Having your idea published isn't equivalent to having your idea heard.
of course not. most new documents in any series are ignored. very few
people other than professional propeller-heads in ivory tower actually
read every article in acm-sigcomm or every rfc that comes out or whatever.
(computing systems, and the usenix proceedings, are notable exceptions,
with many hundreds of interested readers who at least skim everything
since it's likely that they know most of the program committee personally.)
At least for well-known refereed forums, one can make the guess that
"maybe an ACM or IEEE or whatever has relevant publications".
Self-publication is dependent on getting a good Google ranking (more or
less).
two things. (1) people who want a reference will use google first, and
will search it thouroughly, before checking to see if acm or usenix or
ieee knows something that google hasn't heard yet. (2) all publication
is dependent on promotion, whether the journal is refereed or whether
it's just up on the company web server.
so if you want to know that your pubs are available to interested parties,
put them where google can find them and you're done. and if you want to
know that your pubs are skimmed by not-yet-interested parties, talk about
them in public and hope you motivate some lurkers. (it's sort of like spam
in that way, though i wouldn't recommend trying to get a credit card number
before you show someone your content if you're using a list like ietf@ to
generate interest.)
--
Paul Vixie