We need an expert!

[Ben]

It hit me that the exchange could really use an expert or two.

Someone who could speak for NI and settle the "why" questions.

I am not saying that we should draft Greg McKaskle, but the Exchange would benefit if there waws someone around that could "lift the hood" and give us some quick glimpses of what is really happening "in there".

I am afraid that our top contributors are giving more than they are getting.

Anyone else have an opinion on this subject?

Ben

[MichaelAivaliotis]

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@Ben wrote:
It hit me that the exchange could really use an expert or two.

Someone who could speak for NI and settle the "why" questions.

I am not saying that we should draft Greg McKaskle, but the Exchange would benefit if there waws someone around that could "lift the hood" and give us some quick glimpses of what is really happening "in there".

I am afraid that our top contributors are giving more than they are getting.

Anyone else have an opinion on this subject?

Ben

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I thought Greg was contributing to the discussions on a regular basis. Am I to assume he is gone from here? For sure you will never find another Greg.

When you say that the top contributors are "giving more than they are getting", what do you mean by that? What would you like for them to receive?

[chilly_charly]

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@Michael Aivaliotis wrote:

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When you say that the top contributors are "giving more than they are getting", what do you mean by that? What would you like for them to receive?

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Come on Michael !
You know what everybody is looking for here : a hand to be pulled closer to the light (or a foot to be kicked farther ?). Who could give us a glimpse on what is behind the scene ?
Our reward is more efficiency, more speed, just to get the illusion that we are getting better. And for that, we need some additionnal gear...
The worst thing is when you feel that you have reach a summit, that there is nothing above. The pleasure to be there is short : in the mist, you cannot be sure that you are at the highest possible place, that somewhere you didn't take the wrong direction. Even more, you desperately hope that there is somewhere something higher to climb.

Of course it is an addiction... and I love that ! Give me more !!

CC

[Ben]

Hi Michael,

You only get better by playing chess with someone better than you (hmmm champions?).

Greg has served the LV cominity well. He has done his time.

What I miss is someone coming back after we have yacked a topic to death and crear up the confusion.

It is the "why" questions that could use a little more support.

Q's like the CoastalMaineBird Q on "Why do I get a coercion from a typed?? type question.

We worked on that question and found some interesting approaches but no one was able to answer WHY.

Why Q's tend toward the escoteric (sp?) but often give us the insight we need to best understand the environment we work in.

I just feel that I have I have not given a complete or full answer sometimes, and would like to be able to call on an "expert" when I have reached my knowledge limit.

Ben

[Ben]

Here is a link to the Q I was talking about.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=99228#M99228

I do not think we did good job in the "why" part of the question.

Maybe we could get the option to "refer Q to Dr LV".

Molly,

what do you think?

Ben

[MichaelAivaliotis]

BTW, I'm still trying to figure out how to quote individual messages... not very easy to find.

Anyway, back to the discussion...
As far as I know, the NI forums are the only ones that have dedicated employees answering all posts. NI has handed down a mandate that all technical questions will be answered within 24hrs. Now, as long as customers with real issues get their problems resolved then I guess the rest is just icing on the cake. No-one can really force somebody to make detailed explanations of internal workings of LV software. Actually in some cases this might reveal too much to the competition and give them excuses to file patent infringment lawsuites. 😉

All joking aside, I think the only people worth listening to are the core developers or those with the know-how of how things work (no offense to the support personell). However, the problem is that the people in-the-know are probably up to their ears in work getting new software releases out the door. I think the forums here have the most participation from NI employees then from any other forums. If you're complaining here then what do I have to say on the LAVA Forums?

It's interesting that you mention how commentors hash ideas back and forth only to be silenced by the "expert". Sometimes I wonder perhaps this is done on purpose so NI can evaluate customer understanding of new features. Similer to introducing a lab rat to a new kind of food. Have you clicked on the "powered by lithium" icon at the bottom of the forums? You can read there what role forums play in the big scheme of things.

In my opinion, the most interesting LabVIEW discussions happen off-line and in other venues like user group meetings and with one-on-one discussions over beer at NIWeek. 🙂

Having said all the above... Having an expert reveal the inner workings is a great idea but i feel there are only a few that will volunteer for this position. I hope I'm wrong.

