[lugm.org] Announcing a Mauritian tech forum

Wed Dec 18 01:43:26 UTC 2013

Hi Nishal,

Sorry, I'm going to be a noob and top post. I just got into work and
the Gmail interface really wants to be used in the top posting
fashion.

I agree with everything that you said. More than just a debate about
onshore vs. offshore hosting, it boils down to doing what's right for
your users. I understand that you wanted to raise awareness on the
broader issue and I think that it's a debate that is definitely worth
having.

With regards to marketing strategy- I don't have much of a strategy at
all. This basically was my thought process: I'll put the site out
there, get the word out to the tech community, and see if anyone is
willing to support the idea. I want to give the site every chance of
succeeding, but I definitely don't want to be spammy about it. I'm
basically relying on community buy in.

If anyone is interested at all, simply signing up and posting
something would help immeasurably. Personally, if I went to a forum
and only saw a couple of users and a few posts that were clearly
written by the webmaster, I would probably not go back to the forum
again. However, if it looks like there's a little bit of activity, I
would probably visit from time to time.

Cheers,
Shane

On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 2:26 AM, Nishal Goburdhan <ndg at ieee.org> wrote:
> On 17 Dec 2013, at 5:05 PM, Vy-Shane Sin Fat <shane at node.mu> wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 10:35 PM, Nishal Goburdhan <ndg at ieee.org> wrote:
>>
>> The site is hosted on Amazon's EC2. I picked EC2 simply because...
>
> full disclosure:  i'm neither mauritian, nor based in MU anymore.  i monitor this list out of curiosity mostly.  which also means i have zero commercial interest in this.
>
> from my days in MU, there seems to be a large culture of "not caring where we host".
> (actually, it was worse that that;  it was also a "not caring how we're addressed";  i have strong issues with companies that have mail addresses ending in @gmail.com / intnet.mu because, it tells me that they lack their own online business identity, which i think is important.)
>
> i've always believed that the goal to success is to lead by example;  the organisation that i did have ties to while i was in MU, made a point of keeping, and hosting, the mauritian facing part of their infrastructure in MU, even though it was more expensive.  i know that some people on this list share that mentality.  i think that's an important part of growing the local market.
>
> my point about "not hosting in MU" was really, to kickstart some local organisation into seeing that this is actually something useful, and perhaps gearing them to work with you, and vice-versa.  after all, if you don't start investing in your own local environment, don't expect others to... !
>
>
>>> ** makes access to this slower for MU users, which in turn would make them less likely to want to contribute
>>
>> The box is hosted in Singapore, which among EC2's regions, is I think
>> the best the region for Mauritian users. I've kept graphics to a
>> minimum on the site. Hopefully load times shouldn't be too much of a
>> problem.
>
> from what i remember of the way that MT and Emtel do their routing, that's probably not going to be the case.
> they both breakout for IP transit in europe primarily, although MT does have a branch to malaysia telecom.
> that used to be used for backup mostly, but that might have changed;  i see a traceroute from MU does indeed go MY->SG, so that's good for now!
>
> anyway..that's not necessarily relevant :-)
>
>
>>> * as a sometimes techie, i'd say:   "what, no IPv6?"     ;-)
>>
>> IPv6 isn't a priority at the moment.
>
> nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....don't say it like that  :-(
>
>
>> I won't rule it out, but I think
>> that the biggest challenge for the site is not technical at all. The
>> question is: does Mauritius even need a tech forum? Will people be
>> interested enough to join and use it? If no one uses the site, it'll
>> just quietly fade away.
>
> in south africa, there's a local end-user/tech forum called mybroadband(.co.za).
> i forget the history (it's been a while) but it started as just a way for people to write about/discuss their online experiences.  at the time, this was limited to just the DSL offering from the incumbent, but over time, this has grown, and become the de-facto go-to site for most home networking / general simple tech issues.  analogous to the whirlpool forums that you'd find in australia.
> one thing that spawned from these forums, was some sort of tech journalism - see http://mybroadband.co.za/news/
> they've gown - so much so, that they now have an annual large meeting that attracts *lots* of folks.
> that's *one* possible growth path for you...iirc, there's just the orange tech fair that happens once a year in MU as a generic "tech" show, and that's just around stuff that they sell.
>
> let me be clear;  i support the idea of a tech-forum.  but, as you rightfully said, it should be something that the locals want, and that they support.  props to you for setting this up - and double props for using a .mu domain as i know it's hideously expensive.   a good thing to use this forum for, is to show best practices - two of which i outlined earlier - local hosting (the need for it), and IPv6 - and that's why i mentioned them ;-)
>
> i'm guessing you have a strategy to market this inside MU, or is that what this post is - to ask for marketing strategies - and bring awareness - to/from the list inhabitants?
>
>
>>> as a more networking related geek, i'd bemoan that there isn't a "networking" section, but i guess that this is aimed at home users, so the routing protocol market is small here ;-)
>>>
>>> --n.
>>
>> I've renamed the forum "The Server Room" to "Servers and Networking" :-)
>
>
> heh.  thanks  ;-)
>
> --n.
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