Bootstrap Members

Tux MacAuley

Challenge

I would be interested in understanding the makeup of this group. How many businesses are traditional in nature? Retail, Dentist, Lawyer, etc? How many are manufacturing, product design, etc. How many are consulting, and services? How many are software?

I ask because this the “Silicon What?” thread seems to have really hit a nerve with many of the posters of this group, and to be honest, I’ve not been following it because it doesn’t interest me. I’m not saying it is not important, just not important to me.

Bijoy – do you keep some sort of stats on this group that can help answer the question above?

On kind of the same note, I find it confusing that as a group, we benefit from knowing what each other is doing, but there is no easy way to tell all the others what we do in fear of “advertising” for our business and being reprimanded by the group administrators. I’ve continued to have log in problems with the wiki tool and the networking tool or whatever we are using these days. I like emails and can filter out information that doesn’t interest me, and therefore don’t understand why members aren’t encouraged to tell about new services they offer, product releases, general service offering, etc – especially when they join the group. Some people get around the “no advertising” rule by telling how great their company is and what they are up to, then add on to the end of that statement – looking for a CIO or CTO or whatever. I think this is kinda cheesy – but they are smart because they’ve taken advantage of a large network of people, advertised their business, and gotten a free job available ad.

So I guess my point is: Is this a networking group? If so, why can’t we tell more about what we are doing? If not, why are people using this list to ask about lawyers, jobs, product offerings, etc.

My company’s offers services on several levels can benefit many companies that have limited resources, as I’m sure that many services that all of you offer can benefit me. I don’t know how to connect to all of you… The wiki site is not used much – I’ve heard there are 500-700 members in this group – last time I logged into the wiki/networking tool, I only saw about 20 or 30 companies.