to hear from those companies who can't find programmers. Hopefully, some of them are checking by here.

Regards,
Charlie Noah

[Eugene Perry]

Charlie,

I hope that they will be too. I remember what it is like to be out of
work and not being able to find a contract anywhere in the country.

What part of the country are you in?

Eugene

> >> T- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Charlie Noah]

Hi Eugene,

I'm in Independence, Missouri, just outside of Kansas City. I have a full development system here and am set up to work remotely.

Charlie

[Tony Gravagno]

This will probably be my last update to this thread which has been
tracking our progress since the start of the forum.

We now have 200 members, a good landmark but it will be better to get
that closer to 1000. I'll post a few more notices around about the
group but I don't want to annoy colleagues elsewhere. My sig includes
the following lines:
Visit http://PickWiki.com! Contribute!
http://groups.google.com/group/mvdbms/about
I encourage others to adopt these links to community resources to
encourage others to make use of them.

With the exception of some suspicions which will never die about what
Could happen in terms of moderation, I think everyone sees what
actually Is happening. This is a community resource, run by community
members. Moderators are recognized professionals, they are Us, not
some outside unknown group with malicious or dictatorial intent. Now
that the forum is established I'd like to put all worries about forum
policy behind us.

On a personal note, CDP continues to be abused with postings that now
have my name on them, but a quick view of the headers will easily
confirm that none of these are from me. We can't prevent that from
happening - that's one of the reasons why we left CDP. I'm just the
latest target for abuse, in retaliation specifically for the creation
of this forum. I can deal with that. The management of this MVDBMS
group is oriented to preclude that sort of abuse from occurring here,
and I'm glad we've achieved goals for creating a more secure
environment.

Thanks again for your continued support.