On Mon, Oct 01, 2007 at 08:57:30AM -0700 I heard the voice of
Vic K2VCO, and lo! it spake thus:
>
> Elecraft made another innovation, which is the ability of the
> developers to talk directly to their customers. The two-way dialog
> that they have created is unique in the industry, and the Japanese
> manufacturers cannot duplicate it. Possibly Tentec could, but so far
> they haven't.
>
> This is not just a side issue. Think about the amount of time that
> Eric and Wayne spend reading and writing on this reflector -- they
> wouldn't do it if it were not essential for both development,
> marketing, and support.
On this, see some of Clay Shirky's writings about Audience vs.
Community, e.g:
Though both are held together in some way by communication, an
audience is typified by a one-way relationship between sender and
receiver, and by the disconnection of its members from one another
-- a one-to-many pattern. In a community, by contrast, people
typically send and receive messages, and the members of a
community are connected to one another, not just to some central
outlet -- a many-to-many pattern. [1]
Both the channel between the developers and users, and the channel
among the users, are vital bits of the Elecraft Community. The big
manufacturers probably couldn't duplicate it if they tried, but they
wouldn't want to try:
As a result of these differences, communities have strong upper
limits on size, while audiences can grow arbitrarily large. Put
another way, the larger a group held together by communication
grows, the more it must become like an audience -- largely
disconnected and held together by communication traveling from
center to edge -- because increasing the number of people in a
group weakens communal connection. [1]
Audience vs. Community isn't Good vs. Bad, they're just two
alternatives. Audience gives you scale, which is what a company like
Icom wants.
Elecraft [this is all speculative on my part, btw, but I think it's
reasonably accurate] is perfectly willing to give up the scale of
being a Big Company and Selling Lots Of Units. Sure, they're in
business to make money (otherwise, you're not in business), and all
else being equal more is better, but all else isn't equal. Due to
either a particular choice of market niche, or pre-existing biases of
the developers (and probably both), the dialogue between developers
and users is desired. Due to the nature of the products (and thus the
people using them), the dialogue among users fruitfully occurs. And
it's due to the combination, the overlapping, the mutually-reinforcing
of the two components, that Elecraft has a Community, rather than an
Audience.
In a sense, to really "go after the big boys" on volume (as opposed to
just on technology), Elecraft would have to end up with a much larger
Audience than they currently have. That wouldn't necessarily spell
the end of the Community (the two can exist somewhat independently;
the large Audience buying and using the products, and the smaller
Community interacting), but it would certainly change the dynamics of
the situation. Currently, the Community is a significant portion
(maybe not a majority, but certainly a large hunk) of the customer
base; after such a change, it would no longer be. An interesting
sociological study.
[1] <http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html>
Some other essays on the site touch on similar topics, but this is
the most topical. He talks about communities in a somewhat
different setting than this relatively specific and technical one,
but it's still good general musings.
--
Matthew Fuller, N3TZJ
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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