What happened to this forum?

[Todd Terry]

Dunno, Bob… I posted the same question here a little while back, with no real answers.

Fortunately we ourselves have 1) been busy as one-armed paperhangers lately, and 2) haven’t had any real problems that needed the forum’s expertise. That will change, no doubt, as cycles do… but right now we’re in a good place. Although very very tired.

I’m hoping that business is great for all my friends here, and that’s the reason for the lack of activity.

But yes, it is as eerily quiet as a church in here. And there used to be fireworks galore… not even a “crackpot comment” or two to get people stirred up. We used to be able to count on those (although not naming names).

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

The action’s all in Vegas this week. There should be an uptick after the Vegas Lull as people come to debate and discuss what came out of NAB. And I DO think a lot of people are busier than they were.

[Todd Terry]

Agreed… but it’s not just this week.

Been deadsville in here for months.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Nick Griffin]

I’ll ditto Todd. We’ve been VERY busy on a number of fronts with a LOT of out of town work. While I try to keep current with what’s going on here I’ve had little time to post.

Hope things are cyclical.

[Todd Terry]

That, and Nick has been lounging around with undeserved, unwarranted, and just plain blatantly-uncalled-for extended vacations.

🙂

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Tim Wilson]

A lot of the most energetic conversations that used to happen here about the state of the industry as a whole have been happening in the FCPX or Not:The Debate forum.

It has shifted a little bit for NAB, but on most days, no more than third of the posts are about FCPX. Over 20% of the people visiting that forum are coming from non-Mac computers.

In fact, it’s so much NOT about FCPX that people keep suggesting we change the name of the forum. .. but the whole debate about what it means to be an editor anymore, and what it means to be a professional, only started because of FCPX.

So while the REST of the web is finding its way there, some of you guys should at least take a look now and again after the NAB-specific FCPX conversation dies down. Even if you’re not on a mac and will never, ever consider FCPX. ESPECIALLY if you’re in that category.

Okay, now THAT said, whaddya wanna talk about? Start a thread. I tried to do this a while back with the “How’s business?” thread. It would be incredibly depressing to me if this was the most active thread since that one, so please, anyone, start something besides this.

As I’m typing this, I’m also thinking that this forum was part of the COW’S roots in the Media 100 community nearly 20 years ago. (No kidding, 19 years ago this month!!!) We were all in our 30s and 40s, owner-operators who spent $50-100,000 to start our businesses, in the days before a business model for our businesses actually existed. Many of us wouldn’t have survived without each other’s aid.

That’s just not what the COW looks like anymore, and is less and less what the business looks like anymore. The COW is full of broadcast and “film” folks now. Corporate video for everyone from Elvis to Pfizer. (Talk about a business that barely existed 20 years ago!) Religious and educational facilities whose business is bigger than many corporate and broadcast settings. There are post houses in the COW with add many as 700 seats. The joint is crawling with cinematographers who barely edit at all. Even people coming in as real-live professional owner-operators have such a much lower barrier to entry that things don’t seem quite so life and death. .. because they kind of aren’t.

I could go on, but you get the idea. We started 20 years ago with a handful of people who ALL had the same needs along these lines. The COW now has over 250,000 members, almost NONE of whom (relatively speaking) have these needs. The guys at NFL Films, or managing Avid Media Composer-DaVinci Resolve workflow for Arri Alexa footage aren’t worried about marketing their businesses.

I’m oversimplifying a bit, but I think you can see where I’m going. If there’s something you’d like to talk about, fire it up.

In any case, it’s been a while since I thanked the folks here who’ve made this such an engaging forum over the years. I don’t think we’re done here by any means, but I do think that the days are passed in which conversations will happen here just because the forum is here.

Thanks again,
Tim

[Bob Cole]

[Nick Griffin] “Hope things are cyclical.”

Why? You’re on a roll! But if you just get too overworked, just call some of your COW buddies to take on some of those shoots. That way you will have more time for your true calling: keeping this forum jumping.

[Kris Merkel]

Hey Tim,

I think your insights are spot on and thanks for chiming in.

Our social opportunity circles have also evolved over the years and we, at the moment, have greater access to have these discussions through multiple outlets where even a short 5 years ago the COW B&M was really the only forum that existed to have these conversations.

This particular forum used to be the very first thing I checked every morning with my coffee, even before email and has provided many useful insights in managing my freelance post biz. Fortunately, for me, because of this forum and a few others I have developed really great friendships with some folks who used to post often and most of the time nowadays I just pick up the phone and call them.

I sincerely hope that none of the folks who have been involved in the history of this forum and building the foundation of the COW will give up and leave because someday their sage advice will be needed by someone who is just starting out and the true wealth of your collective knowledge is invaluable to all.

“Think of everything in terms of building capacity.”

Kris Merkel
twitter: @kris_merkel
Product Manager, Flanders Scientific Inc.
http://www.shopfsi.com
Co-Founder, Atlanta Cutters Post Production User Group
http://www.atlantacutters.com

2.2Ghz MBP core i7
16Gb RAM
CS6/FCP7
AJA T-Tap
AJA IO XT
FSI LM-2461W/CM-170W

[Mark Suszko]

As far as the FCPX debate forum, well, I don’t go there very often because of the name. Maybe it’s my Catholic school upbringing, but I go by the name of things and like stuff neatly categorized. I visited it when I still had doubts. Now, I don’t have doubts, and had no idea there were other off-topic things going on there. We in fact have bought FCPX now, as well as Premiere, and are planning to spend the year evaluating both before we standardize on one or another of them, so you can expect me to infect the FCPX techniques forum occasionally when I have a question about using that.

I’m actually kind of surprised there isn’t a dedicated forum for the folks working in the “worship” category. It’s not what I do, but it’s a big niche market of the biz, and when I see someone from that community post, they find a forum specific to their problem, be it editing or shooting or whatever.

I dabble in various hobbies including radio control flying and sailing, and what I noticed at the “Creative COW version” of that community, RCGroups.com, is that they started with maybe twenty forums but each one kept fracturing into narrower and narrower slices. While it helps to ask a question about something very specific, and get a quicker answer, I found their over- specialization took away some of the useful “cross-pollination”, the “encyclopedia browsing effect” you got, when the categories were fewer and more general, and people of different disciplines overlapped their expertise and fed off each other’s perspectives.

In the broader categories, I would come across things that were interesting and useful, but I’d never have seen them in the more fractured, hyper-specific forums.

If you look at the Big Picture, what about forums like TED? They are all about mashing-up and cross-pollination of ideas in order to stimulate new thinking.

So is the future of forums in narrowness… or in “wider” groups?

[Bob Cole]

[Mark Suszko] “As far as the FCPX debate forum, well, I don’t go there very often because of the name”

Thanks Tim for that info about the FCPX forum. Like Mark, I have avoided that area, thinking it would bore my socks off. I’ll take a look.

Tim’s analysis of the way the business is evolving is the best thing I’ve read on this forum in a long time, and since comparisons can be invidious, I should add that I don’t mean that as faint praise. I would really like to see more of those insights from Tim. Where should I look?

Oh, that’s right — the FCPX forum!

Bob C