Yes, there are a lot of potential forum users that aren’t getting involved. Quite a few unique viewers. I haven’t gotten the invite badge yet. I followed up how it is pushed on www.glowforge.com. Kind of minimal connection between forum and main site as an owner at first glance.
A quick email out to all pre-order purchasers encouraging them to set up a weekly digest, or at least an email notification from anything in the Announcements category would be a phenomenal first step.
But yeah… no matter how much you push for it, many people just do not do forums. And of those who do, few will actually read everything. Quite a few will come in weekly at most, glance at a few topic headers for anything of interest, and move on thinking there was nothing good to read.
Though having anything more than an email a month which is blasted out to all purchasers will certainly get people complaining of spamming their inbox. So it may be a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.
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Good Call, I had only been searching forums and just went to these other areas. very informative. @rpegg I saw your thread titled “Realistic Expectations” regarding beta testers around the seattle area to start with. An update here or maybe question that i seem to have missed…I noticed on facebook and in the Shipping FAQ, a breif comment:
If you’re interested in getting an earlier, beta unit, then after you purchase, keep an eye on your email. We’ll send an email when we’re ready for volunteers to try the first units.
I suppose that in some sense all that purchased pre-order are beta testers to an extent since we will all be on whatever current version of software and if I understand how this cloud deal will work, even the folks who buy retail will be part of a community where everyone has a chance for feedback to make it better and better. Looking forward to seeing the features this machine can do as they keep getting added 
This is my first crowd-funded pre-purchase. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. And what I am finding is that, for me, the conversational forum approach has been working well and I have no worries about eventually receiving a high-quality product. That said, as the forum gets more and more use it also gets more and more difficult to keep track of every post, each little gem of information. I have been trying my best, but even so I find that sometimes posts from a month back escaped my attention, and contained some piece of information that I found helpful, interesting, important, and (only occasionally) worrisome.
Coming from a video/media background, I agree completely with this statement:
This is an interesting project. Not just for the designers, not just for the investors, not just for the owners. There are many different angles to the entire project that beg for documentation: Successful startup? Check. Innovative product? Check. Record breaking crowd-funding? Check. Non-traditional hiring methods and casual workplace? Check. Disruptive technology? Check. Eager audience, ready to watch and begging for more? Check.
One of the harder things to do in film-making is to find an engaging subject, especially one that has not been worked to death… and here is Glowforge with that in hand, but too busy to run with it.
When I was in film school, one of the standard projects was “Find something to make a documentary about, and make it.” When I graduated from university and started looking for a real job was when I discovered that having an had internship would have been a better move for finding a job than having covered a wide range of subjects in classes. I wonder if there is a film school, or an arts school nearby your location, that could provide you with a film/video intern or two. Someone who will be happy to work for school credit AND who knows their way around a tripod, boom and gimbal. They would be guaranteed hundreds of hits on their youtube channel from forum users alone, and if my initial sense of @dan and @aeva 's humor and charisma is correct (and especially if it extends to others in the office from whom we have not heard as much) than I think it would be a whole lot more than that.
And just maybe it would calm down some of the folks who have concerns about… stuff.
just my2¢
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[quote=“rpegg, post:60, topic:742, full:true”]
Don’t disagree. It would be prudent to get an occasional email out to those folks that aren’t fully engaged with this forum… There are probably thousands of owners that have never viewed these boards and mistakenly think the communication has stopped. There is a lot going on outside of this forum but it’s not easy to find. For example: Last weeks interview http://embedded.fm/episodes/125 gives us additional information about the power supplies, cameras, etc. [/quote]
The GlowForge community should be made aware of that interview. I listened to it yesterday and it addressed several of my concerns with the product in a very satisfactory manner, perhaps mostly because Dan was able to answer there in a lot more depth than his time allows here in the forums.
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