Its been a couple of years and I believe that some of the players have
moved on to a different role, but its a true story none the less. But
take it with a grain of salt.
After I left IBM, I was involved in the local user group.
On a con-call with IBM and some of the other local user group
volunteers, we were looking for a way to increase awareness and
improve the local group's member****p.
We wanted to be able to reach out and talk to as many of the local
users as possible. The biggest issue is that we didn't know who,
outside the regular users were using Informix products.
IBM has this database called AAS. This is the database used by sup****t
to determine if you are entitled to sup****t when you call in to the
800 help line.
It would be trivial to go to sup****t and get the contact information
on all of the customers who have a physical plant in the Chicagoland
area. (OK, so you get all the customers in IL, WI, and MI and then cut
the list down to those within a 120 mile radius (2 hour drive) to your
meeting and then invite them.)
Getting IBM to do this was next to impossible for several reasons.
None of the reasons were real. They were just excuses because they
didn't want to do the leg work.
Oh there's more to the story....
But the point is that when IBM asked for ideas, even if you give them
a good one. Volunteer to help (I was still under NDA at the time...),
they just don't want to do the work unless there's a direct
correlation to a sale.
But hey! What do I know?
Oh yeah, more than IBM would want me to talk about in public. ;-)
-G
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