You never personally suggested it, but it was the general basis of the rant made by others.
I personally wasn’t offended by the posts, but I have a remarkably irritating tone deaf attitude regarding people complaining about things in their singular frame of mind.
Wouldn’t the flagged status be removed after the other posts were deleted? To me that seems like the situation would be resolved at that point. Provided it wasn’t flagged again that is.
What important issue are they ignoring, by utilizing Marketing staff and brand new hires, to man a booth? Are these folks contributing to the engineering and design of operations issue solutions? Are they on the production floor at the contract manufacturer, actively participating in production or QA? Is the Marketing staff in charge of handling shipping problems? Are they responsible for Customer Support?
No. They’ve got to keep pushing forward, driving new sales and keeping the doors open so the other folks can continue working to solve those issues. Now is not the time for them to shrink back with their tails between their legs and hide in a corner where nobody can see them. That’s not going to get the problems taken care of and it’s not going to help get this great product out in front of people.
It doesn’t matter “how it looks”… because “how it looks” is subjective to the viewer’s current emotional state, and everyone is going to see it differently.
IMO the direction as a whole is neglectful of the current issue (getting the glowforges delivered). New sales aren’t keeping this company aloft anyways. Investor dollars are. So the marketing people doing this arent keeping the others working by doing this.
[quote=“mpipes, post:107, topic:9215”]
It doesn’t matter “how it looks”.
[/quote] But it does. People buy into a company based on their perceptions.
[quote=“mpipes, post:107, topic:9215”]
“how it looks” is subjective
[/quote] I agree.
I don’t understand what you’re saying at all. This is what marketing people do. What marketing does to promote the product (and make no mistake, this is a great way to market the product) doesn’t affect the production line at all.
So if GF doesn’t choose to sponsor GF users at Maker Faire, nobody will get their machine faster. If they do sponsor users, nobody will wait longer to get their machine. These are two different parts of the company.
I’m going to requote this part:
[quote=“sameolegrind, post:108, topic:9215”]
So the marketing people doing this arent keeping the others working by doing this.
[quote]
How do you think the marketing people “keep the others working” if they don’t do this? I’m genuinely asking because I can’t figure out what effect it has. Again, as a marketing person myself, I can’t make product happen faster at my company, i don’t have the skills. That’s not what they hired me for. I’d be more in the way than helpful. But maybe I’m missing something and there’s something specific you think GF marketers can be doing to ensure that GFs go out the door sooner rather than later.
[quote=“shop, post:109, topic:9215”]
How do you think the marketing people “keep the others working” if they don’t do this?
[/quote] In a normal company they do. In this situation it’s funded by previous investments. The glowforge staff themselves pointed this out and downplayed any initiative to make sales at these sort of events. They said this in response to some peoples anger that they were pursuimg sales over producing units
The NY Faire is not quite as large as Bay Area, so maybe connection issues are less of a problem there (I do not remember people grumbling about them, but I hadn’t been around the booths very much).
If you do try something like this, be sure to bring some serious wifi hardware and make a deal with the Faire coordinators to ensure a strong wired connection for your hotspot. At BAMF, the individuals with glowforges had problems with getting them to connect. But… the main glowforge booth was pushing people through on multiple machines through the day (also with problems, but surmountable ones).
It doesn’t sound like your case is outside the parameters of this grant. Probably lower on the priority to be awarded, since you won’t be directly interacting with as many people as the walk-up booths. But still feasible (IMO)
The entire reason that flags require manual action for permanent action is because different people are offended at different things. If you think a flag is inappropriate… don’t add another flag to that post? Or maybe give the post a like to show support for not enforcing the flag?
The auto-hide happens when a certain number of people have flagged the post. There is no indication one or two people have already flagged it. So each of the individual flags that resulted in the eventual auto-hide came independently. Enough people DID find the post flag worthy, even if you and I do not.
For all we know, there could be a forum member who flags every single post, even their own. That has NO impact on you or me. Us complaining about how others handle flagging is quite pointless. Do not worry about stressing yourself out on things that have no impact on you, and you have no control over. It is bad for your overall health 
Just as people will ignore forum guidelines, and post things which shouldn’t be posted… people will ignore flagging guidelines, and flag things which shouldn’t be flagged. Dan and crew will review the flags and THEY will remember the flagging guidelines in deciding on final arbitration.
[quote=“sameolegrind, post:110, topic:9215, full:true”]
So, is your argument that the company simply should not have a marketing branch at all? Because I am with the others in not understanding your complaint here. Marketing is absolutely vital to any company. If Glowforge was not marketing, they would lose their investors in no time. The investors are here for the longterm gains from the company. Marketing is the entire source of those longterm gains.
