norty303 Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 Stumbled across this on Google today, is it to be the new official Chamsys forum? http://www.chamsys.org Look good so far, including the Wiki entry and manual, it would be good if all of the european forums became part of this purely to keep all the knowledge/questions in one place. Any info Matt? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvi675 Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 This is not the new official UK forum, this is due for launch together with a new look website at www.chamsys.co.uk in the next few months. www.chamsys.org is run from the Netherlands together with www.chamsys.nl - take a look under the showcase section and you can see pictures of a very successful training course we ran in conjunction with the owner of chamsys.org in Rotterdam! For the time being all of the forums run by our various distributors will remain separate as they can provide support in local languages for our customers however a centralised knowledge base is certainly an idea for the future! Regards, Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 There's also the Belgian 'outpost' at http://www.chamsys.be/forum/. Is the idea, once the official Chamsys UK forum is up and running, to amalgamate all these outpost forums into the official one? If not, won't that lead to the online user support structure and knowledge base being spread out and diluted, rather than being hosted in one central location? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvi675 Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 The argument is strong on both sides - having one amalgamated forum does keep the knowledge base central, however having these 'outpost' forums allows our distributors to provide direct support to their customers in languages which we do not have a good enough grasp on to effectively provide support in. While knowledge is then duplicated and spread out, isn't that the case with any kind of forum - for instance take the Blue Rooms, LightNetwork, UKSLC, ABTT forums, etc, all of them talking about the same topics and subjects so there is duplication of information but each takes a slightly different course and attracts a different user base. What would seem sensible would be to keep things like feature requests, bug reports, personality stuff all in one place as going around each of the various forums to keep track of these can be a time consuming process, particularly when you have to get some translations on them too! However the actual logistics of doing this may be trickier, but certainly something I will consider and discuss with our distributors when I'm working on the new site. Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 I see what you're saying, Matt - but I don't think you can draw a comparison between a Chamsys support forum and the BR. The Blue Room is a discussion forum with a very broad brief, covering a huge range of technical theatre topics, and it has its own style and 'feel' which is very different to other forums like the ABTT and LightNetwork. As such, it exists very much on its own terms, doing what it does in its own corner of the technical forum 'market'. The Chamsys forum, however, will (when it launches) have a much more specific function to fulfil - the discussion and support of one specific product range from one manufacturer. In that context, it's far more about the content than it is about the style of a forum - as such, it just seems to me that having several forums, in different countries and run by different people, all trying to cover the same very specific ground, is going to lead to confusion and dilution of information. For example, the Belgian forum has been going for quite some time, and many people see that as the "official" Chamsys forum (I know it isn't, but I'm sure many of its users see it as such). When Chamsys UK launch their forum, which will be the official support forum for their products, I can see people who are long-time regular users of the Belgian forum (for example) feeling a bit confused as to where they should be turning for informal online support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
norty303 Posted December 10, 2007 Author Share Posted December 10, 2007 I agree Gareth. Additionally, the thought of having to visit 2 or 3 different forums to see if my question has been answered already doesn't fill me with delight either. I can see lots of crossposting of threads as an unwanted side effect of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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