by Sonia Zarino

The sound of toasting and best wishes is still echoing in our ears and Microarea already has important news for its users and partners:   the Microarea Community, an online forum that, as from 12 January will enable anyone who actively participates to improve and share their knowledge of the Microarea products and services.

We talked about this with the project manager, Andrea Rinaldi, who stressed the most significant features of this new tool: “The forum has three basic objectives:

1. To be a place to swap information where people can network and share experiences on the Microarea products and services, give and get help or just swap ideas and points of view;
   
2. Become a store of experiences and knowledge of the Microarea products and services accessible to the Community and easy to use with appropriate keywords;
   
3. Create added value for all the Community users with the accumulation of contributions by various participants that translates, for example into saving a good deal of time (and therefore of money!) spent searching for information or developing software.
   

So, the conjecture is common interest and desire to share.”

Mr. Rinaldi uses a suggestive image to simply explain the mechanism of the forum: “Imagine the forum as a large container to which each regular visitor adds even just one coin: the great thing is that because we are dealing with knowledge, the content can only grow, and the container will never be empty, however much people draw from it the knowledge collected there. Overall, the more active the community of people networking in the forum, the higher added value obtained. Furthermore, individual users get back a lot more than they give and everyone can draw great advantage from joining the forum.”

You can only access the Microarea Community after registering on the Microarea site, using the same selected credentials. Depending on your profile (partner, user, prospect), you can access diverse areas where you can initiate discussions on issues you are interested in.
“Microarea hosts the forum”, explains Mr. Rinaldi, “but it doesn’t guide the discussions: we thinks its right for the users of the service – Microarea users and partners to communicate directly with each other.
Microarea mainly acts as moderator and ensures compliance with the principles of “Netiquette”: politeness, reciprocal respect, relevance of the topics, ban on advertising etc…”

How can you enter the Microarea Community?

Here are the simple steps to take in order to join the Community:

• If you haven’t already done so, register on the Microarea portal;

• Access the Forum and use the same credentials to enter;

• At this point we recommend carefully reading the Netiquette that includes the code of conduct so you always act correctly and can avoid possible “gaffes”;

• After reading and accepting the Netiquette regulations you can start visiting the forums and access the various theme areas to suit your profile.

It’s a good rule to read what has already been written on a given topic so you don’t repeat issues that have already been covered. If there is no answer to your question, you can ask the Community for help by writing a new post. One function that could be of interest to the user is notification by email of the response published on the forum.