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This forum’s name will change to “Apple Talk” in the new system
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All Things Post Debated
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[Ronald Lindeboom] “There will be no perfect name, just as the existing name has been far from perfect. Anything will be a compromise and so I am going to leave it up to you guys to come up with a name that you can live with.”
How about breaking it into two forums? I don’t come here for the debates. I come whenever Apple releases something new like a new MacBook Pro because I know someone will have made a post and others who may have even bought it will comment on how it fits with their workflow. That is probably something I would go to an Apple Talk forum for.
So how about we split this forum into two: One for discussions about the latest Apple products for video production called Apple Talk and another for debates on the merits of different NLE’s NLE Debates?
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com -
When this forum started, it was all about FCP X: the evangelists vs the naysayers to put it roughly. And I loved to participate in it because good points were made on both sides and we tried to stay as polite as possible with each other, even though the positions were quite polarized at times.
Over the years, when it became obvious that FCP X was here to stay and that it even became one of the most used NLEs on the planet, the Or Not discussion was over and this forum shifted to an amalgam of topics that have little or nothing to do with FCP X anymore. That’s why I truly understand that new people who come here these days looking for information about FCP X (because that’s in the title), are disappointed and even angry when they see what this forum really has to offer. Let’s be honest: since the focus changed from FCP X (or not) to a more general discussion about anything you can imagine, this forum is absolutely not as lively nor as interesting anymore as it used to be. And I say this will the utmost respect for everyone who contributes to it.
So the question is: do we really want to continue with the forum as it is, albeit with a different name? Or are we willing to accept that the ”discussions” here have worn out and it’s time to change directions all together with a new name?
If it’s the first option, I agree the name cannot include FCPX anymore and I honestly don’t care what the new name will be. Because just like many people have done before me, I will stop coming here. I am simply not interested in arguing about NLEs because I find this to be a colossal waste of time. In my country, we say: “les goûts et les couleurs ne se discutent pas”. And I entirely agree with that. If I want to get more information about a piece of software, I can easily find specialized websites, forums or groups. Based on that information, I’m quite capable of making up my own mind. Actually, the last thing I need is to see other people arguing about an application I’m interested in. Because those people are not me and we all have different priorities, preferences, and needs.
On the other hand, if we would be prepared re-direct the focus of this forum, I’m sure we could bring back many interesting people who have left out of frustration, and we could even attract new participants. In that respect, I agree with Ron that a more specific forum such as “Apple Talk” would be a great idea. If we want to avoid having to talk about the latest i-toys but stay within the professional spirit of the Cow, we even could opt for “Apple Pro Talk” instead. I can assure you that this certainly wouldn’t be a fanboy-only forum, there is just too much controversy and misunderstanding around Apple’s interest in the professional market for this to happen. Quite the opposite: I think that there will be a LOT to debate about in the next 8 months. But I’m only one little voice in this discussion, this is my personal opinion on all this. And I’m with Ron all the way.
– Ronny
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[Ronny Courtens] “On the other hand, if we would be prepared re-direct the focus of this forum, I’m sure we could bring back many interesting people who have left out of frustration, and we could even attract new participants.”
But shouldn’t us actual FCPX users start having discussions on the Apple FCPX Forum (formerly the techniques forum) I think that splitting the forums has chased away people that actually want to talk about FCPX and that forum is now seen as just a place for people looking for solutions, not discussion.
We used to do that that on the old FCP “Legacy” forum, in fact it’s the thing that led me to the COW in the first place.
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I agree, Steve. The Techniques forum is far more interesting and alive than this one and should indeed be the only forum for anything related to FCP X. The Debates forum has lost its roots and its credibility and should get a new destination.
Seeing what this forum has turned into, I sincerely question the usefulness of any forum where people debate over NLEs. IMO it’s as useless as debating over cars, and it leads too easily to frustration and name-calling. The fact that many brilliant contributors have stopped coming here seems to prove this point.
– Ronny
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I’ll start by observing that one of the most frequent topics here has been the inappropriateness of the name of this forum. The current name is the fifth, I think, with as much room for improvement as any of the others have had.