What precisely should marketing be doing? Waving pompoms at the assembly line? Marketing has a job to do, this is them doing their job. Manufacturing is outsourced to the Flex team, with some engineers helping to speed up the assembly process, and others working on improving the shipping outcomes. Everyone is doing their job, Glowforge is actively hiring more people to do more jobs.
But do not make the claim that a business can exist longterm without marketing, or that they can wait on marketing until some future point. Marketing is a constant need in any company. And we all want this company to exist for a VERY long time, or our cloud services are gone, and we have to wait on community effort to make our machines return to a fraction of what they are capable of with the company in place (and we have absolutely no source of Proofgrade…)
What “normal company” are you talking about? Are you in marketing? I’ve been doing this for 25 years in a whole lot of different industries, in companies as small as 25 people and as large as 50,000. Marketing people do marketing, they don’t do production. unless your product is marketing.
How does the Marketing department help get previous orders delivered?
Investor dollars are not an infinite supply of spending cash. At some point, those dollars have to be paid back in full PLUS some ROI, the loans need to be paid back with attached interest debt. At some point the company needs to stand on its own two feet, and it’s going to get there through marketing.
Marketing is an investment. Sometimes the returns can come in short order but usually to gain mindshare amongst the mass volumes needed to generate the momentum a company needs to survive, it requires repeated exposure over long time frames.
The marketing done today, might take 6 months to yield results. Glowforge, Ford, whoever, doesn’t matter.
I never said they did. In an average company, in this case, one that doesn’t have investment capital to burn, marketing is done to garner sales. The sales drive the business.
I’m pointing out what Dan himself said, which is that these sort of events dont have the intention or motivation of sales but rather to meet the end user.
That’s called Marketing.
They’re not selling AT the show. But they are definitely marketing.
Face time, meeting with your customers, is marketing.
I’m aware of that. I was responding to the idea that sales at these shows isn’t what’s paying the bills currently. Which has been stated by GF staff
i’m not really sure how to respond to that. you literally said, “in a normal company they do.” then turned around and said, “i never said they do.”
still not sure what your argument is. i get that you’re upset. i’m sure at least part of it is because you don’t have a GF yet (neither do i). but i still can’t figure out how you think abandoning this grant process would benefit preorder buyers, GF as a company, or anyone else.
You said that marketing people don’t do production. My response was, I never said that they do.
The “in a normal company” part references the role of marketing needing to drive sales. They do.
ok, i obviously misread your response based on what you quoted.
understand, though, this maker faire happens once a year. and it’s one of the biggest ones. so this is their chance to up their marketing game at this faire now (w/o having to wait another year). even if they don’t keep the business afloat by selling units at the faire, they do keep the GF name out in front of people’s minds, which, as noted by mpipes above, is necessary to help pump future sales. and the more people at the faire using the GF who aren’t GF employees, the better it looks.
so, that said, i’m still confused about what your argument against this is. i still don’t see a downside.
Well they could have those marketing people sitting around doing absolutely diddly-squat, burning through salaries, with nothing to show for it… 
To confirm what others are sharing: I’m the only marketing person at Glowforge and I coordinate all aspects of Maker Faire (and this grant program) single-handedly. Our new hires come staff the booth for the weekend, which gives them the chance to meet customers and introduce Glowforge to families, STEM teachers, wide-eyed toddlers, 10-year-olds who know an impressive amount about fabrication tech - they walk away feeling energized and more committed than ever to serve our customers. I see it as a total win-win. 
I’ve read much (mostly valid) criticism, but overall I think this is a great idea and a wise use of financial resources and human capital on the part of the company. I choose to interpret it as what it is on the face - an honest attempt to support customers, regardless of their delivery status. Thank you! I just wish I had enough spare vacation time to apply.
Ive made my argument repeatedly. Its ok if you disagree however. You may not see it as a negative. Everyone sees things differently. The whole reason I posted today was essentially to point out that not everyone agrees with the general consensus.
At this point, with as many delays as they have had, I dont feel that they should go out of their way to allocate resources to other places rather than production. To me, it sends a bad message. I also dont think they should send units out for this. None of this has a large effect on the overall outcome but it does have some. People were upset to see units going to others out of order (forum regulars) and now, money and machines will go to others again instead of sending the machines to the final customers. All of these things compound over time to create tension. Things like this make me interpret this whole event negatively.
Again, it is ok if you don’t see that. Its also ok if you disagree. Its not as if GF is actually going to change anything on account of my opinion.
Right… Marketing can only be done in this way and at this event.