Comments on: On IT Support Stereotypes http://philcrissman.com/2008/05/01/on-it-support-stereotypes Web Development, startups, entrepreneurship, books, art, and other stuff Sun, 23 Nov 2008 12:04:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Phil Crissman http://philcrissman.com/2008/05/01/on-it-support-stereotypes#comment-1978 Phil Crissman Fri, 02 May 2008 14:07:05 +0000 http://philcrissman.com/?p=1574#comment-1978 Sounds like a very cool topic; open source tech support has the additional challenge of being more or less voluntary, rather than paid positions. In some ways it would seem that the passion which drives individuals to contribute for free would help to keep support civil and kind, but in practice I expect you have some of the same problems... since the only time you interact with your users is when they are complaining, and possibly are causing their own problems by Not Having Read the [Free] Manual, it would still be quite easy to gradually get a skewed perspective of your users. Sounds like a very cool topic; open source tech support has the additional challenge of being more or less voluntary, rather than paid positions.

In some ways it would seem that the passion which drives individuals to contribute for free would help to keep support civil and kind, but in practice I expect you have some of the same problems… since the only time you interact with your users is when they are complaining, and possibly are causing their own problems by Not Having Read the [Free] Manual, it would still be quite easy to gradually get a skewed perspective of your users.

]]> By: mrben http://philcrissman.com/2008/05/01/on-it-support-stereotypes#comment-1977 mrben Fri, 02 May 2008 09:42:54 +0000 http://philcrissman.com/?p=1574#comment-1977 I'm going to be doing at talk at the upcoming LugRadio Live about this kind of issue, although focused more on how we provide support within the Linux/Open Source community, and, more importantly, how we need to change our support mechanisms if we're serious about wanting a majority market share in the OS market. I’m going to be doing at talk at the upcoming LugRadio Live about this kind of issue, although focused more on how we provide support within the Linux/Open Source community, and, more importantly, how we need to change our support mechanisms if we’re serious about wanting a majority market share in the OS market.

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