Mission Statement: What is the battle plan?

[ekezz]

So the mission statement is clear. What intrigues me is: what the battle plan is to achieve this?

Mission Statement
Our mission is to promote global advancement and enthusiasm of flight simulation through collaborative sharing of knowledge, ideas, and product development by amateur builders to maintain flight-sim building as an enjoyable hobby.

Some thoughts on this:
- building a worldwide community requires local heroes/champions who are very well known for their expertise in any geographical, product, or specialization area, and ask them to help and commit to the community-building

- promote means to me getting exposure in magazines, on product websites, at events, etc

- collaborative means to me that builders, product manufacturers, sellers (shops), magazine editors, topic experts, etc, should have a common focus on getting the community together. While we do have events where we can get together, this should become the virtual 7x24 event for all. Where builders meet suppliers, where topic experts have a platform to show what they know, where wannabe builders can get information with a gradual learning curve (as opposed to steep)

Efforts today (galleries, forums, etc) seem to have a prorietary link to the product being sold. However, the same user names are to be found in all these places, as well as the same topic experts. Getting the required information from a builders perspective today is like driving from one mall to the other, wheras tomorrow it would be perfect to have a single "mall" where all information and products are to be found.

Maybe too ambitious, but it is possible. I have seen it work for the world wide helpdesk institute.

Just my 2 cents, and wanted to share this with you.
Kester

[Bob Reed]

Hi Kester. Well, Your post hits the nail right on the head. This is EXACTLY why we started IFSBI! You seem to have the same goals we do. What is needed is for the community to get involved and take the bull by the horns so to speak. We felt that if we put this together we could get other builders involved in helping others. Be it new people getting started in this wonderful hobby or an old timer that needs help with a certain part of there creation. We felt it was time to give the builder a one stop shop. So if you have ideas or anything else you would like to share that’s what we are here for!

[ekezz]

Thanks Bob,
I'm interested in which concrete steps the IFSBI team has planned to achieve this goal.

For instance, with your contacts you could ask for example PM and FDS to integrate/move their support forum into IFSBI forum. For the builders this will make for a one stop forum-shopping. For PM and FDS it might attract new customers and they won't have to manage the forum, only do the moderation if required.

And what about talking to Dean Bielanowski from Computer Pilot and get some exposure there. I feel that cockpit building should get more coverage in his magazine. He started a series of articles about basic cockpit building but I think it was put on hold as the author wasn't available anymore. Anyway, his magazine has some fixed topics and you could make a forum subsection Computer Pilot with these fixed subjects as topic groups

etc etc

Kester

[Matt Olieman]

Kester, I think you got into my head

As I mentioned to someone else the other day: "I never thought helping other builders would be such a hard job."

The road is long and hard, but with builders like yourself it is encouraging. I think we've all seen people (builders/vendors) come and go, some are good and some are bad. I would like to think we're the good guys.

Bob, Larry and I were speaking last night and praised ourselfs for being a tiny step away from completing our goals (as far as the web-site). All it requires is to put the tutorial pages in action, that makes it 100% complete. I think, it took 3 or 4 months of hard work. Now comes the refinement, more hard work

The mission itself, is far from being complete, and the hard work continues.

Kester I welcome your input, perspective, involvement and support. I love to have personal conversation with you and discuss our plans, perhaps you can get intricately involved

[ekezz]

Hi Matt,
Thanks for your encouraging words. Sure, I am glad to be able to participate in whatever role. Let's start (continue) discussing the objectives and the plan.
How do you want to proceed?
How do the three of you communicate? by phone or by mail?

Kester

[Bob Reed]

Hi Kester. We comunicate by phone, Team Speak and email.... I will let Matt fill you in!

[Westozy]

G'day guys, Interesting stuff. I reply to the Q. What do builders need.
I would like to see a page with advice on PC building. Eg. what are the current best video cards, motherboards, power supplys etc. As you know, I intend to make my 737 sim run on a solo PC using PMDG and will be building a PC to suit. I guess this is sort of entry level and I do want to keep it simple. I know PC gear improves and changes all the time but I think it would be really good to be able to click on a link, and find a description on how to build a cockpit PC or network using current best practice. This would surely eliminate a lot of expensive mistakes made by builders using trial and error methods. I am sure there are many different configurations of successful PC set-ups but there must be a common train of thought on the best way to do such a task. This would take a lot of the mystery out of my project!
I am lot more confident of building a good sim since joining IFSBI and talking to Matt, Larry, Bob, Kester and others. However, questions answered in the forums are only seen by the people following the forum, and as a result only the few following the string benefit from the valuable exchanges. Forum strings do tend to wander off track and as a result valuable information ends up hidden all over the place. I think the ever increasing wealth of PC and building knowledge needs to be published at IFSBI under specific catagories. The same could be done for the mechanical side, eg. links to pages for mechanical drawings, building tips and correct use of tools etc.
What do you think?
Gwyn

PS Kester, I have already contacted Computer Pilot magazine, I'll chase it up.

[Matt Olieman]

Westozy,

EXCELLENT input!!!!! Thank you