Some broader thoughts:
[Steve Connor] “But shouldn’t us actual FCPX users start having discussions on the Apple FCPX Forum (formerly the techniques forum) I think that splitting the forums has chased away people that actually want to talk about FCPX and that forum is now seen as just a place for people looking for solutions, not discussion.
We used to do that that on the old FCP “Legacy” forum, in fact it’s the thing that led me to the COW in the first place.
“I agree that virtually every conversation about FCPX taking place here could just as easily be taking place in the FCPX forum.
It’s not that we split the forums, though, not exactly.
We were at home during NAB 2011, when our system blew up with notifications of new posts going up in the FCP forum (the only one we had at the time). Hundreds of them an hour, so we assumed that it was spam that somehow got through our walls, but no, it was real-time response to the presentation, and virtually all of it negative.
Whatever anyone tells you about the happy happy temperature of the room at the time, fine, whatever. Look around the internet, though. Nearly EVERYONE motivated to post outbound from the event, on social media, on their blogs, on forums by no means limited to the COW — was unhappy with what they were seeing. This is easily verified, and very much lines up with what we heard from people who’d seen previews once they were released from their NDAs.
So as part of our effort to preserve signal in the FCP forum, we at that moment created an FCPX or Not: The Debate forum. We didn’t think too long about the name. We were drowning with posts to the FCP forum, that were getting in the way of actual conversations about actual FCP, and went with the first thing that came to mind.
It really did seem to be the crux of the biscuit, though — are you down with this new direction, or not?
Our decision to create a separate forum for this was quickly verified as the right call, as the volume (both in number of posts and the vociferousness of their content) skyrocketed over the coming months.
Why no forum for the USE of FCPX out of the gate? Well, we DID have one out of the gate. As soon as there was a product that people were using. Later. For months, debating was the only thing we COULD do.
Obviously, the debate continued for some time after the release. Debates over issues like, Apple’s decision to end official support for Legacy, their decision to intentionally ship the product “wet” with an accompanying roadmap of when mission-critical features would be arriving, followed later by debates over whether Apple’s idea of mission-critical matched one’s own.
No need to rehash any of that now, of course. Much of it is moot. The features are there or they’re not. You care or you don’t.
But in the meantime, the traffic in the Forum for the Using of FCPX (whose name underwent a tweak or two of course) continued to climb as well, but as is the nature of such things, more quietly. Nobody was yelling. They were there to work.
A number of early and frustrating ironies abounded along the way. One is that the COW itself was branded as having a negative disposition toward X, when nothing could be further from the truth. Not one of you — not Bill, not Robin, NONE of you — was as bullish on Apple’s approach to X as me in particular. To review:
— I supported, and still support, Apple’s rollout plan as exemplary in every jot and tittle. I was lacerated for this in the forum at the time, and still am now and again.
— I boldly predicted 10 million seats by the end of the first year. I regularly get mocked (mostly playfully) for this, along with my contention that anything less should be considered a failure, and my statement that if it were Timmy Wilson were in charge rather than Timmy Cook, I’d have had many heads rolling if that goal weren’t achieved.
— I predicted that this would be the Apple NLE release that finally moved the needle in Hollywood, because it provided obvious workflow advantages where Legacy presented obstacles.
— In my interview on the making of Whisky Tango Foxtrot with director Glen Ficarra (and a lengthy sidebar with First Assistant Editor Kevin Bailey) predicted that X would change not only the way movies are edited, but would change the nature of VFX production, AND the way that movies are financed.
With the notable exception of anything Ronny Courtens was involved with, I still think it stands up as well as anything ever written on the topic by anyone (else).
Apple FCPX and The Making of Whisky Tango Foxtrot
Honestly, though, as a corporate position, we don’t favor or disfavor any particular toolsets, whether or not their developers advertise with us. We’re fans of the entire industry, and we have every intent of getting everyone in here eventually, one way or another. We’re here to help everyone win, regardless of their toolsets.
Which is why, at its best, this particular forum has been one of my favorite things to be involved during the over 30 years I’ve been involved with one form or another of online communities, since long before people used words like “online communities”.
The next unfortunate irony is that in helping this particular forum become the best version of itself, it became exactly the kind of forum we didn’t want to have on any other topic. I’ve done both the COW and the industry as a whole a disservice by providing a platform for attitudes and energies that we’ve thrown out of other forums here.
