Meeting with Ken Tarpey, VP Customer Service, Symbolics

[pan@Athena.Pangaro.Dialnet.Symbolics.Com (Paul Pangaro)]

    Date: Fri, 2 Mar 90 11:49 PST
    From: RDP@ALAN.kahuna.decnet.lasc-research.lockheed.com (Robert D.
	  Pfeiffer)

	Date: Wed, 21 Feb 90 11:42 EST
	From: pan@Athena.Pangaro.Dialnet.Symbolics.Com (Paul Pangaro)

	Friends: This is a brief and informal report on my meeting with Ken
	Tarpey on Thursday, 8 February. 

	[...]

	Of particular interest but only slowly-emerging detail is a
	clarification of strategic direction on Symbolics' part. One
	summary might be that Symbolics, now more than ever, is trying to
	respond to users' stated needs.

    I hope I'm not jumping the gun on this since you allude to the fact that
    there is more in the works than we are hearing about.  But since you

No, you are not jumping any gun, especially since Symbolics has
not proceeded with public announcements at anywhere near the pace
they had professed; in any event, opinions such as these are
extremely valuable and must be aired as widely as possible. Thanks
for the effort.

    invited discussion at the end of the message, here goes:

    If I were to generalize the single most important need that we have in
    my group which has not been met by Symbolics, I would say that it is in
    the "packaging" of the Symbolics products.  We could really make great
    use of the underlying technology in Concordia and Statice, for example,
    but their "rough edges" and NON-seamless integration with the rest of
    Genera has really caused us headaches.  I could go into much more
    elaborate detail about the specifics but I want to be brief in this
    message and focus on the high-level issue.  That issue is that we could
[...]

Given that you have added specifics, would you be able to attend
SLUG-90 and do a session on this? I think your proposal is
excellent, and it mirrors some other users needing similar things.
Given Symbolics' new focus on major applications of their existing
high-power corporate users, it is a good time to go into details.

	[...]

	Communciations to users: I understand that improvements in
	communications to the sales offices (e.g., regular FAX network
	communiques) have been made and the impact of these will be felt.
	As suggested by SLUG, the publication "Symposium" will be
	re-evaluated. A letter to users concerning details of 8.0 is being
	drafted. We must wait to see the effects of the new communications in
	information available to individual users.

    One thing I would like to see is a regularly published and effectively
    distributed publication about what's new with Symbolics.  I guess that's
    what "Symposium" is (was) supposed to be but I've never even seen a
    copy.  Lucid does a good job getting me Lucid Moments each quarter and
    I'm not even a customer of theirs (yet).  I see no reason why Symbolics
    shouldn't be able to do as well (i.e. maintain a distribution list and
    make sure a quarterly publication gets to everyone on it -- PARTICULARLY
    NON CUSTOMERS).

Right on.

	[...]

    I think I've used up my two cents worth.

Never, please continue.

Best,
PANgaro