[Molly K]

Hello all:

Sorry to get to this thread so late in the game, but I was out of the office a few days last week...

I think you all have touched on some great points and you can kind of see our challenge.

Our R&D employees are hard at work developing new products. As soon as they start to focus on answering the "why" questions in the community, their development timelines are at risk of being affected. In the extreme case, if they focus too much an answering the "why" questions, they get out of touch with development completely and are no longer able to answer them.

On the flipside, the veterans of this community deserve to interact with the makers of the products and to have their questions answered by the experts as well as bounce ideas off of them. They deserve to be challenged so that they can gain as much from the community as they give.

Currently, the forums do have significant participation from several groups within NI -- including Applications Engineers, Marketing Engineers, and R&D Engineers. I think the community is a perfect place for all of this interaction and collaboration to take place.

I will continue to work on driving participation in the community from members throughout the NI organization to ensure that we provide as much support for all members of the community as possible. We could also consider what some communities do where there is a "live" session with an expert where users have a forum to ask their burning questions.

As always, we appreciate your participation and your feedback,

[MichaelAivaliotis]

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@Molly K wrote:
I will continue to work on driving participation in the community from members throughout the NI organization to ensure that we provide as much support for all members of the community as possible. We could also consider what some communities do where there is a "live" session with an expert where users have a forum to ask their burning questions.

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That's nice to hear Molly. Perhaps a webinar can be aranged for this.

[Ben]

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@Michael Aivaliotis wrote:

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@Molly K wrote:
I will continue to work on driving participation in the community from members throughout the NI organization to ensure that we provide as much support for all members of the community as possible. We could also consider what some communities do where there is a "live" session with an expert where users have a forum to ask their burning questions.

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That's nice to hear Molly. Perhaps a webinar can be aranged for this.

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I will not decline the webinar with the expert but that would fall short of what I had in mind.

The "why" Q's could take some time to research and respond. I do not think that would cover what I feel the Exchange could benefit by (I know bad english!).

I (and I beleive, many others) have worked to make the Exchange a common repository of LV answers.

Over the years we have accumulated a great deal of knowledge in the Exchange. Knowledge BTW that will persist beyond some of our life times.

I view this knowledge as falling into three catagories.

1) Basic
2) Intermediate
3) Advanced

(I will resist defining exactly what falls into each catagory. This is really dependent on the user it seems.)

I think the contributors to the Exchange do a great job of catagories #1 and #2.

#3 is marginal (now)!

We used to be better!

We were better before NI Week 2004.

Why were we better?

Because we had Experts!

I used to subscribe to all of the Experts. I would read all of their answers and share them with the developers I support in-house.

This change in Expert contributions was not due to the Exchange conversion. It pre-dates the change.

After this discourse let me rephrase my desire.

We need contributors that can can expand the scope of the Exchange's KB.

Set ramble=True

The Exchange, without Experts is like the world without science!

Before science the world was understood by observation and the attributing phenomonon (sp?) to super-natural forces. "If you swing a cat three times and then..... while ... you will be favored."

That is how I view the A that was provided to Coastal...

Coastal.. just got the "what" answer, not the "why"!

Science appraoches things differently. It seeks to understand a phenomonon and by so doing, acquire the knowledge and understanding required to "PREDICT" how the system would behave in other non-observed conditions.

The various replies given to Coastal... were only devloped by trial and error until we figured out if we should spin the cat clock-wise or counter clock-wise.

Set ramble=False

I do not think that we need an Expert to be on call 24/7. That is over-kill.

What could work is having a "messenger" that could carry coice Q's to the "Ivory Tower" and return with the knowledge we seek.

NEW IDEA!
How about getting one in-depth answer per week?

Of course I would like it to be my Q that gets answered but maybe we could re-introduce the "polls" and allow Exchange contributors (BTW what do we collectively call ourselves now?) to nominate what answers get the "treatment".

Trying hard to expand the strength of the LV community,

Ben

[Ben]

This what i mean about being able to answer "WHY" questions.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=101553&jump=true

If LV-Experts are ever officially declared, Rolf K should be the first!

Ben