So while our Forum For The Using of FCPX continued (and continues) to thrive for the kind of no-nonsense, “professionals-helping-professionals and aspiring professionals” information that continues to draw over 1 million people a month, the internet at large barely acknowledges that it exists. We STILL have people insisting that this is “the COW’s FCPX forum”.
On the one hand, we can’t be expected to overcome people’s willful ignorance, or challenge every instance of warping easily demonstrable inaccuracies to fit the narrative of their outrage. But we do in fact live in an age of willful ignorance and contrived outrage, and we have to take some responsibility for allowing this forum to in any way become the tail wagging the COW.
Ron mentioned the complete absence of women here, and that’s definitely an issue that we’ll continue to address at length in this forum and others. But I’ll underscore an observation that many of you have observed over the last couple of years, that some of the most thoughtful, engaging voices from our earliest days are almost entirely gone.
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[Ronny Courtens] “The fact that many brilliant contributors have stopped coming here seems to prove this point.”[I edited my post to add the above quote from Ronny, whose post went up while I was writing mine. Sorry I missed it, Ronny! Obvs many points there that I echo here.]
*editWith deepest respect to the folks who’ve stuck it out, and apologies for my own long absences, a few too-rarely-seen friends and foils off the top of my head include David Lawrence, Simon Ubsdell, Franz Bieberkopf, Charlie Austin, Aindreas O’Gallchoir, and others who I’m sure you’d add to your own lists. I feel like their leaving had a lot to do with my own failures as a moderator, to shape a forum whose energy was as thoughtful as theirs was.
Not that I think that they represent the sum total of our best and brightest. On the contrary, many of the folks who’d I’d put at the top of my own list have been here all along, including on this very thread.
I recognize that those other folks left at different times for different reasons, and pop back in in varying degrees, and again, feel that I’ve failed the rest of you no less than I failed them. Cows are gentle spirits, and I didn’t take proper care to preserve an appropriately bovine gentleness here.
So, yes, in years past, it felt critical to me to maintain FCPX in the forum name, to recognize that this forum wouldn’t exist without What Happened With X….but most of the threads that you’re engaging most with don’t have all that much to do with FCPX. Sometimes nothing at all. You can see this for yourself by just looking at the number of replies to threads on the forum index page.
Over time, we need to get rid of some of the worst of the old threads, as indeed we’ve begun to. There are some things we just don’t want to have as part of our heritage.
I’ve wondered what to do with some of the other, more productive threads, and wondered about how to insert them more into mainstream conversations, and Steve, the quote from your post alllll the way at the top of this one may have the answer: just move some of the more FCPX-specific threads out of this forum and into that one. Maybe. Maybe not, but I hadn’t thought of it before.
And yes, I’d previously said that Debate needed to be in the title of this forum, but as the world has turned since we last aired out that topic, the word “debate” has become debased past the point of usefulness. What passes for “debate” these days is people hardening their own calcifications at each other as loudly as possible, making any kind of reflection impossible.
Thankfully, we’ve rarely gone that far here, but have come close enough, often enough, that we behind the COW are not interested in encouraging anything that might take us down that road any more. We’re certainly not interested in associating ourselves with how debased that word has become, and don’t have the energy or resources to fight upstream against the forces of the decay of civility.
In fact, our larger challenge is repositioning this forum in the context of our larger mission of being helpful, being inclusive, being smart, being professional, being fans, and having fun. We’re tired of people googling something about FCPX and having the first page be full of nasty threads from this forum that don’t reflect who we (AND YOU) actually are, or what people can typically expect from the COW when they ask for help.
They think, wow, I’m looking for help, and came to the COW to find a fight — which makes perfect sense if you’re coming in through the forum page, see THIS forum listed AFTER the FCPX forum, and wonder what the debate is about. But that’s now it happens most often. Most often, Google sees “FCPX”, sees the staggering amount of traffic here, assumes that the Fight thread is super relevant based on machine reading that misses the context of Help that someone is looking for, then those people come here once and are turned off forever — which wouldn’t happen if they’d been directed to The Forum For the Using Of FCPX in the first place.
