Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!yale!cmcl2!phri!roy
From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Corporate Image
Message-ID: <3422@phri.UUCP>
Date: 5 Aug 88 15:03:11 GMT
References: <7047@tness7.UUCP>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 34

mechjgh@tness7.UUCP (Greg Hackney ) writes:
> Do you have any advice on how to justify the existence of netnews
> on your machines, the existence of public gateway machines, the
> existence of administrative positions for news administrators, etc.

	We're a pretty small site who probably feed more than our fair
share of other sites (about 5 or 6 at any particular time).  Periodically I
get people complaining about how slow the machine is when news comes in but
in general people don't complain much because:

	1) I'm constantly getting software off the net.  Oddly enough, even
though I'm a dedicated Unix hacker, I find that at least half the software
I snarf is Mac stuff.  It works wonders for "publicity"; I see something
interesting, grab it, spend maybe 15 minutes assembling the files and
unbinhexing them and then I go present a floppy to somebody as a present.
The conversation goes something like this: Me: "Hey, remember you asked me
N months ago about emacs for the Mac?  Well, here it is; it doesn't come
with any documentation, but it's free".  Them: "Wow, that's nice, where did
you get it?"  Me: "Oh, I'm not sure who wrote it, but I saw it go by on the
net."  Do this enough times to enough people and you build up a groundswell
of support.

	2) We've been able to use the net to our advantage.  We've found
employees through the net.  We "advertize" our various (free) seminars
which are open to the public on the net.  We use the net to communicate
with other scientists (while most of that is mail, many people don't fully
realize that mail and news are distinct and while I'll gladly explain the
difference to people if they ask, I don't go out of my way to disabuse
people of their misconception without prompting).
-- 
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net
"The connector is the network"