said by BHNtechXpert: Forums participation has doubled or higher since direct was implemented overall but more importantly we have been able to solve more problems quicker than ever which is really what it's all about from my perspective. Honestly I would like to see the public forums be a place where our resident experts help and drive the momentum and I'm working on some things now to encourage that more than ever. Hopefully by mid December we can get that ball rolling...
This forum is great but in cases where you are offline, unless you have alternative internet access available, you're stuck with having to call tech support. Maybe along with this forum, you could implement a twitter account for "public" things and then maybe text messages for the private stuff.