Which is why we’re going to be telling Google to stop showing people those kinds of results when people ask about FCPX, which is also why we’re going to be getting FCPX out of the name of the forum.
To acknowledge an observation upthread that I haven’t filled all of you in on the backstory behind this internal conversation, you’re correct of course, but you also instinctively know that what I’ve said is generally true. (Except for my enthusiasm for X, which has been demonstrated as being far beyond the bounds of reality.) I know this, because I’ve observed many of you saying similar things over the years.
Ron, Kathlyn, and I have an opportunity (and a responsibility I think) to realign ourselves with our own goals — but we’re doing things the way we always have. With transparency, accountability, and one thing I can also definitely promise — a degree of clumsiness. You would expect nothing less. Cows are gentle, but grace is rarely ascribed as one of their virtues.
For example, in retrospect, it might have been more prudent to present “Apple Talk” as a proposal, rather than announcing it as the final decision. I’ll take some blame for that one. When Ron suggested the name, I ADORED it, and told him we should just do it, regardless of how you lot reacted. LOL Sorry. I argued that position as recently as last night, but Ron told me how you’ve talked him out of it altogether, and after reading the whole thread again, I’m persuaded too. (I have some ideas that I’ll save for another post.)
But to echo Ron’s reply upthread, we’re not trying to change anything specific about the forum, as much as we’re trying to reflect what it has actually become (where, by post count, Apple Talk is far and away the most relevant name…which yes, you’ve talked us out of, BUT STILL), lightly leavened with a reflection of the kind of community we want ALL our forums to be.
Not debates, heated or otherwise. Instead, ruminations. Shared observations.
We’ve had hundreds, if not thousands of threads reflect this of course. We want to encourage them ALL to, though.
So while I have no doubt that our eventual solution will displease some of you, hey, we’ve fumbled before and kept moving. Nothing is final. We’ll stay transparent and accountable, and hopefully eventually land on something that suits you better, both as a name for the forum, and as a gently nudged refinement more in keeping with OUR mission, and with the way that most of YOU conduct yourselves when you’re not here. LOL
In the end, this community is not a democracy. It’s a business. There’s a certain kind of decorum we prefer to have in our office, and a certain kind of vibe we want to feel when we walk in, as I know you all aspire to for your own businesses. I don’t think that there’s any conflict whatsoever in our commitment to a robust community for both our members and our sponsors, and our broader goals of having engaging conversations. I think we’ve been doing that pretty well. Just not well enough to satisfy our own desire to keep doing better.
And really, if you don’t want to keep doing better, why bother doing what you’re doing at all?
I want to end by again thanking the many, many of you who’ve made vastly more significant contributions to the ongoing life of this forum than I have. I regret having to be away as much as I have over the past year-and-some, for reasons I’ll also save for another post, but I hope to get back to being in the thick of things soon. I’ve spent the entire time since I’ve been away with a rotating set of at least half a dozen tabs open with half-finished replies, and have a long list of threads I’d like to start.
In the meantime, that’s a little more of what we’re thinking. I look forward to ruminating on it some more with you all.
Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW -
Having grown up on a dairy and having bought my first car in high school by selling manure to the new homeowners moving into Orange County displacing the farms that had been there before them, I know a thing or three about both the awkwardness and clumsiness of cows and the amount of manure produced around them.
Tim is spot on when he points to our own awkwardness and clumsiness but one thing that many do not consider when they enter in with their response to what we present or say, is that we are in a no-win position coming out of the gate: we will always be at odds with a significant portion of the people who come here because we are dealing with over a million people a month who enter these corrals. So there is no way to avoid pissing someone off, no matter what we say or do there will always be aggressively dissenting voices — and because it’s the internet, those voices will often be like drivers on the Los Angeles freeway who do things in their freeway anonymity that they would never do if they had to deal with you face to face. Sometimes, we have been known to be like those drivers, depending on your point of view.
