Apologies for the delay.

Most of what I heard has already been mentioned by Sam (and positively: a lot of it related to ideas we have already spoken about) so I've added my comments, thoughts and more questions:

Most of the comments that I picked up on seemed to relate to our target audience: who are they - client or agency? (I'm sticking to some rigid stereotyping here). Obviously both but does the site need to be skewed one-way or another?

Content/architecture "too vertical":
- "Would clients understand forum titles?"

Creative: "too harsh"
- Questions - "how intimidating is it?", "how important is download time versus 'personality'?"

Currently harsh and vertical (agency skewed), can we also make it softer and horizontal (for the client types) without weakening it.

- (PT: Two-tracks - one for the specific information gatherer and another for the browser. Current architecture and look & feel lends itself to information grabbing. Can we make it better for browsing as well by increasing horizontal content: contextual cross-links and softening the look&feel? ie. e-consultant pics, or maybe something as simple as colours and a curve here and there).

Forums are "scary"
- you wouldn't want to post a quick, jokey note to the forums, it would look out of place amongst more thoughtful, quality posts.
- We don't have critical mass in the forums and that means less up-to-date content. However, the content is good enough to have a longer 'shelf-life'.
- (ME: I think that less is more, and fewer, considered postings are of more value than a constant mass of 2 or 3 line questions and answers - it fits in with 'thought-leadership' and the whole idea of a concentrated, knowledgeable brand - less fluff more hard info. It also means that valued forum content can be cross-referenced horizontally to create integrated knowledge sources on say, 'kids e-commerce' without being drowned in specific, chatty posts on, 'Fox Kids' new look & feel').

E-mail services are good can we bring them even further to the front'?
- Use mail services to create a 'softer' track for less hardcore users - promote aggregated e-con content with a more accessible tone-of-voice ie. 'Everything we know about eCRM' or even softer 'Everything we know about using the web to talk with customers'. These could be indexes that link to the site.
- ...So I visit an Alex post on GPRS, don't understand a word of it but a contextual link takes me to 'e-consultancy: The layman's guide to wireless' an aggregation of forum posts, white papers and features.
- Question: Can we grade white papers on level of experience - a beginner's guide to globalisation would be accessability '1' while - 'Ethnography in online FMCG channels' would be a '5'. Then users can search knowledge levels - I want to know about 3G but I don't want network diagrams and examples of code so I'll choose 'beginner'.

e-con Users - who are they?
- how do they divide by agency/client - can we analyse the user data to help in the targeting? Are client-side users put off?

Paul