RE: Avid Community Forums

["Mark McArdle" <mmcardle(at)postcentral.com>]

agreed 

...and excellent metaphor

 

Mark McArdle

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ds(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-ds(at)Softimage.COM]On Behalf Of Chris Connolly
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 4:08 PM
To: DS(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: Avid Community Forums

Hey Sylvain,

Here's the way I see it. I don't think anyone left to exile themselves from the avid community. It's more about the efficiency of communication, and I don't think the online forum does it for us.

Bear with me for this metaphor. The email list is kind of like radios for a police force. We can all call on each other for backup when we need it, and help out when we can. I myself check my email about 20 times a day, so I can end up seeing a lot of DS emails flowing my way. I can be very passive in this sense and still be very connected to the list. The "radio" is always on my hip.

In a forum I would have to actively go out of my way to stay connected. Now that might not seem like much, but it's kinda like counting on the police to be in their cars constantly, or in their offices, when the reality is that sometimes they have to be elsewhere. Instead of the communication coming to them, they have to go out of their way to find the communication. So with regards to the DS forum, I think that turns into a lot of dropped calls, both asking for help and offering it.

So staying with this metaphor, I think the list ending feels like our radios are being taken away. So we decided to go out and get new ones. I think that if Avid wants our activity in their forum, then they should look into how much it would cost to reprogram it a little bit. If we could all get emails like before, I think there would be a chance that many would reconsider it. I admit I don't know all the factors involved, but is that one more step too much to ask for?

Thanks,

Chris

I hope you do tune into our new list once in a while.


On Jan 27, 2006, at 9:09 AM, Sylvain Labrosse wrote:

Hello,

I waited for the dust to come down a bit before posting.

The intention was to regroup all the wonderful knowledge into a single place so all great minds could help newcomers with their excellent advices.  The forum did not have much activity for Avid DS and there are numerous other forums where the DS community could pick great information and even exchange workflows and tips.

The forum is also a place where users can provide their suggestions and feedback about the product.  It is totally acceptable to even post complaints about what is missing or not working.

I research the e-mail question with the forum web developers and they provided me this answer:

You can subscribe to one or all forums and receive the posts in your mailbox:
Log in to the Community Forums.
Click the forum you want.
Scroll down and click the "Options" button.
In the bottom pulldown ("Send e-mail"), select the option you want;
        never
        when new topics are posted in this forum (new threads)
        when new posts are posted in this forum (new posts) Click "Remember!"
To reply to a post, though, the member would have to click on the link they receive in their e-mail to return to the forums - you can't reply via e-mail.

It is not like a mailing-list but this an option for users who wish to lurk and read the discussions, maybe even participate.

I feel that going away to a separate mailing-list is like isolating yourself from the Avid community instead of joining in with the entire group, exchanging ideas and workflows between products, and helping building the next generation of products by providing suggestions or pointing out the current flaws.

I understand the overall reaction.  Being at Softimage since 1992 and living through two major acquisitions (Microsoft in 1994 and Avid in 1998), I know how upsetting things can be, or appear to be, at first.  Can I ask people to re-evaluate it all, when the emotion is taken out of the equation?  Maybe not today, not next week, just when you feel ready?

Having a separate mailing-list is fine if that is everybody's decision.

The Avid Community Forums welcome anyone who wants to join.

Sylvain Labrosse
Avid DS Support

Escalation team

http://www.softimage.com/avidds

Check The Learning Collection