How many of us have come back from one of our every day consumer experiences just fuming about what a bad experience it was. I know I have had plenty of bad experiences. I have often wanted a way to express my concerns and suggestions but always felt like it did not make a difference. How do I make my voice heard, what if I have suggestions that I feel need to be acknowledged?

What about beyond just general consumer's experiences. What about when you are working with a computer or piece of software and you have good ideas to improve, what do you do? What if you are having nonstop problems with something and you need to let people know? How do you get this feedback? And how does that company find you, and leverage your feedback to make the product and the company better? Are these companies that are out there really open to this feedback? Are they open to discussing ways to improve products, services, support or just their general presence in the community? In many cases no, in many cases they are scared or they just don't know how. They strive to quiet the conversation because they are nervous or scared of seeing bad things written about them. They don't want people experiences to get out. They are willing to sacrifice and not have the good stories be out there in order to prevent the bad ones from being there. Well guess what, there is nothing you can do about it. Having bad stories out there can be good. These stories can be opportunities for you to listen and find ways to make your product, or service that much better, and possibly even be innovative.

So what does it take to be open? What is openness? How does that affect a company's ability to innovate? What is Innovation? Well these are 2 terms that can mean different things to different people, and sometimes they can be diametrically opposed to each other. Can you have real innovation that is economically viable and be open and communicative with the community? Well it seems that there is a lot of talk about there about this. Take a look at the THE LOVE-IN article which says

"The move toward open innovation is beginning to transform entire industries"

It really is a good read on a balance between the two. I believe that without a balance between these two things companies, especially technology companies are not going to be as successful as they can be.

Part of being open, is actually opening up to and joining the conversation. Take Dell for example which is a GREAT story one of my personal favorites. Read some about it in the article Dell Learns to Listen

Also be sure to take a look at their website IDEAStorm There are many stories floating around out there about the impact that this web site has had on shipping products and how they are sold/configured. All because Dell joined the conversation. Now in this case Dell did not start the conversation, Dell just opened themselves up and realized that the conversations was going on without them and whether they wanted to join or not. Then they decided to join in and be an active part of it.

Now so let's put this in some context. As much as this site is a community site, and is geared towards helping community members connect and help each other. This site is also a way to help us communicate information to you the community. But also and perhaps most importantly this site is a vehicle to help you communicate with us. We want to give all of you a place to let us know what is going on, we want you to be able to tell us what you think, tell us what you need, what ideas you have, what we need to do to help you and what ways you need the product to improve. Now I have been in the software industry for a while, and have worked with some big companies that make it extremely difficult to give feedback and even harder to feel that the feedback you give makes any difference. I have personally lobbied for changes to several products at other organizations because it was something that we needed or something that would just be a great feature. I can only think of a couple that ever made the light of day. But I honestly feel that here that is not the case. We want to do the right thing for the right reason. Now I am not saying that anything that is suggested and or asked for will make it into the product or be changed. But I can honestly say that we are listening, we want to help you and we want to make the product better. With all that being said, this is officially your invitation to the conversation. This is your opportunity to PARTICIPATE in the conversation and give your feedback, tell us, talk to us. Let us know what we are doing wrong, let us know what we are doing right. Just participate.