[Wylug-discuss] leveraging LUG expertise

[tom hall]

I'm in the process of setting up my own business selling NAS servers.
Ill probably branch out into webservers for schools (get moodle
schooltool etc working well on them).
I was thinking about the level of support i would need to supply and
how to avoid doing it all myself or getting too many staff in. do you
think people from other LUGs would want to sign up for ad-hoc
consultancy if a device failed in their area?
my thinking is as follows: my devices are very competitive on price,
adding £500 (for example) and offering 3 years support is equivalent
to me betting them nothing will go wrong in 3 years. if i have a
separate option to buy that support for £500 (so the price structure
is explicit) or offer a lost of local consultants willing to work on
an-hoc basis, with the hope people would prefer that option. to make
live easier for the people supporting, i would outline the setup, save
partition table info and all important config files etc. do you think
this would be popular? i could imagine myself signing up for such a
thing if the price was right (£300 for a days work or whatever). the
analogy being with the free software ecosystem having choices of
where/when/if to get support in.
any thoughts appreciated,
tom