I sleep easily and went to bed early on Friday night. But a TV program had me attentive and delayed my slumbers for a while. Subject? The success of EBay; now with a turnover that beats many countries of the world and growing rapidly all the time.

I'm not a great "ebayer" myself. I have done it, nice system, admire them for what they do but I've only so many hours in the day. So the following may be a "duh - of COURSE" for any of you who's a regular 'bayer ... the way their success is generated by their feedback system. Very neat, and self motivating / self justifying / self-policing.

When we launched OpenTalk here, several years ago, to allow past trainees to get back and ask questions, we questioned our own sanity. Other training outfits typically don't have a "get back to the tutor" board that's open to all comers on the internet. But OpenTalk has worked and has worked well. It does call for a certain daily dedication - I've just answered two questions this morning before posting here, and I expect there may be others during the day. But it gives trainees and potential customers a valuable way to provide feedback, and to get back and ask a question too. And these things accumulate into a useful FAQ since it's public.

The Ebay program inspired me in other areas I was working on too. Our wiki based internal note and communication system now has a public face - our share system where visitors can browse the latest gossip and (in some areas) contribute too. And a new page encourages our customers to talk about us and link to us from their own sites.

I'm proud of our product and what we do, and happy to talk about it and discuss it in public. It's a great success in our niche market, and we enjoy working most through networking with friends, colleagues and contacts.


(written 2005-02-28, updated 2006-06-05)

 G903 - Well House Consultants - Running and moderating forums
  [3479] Practical Extraction and Reporting - using Python and Extreme Programming - (2011-10-14)
  [2820] Netiquette for forum newcomers - (2010-06-20)
  [2781] The 500 pound question to get you started - (2010-05-26)
  [2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
  [2527] Flying tonight - (2009-12-05)
  [2526] A reluctance to move from old shoes to new - (2009-12-05)
  [2386] Computing under the influence of alcohol - (2009-08-29)
  [2254] Forum membership - a privilege not a right - (2009-06-22)
  [2177] Preventing forum spam - checks at sign up - (2009-05-12)
  [2162] Admins thoughts on banning a member from a forum - (2009-05-09)
  [2156] Stopping forum spam - control of the signup process - (2009-05-04)
  [2116] Why do we delay new forum members through authorisation? - (2009-04-03)
  [2103] Ask the Tutor - Open Source forum - (2009-03-25)
  [1972] Pettifog and forum boards away from public view - (2009-01-03)
  [1923] Making it all worthwhile - (2008-12-04)
  [1759] While the world sleeps ... - (2008-08-19)
  [1678] Software - changes and delays. But courses must run on time! - (2008-06-15)
  [1595] First Great Western Weekend - (2008-03-30)
  [1578] Please don't shout at me! - (2008-03-16)
  [1569] I dont care - goodbye - (2008-03-09)
  [1563] Guidlines for posting on a forum - (2008-03-04)
  [1539] A forum is not always the best vehicle - (2008-02-14)
  [1532] Comment spam blocked. Please comment via Forums - (2008-02-05)
  [1523] Ive just received an email from myself. Should I be worried? - (2008-01-29)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1472] The Horse goes on and on - (2007-12-15)
  [1362] No Thank You - (2007-09-23)
  [1190] Save the Forum - A regular clean sweep - (2007-05-17)
  [1088] Why use BBC code not HTML? - (2007-02-21)
  [948] Running an on line campaign - (2006-11-27)
  [923] Why shouldn't I spam? - (2006-11-13)
  [919] Freedom for X is denial of privacy for Y - (2006-11-09)
  [841] Forum help - a push in the right direction - (2006-08-21)
  [828] Freedom of speech and freedom to post - (2006-08-10)
  [806] Check your user is human. Have him retype a word in a graphic - (2006-07-17)
  [651] Please Register with Opentalk - but just once! - (2006-03-19)
  [516] Open source questions? Anyone can ask. - (2005-12-03)
  [424] How not to run a forum - (2005-08-24)
  [248] Use me, but use me effectively - (2005-03-16)
  [204] The confidence to allow public comments - (2005-02-06)
  [130] Spelling and grammar - (2004-11-25)
  [115] Expiration dates or times on web pages - (2004-11-12)
  [29] Silence is Golden - (2004-08-26)
  [22] Falling out over the silliest things - (2004-08-21)

G905 - Well House Consultants - Blogging and Blog Administration
  [3514] Microblogging - what I should have tweeted in the last 48 hours - (2011-11-10)
  [3208] Links for social media, microblogs and business networking - (2011-03-20)
  [3186] How to add a customised twitter feed to your site - (2011-02-27)
  [3163] Twitter - the special use of @ # and http: in tweets - (2011-02-09)
  [3016] The legal considerations of your web presence - revisited - (2010-10-26)
  [2823] Where have all the bloggers gone? - (2010-06-24)
  [2751] Going off at a tangent, for a ramble - (2010-05-04)
  [2564] Microblogging services - Plurk, Twitter, Jaiku and more - (2010-01-05)
  [2517] Blogging accuracy - open invitation for any corrections - (2009-11-29)
  [2449] Four aspects - Chamber, Transport, Courses and Hotel - (2009-10-11)
  [2192] Copy writing - allowing for the cut - (2009-05-21)
  [2000] 2000th article - Remember the background and basics - (2009-01-18)
  [1978] From spam to mod_alias - finding resources - (2009-01-05)
  [1203] A Fresh horse - (2007-05-24)
  [1077] In answer to 'am I glad I started a blog' ... - (2007-02-12)
  [1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
  [876] Making pages clearer - easy Disability Discrimination Act Compliance - (2006-09-23)
  [671] Both ends of the animal - (2006-04-05)
  [508] Comment, please! - (2005-11-28)
  [425] Caching an XML feed - (2005-08-26)
  [410] Reading a news or blog feed (RSS) in your PHP page - (2005-08-12)
  [405] Horse's Mouth is a year old - (2005-08-07)
  [390] Moderating wiki, blog, and forum contributions - (2005-07-26)
  [359] Chicken soup without the religion - (2005-06-26)
  [245] I'm not blogging it - (2005-03-14)
  [185] Who am I - (2005-01-21)
  [177] Blogs come of age - (2005-01-14)
  [145] a comment on comments - (2004-12-09)
  [141] Too technical? - (2004-12-05)
  [18] Wanted - more hours in the day - (2004-08-18)
  [6] Blog v Forum - (2004-08-07)
  [1] First Jottings - (2004-08-05)

Back to Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to Diverse activities

Preparation for a day's work
How to get the best from your supplier
Giving customers best value
Diverse activities
Feedback as lifeblood
Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics
A fortunate accident
Beard Justification
Bellringing and Programming and Objects and Perl
Growing our systems