Ronny Courtens points to the departure of many who no longer come here. That is both a bad and a good thing. Tim points out that some do indeed still come but do so irregularly or only when the Google search engine brings them to something they need right now. But I would point out that this phenomenon has been core to the COW since we were the WWUG long ago and we began building a team whose roster always changed as people grew in their positions and often left to start their own resources. It would take me hours to point out the names and resources that exist today that are headed by former COWs or WWUGsters, as we called them back then. As Tim Wilson likes to say, “The fields of the internet are rife with those who built their reputations at the COW and moved on.” We are proud of that fact. We do not see it as a failure but as something we always knew would happen because we are dealing with highly creative people who are thoroughbreds. I can remember when I first saw Andrew Kramer online and I told Kathlyn and Tim, “I do not know how long he will stay with us because this guy is destined to be a rockstar in this industry, but for as long as we can walk the path together, I’d love to help Andrew Kramer while he can help the COW community.” That he went on to be the graphics supervisor at Bad Robot and has worked on Star Wars and Star Trek is no surprise to me. I could go on for days with one story like that after another. Even the most directly competing and comparatively miniscule site in this particular niche, came out of the COW.
We have always said and have always know that we work on the value-for-value exchange principle. Our people bring value and we bring value. When we start, we hold the greater value and when they grow to the point that they no longer need us, much like parents who raise children that grow up, they move on when they see their own value increase. Some pretend it was all them. We know better, but we are also mature enough to know it has never been all us either. One of the secret ingredients of the COW is that not Kathlyn, Tim nor I have ever wanted to be the stars here. We like to say between ourselves that “the real power is in the invisible.” But most of competitors, even the ones that grew out of our own system, want to be the star. That is both good and bad and will always have its limits.
All this said, Tim is far nicer than me and he is much more concerned about how people see him and his place in this market. I came into all this knowing full well over 20 years ago that if we were to succeed, one of us would have to wear the black hat and I told this to Kathlyn in the very beginning. “If no one is willing to wear the black hat, the community will collapse under the weight of the most aggressive personalities manhandling [and I use that word purposely] the gentler souls in the room. So one of us is going to have to be the bastard and that isn’t going to be you, Kathlyn.” It isn’t Tim, either. He is made of gentler stuff, too. But I grew up in and survived a house that destroyed the lives of both my brothers who died young, both at their own hands. I know how tough and ugly life can get and I am unwilling to let this site degrade into the kind of ugliness that I have found coming back to it after being gone for six or seven years.
Yes, I am clumsy and I am regularly too direct for my own good. But the fact that in 2020 we will be celebrating 25 years of building sites for media professionals is a testament to the fact that what we have done has worked and proven itself over the last quarter century.
We have not given up on our goal to build the most productive, positive and helpful site of its kind for media professionals. And when our critics get anywhere close to our tenure or our track record and results, then I will worry more about their criticism than I do at the moment.
Ever wearing the black hat,
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLCCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
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[Ronny Courtens] “I agree, Steve. The Techniques forum is far more interesting and alive than this one and should indeed be the only forum for anything related to FCP X. The Debates forum has lost its roots and its credibility and should get a new destination.
Seeing what this forum has turned into, I sincerely question the usefulness of any forum where people debate over NLEs. IMO it’s as useless as debating over cars, and it leads too easily to frustration and name-calling. The fact that many brilliant contributors have stopped coming here seems to prove this point.”
The problem that this forum solves though is that it is inherently heterogeneous where as other forums are almost always inherently homogeneous. You talk about X in the X forum. MC in the MC forum. Resolve in the Resolve forum. If you try and talk about Product X in Product Y’s forum you will get shouted down and told to go post in the ‘right’ forum.
I think having a place where people are encouraged to talk about all NLEs (including in a ‘head-to-‘head’ fashion) is still very useful and worthwhile. The tone of this forum is what needs changing, not the subject matter, IMO.
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I don’t care much what you call it. I get why it’s happening and I have no issues about it.
I AM curious to know if and how some of the more useful tips and related threads that were generated here under the old name will be accessible in some kind of archive in the new system? Or like Cortez, are we burning the boats?
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No, we are NOT burning the boats, Mark.
The posts and the addresses for them will survive into the new system. It’s taken a lot of work to figure out a migration from one system to the next and do it keeping the same addressing but we have it figured out.
That will help those who have certain things saved in an archive of links, etc.
I hope that helps.
Best regards,
Ronald Lindeboom
CEO, Creative COW LLCCreativity is a process wherein the student and the teacher are located in the same individual.
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