What is the point of this forum?

[Alan Okey]

This forum was created to annoy and anger you, specifically.

Looks like it’s working…

[Walter Soyka]

As Craig Seeman [linked post] and Tim Wilson [linked post] pointed out, this forum may nominally be about FCPX, but it’s home to many interesting discussions on broader industry trends.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Tom Wolsky]

It doesn’t anger me. It does seem pretty silly to me.

[Tom Wolsky]

I guess I’m just confused by the silly name.

The Wider Industry Trends forum. Got it.

[Alan Okey]

[Tom Wolsky] “It doesn’t anger me. It does seem pretty silly to me.”

But you can’t deny its entertainment value…

🙂

[Tom Wolsky]

As a sitcom it’d get about a 1.5 rating.

[Chris Jacek]

I think the point is to provide a place for industry professionals to compare notes on a controversial piece of software. There are many of us who needs to make some important decisions regarding budgets, workflow, or in my case, curriculum.

That doesn’t seem silly to me at all.

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Tim Wilson]

[Chris Jacek] “I think the point is to provide a place for industry professionals to compare notes on a controversial piece of software. There are many of us who needs to make some important decisions regarding budgets, workflow, or in my case, curriculum.

That doesn’t seem silly to me at all.”

Exactly.

And not to put too fine a point on it, I think that the forum title is pretty clear. The Debate.

[Tom Wolsky] “As a sitcom it’d get about a 1.5 rating.”

Which translates roughly to 1.5 million viewing, which, for the COW is just a little low. It’s more like 1.7 million every month, and trending up.

In TV, that’s kind of low. On the web, in this business, it’s many times more than every other site combined. The FCPX forum is one of our most active forums measured by postings, and one of the most popular measured by visits and views.

While posting has obviously slowed since the peak when posts were going up every 15-20 seconds, views continue to climb as more people are getting closer to making buying decisions that they’ve been putting off for a couple of years.

Especially in meeting our first goal, which was to keep the FCP forum clear for people with FCP support issues, and now, to keep the FCPX Techniques forum similarly clear — success. In terms of traffic, more successful than we expected. I don’t think ANYBODY saw this kind of discussion coming until it came.

In terms of creating a venue for broader industry discussion, well on the way to fulfilling a dream we’ve had for years, if not quite there yet.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m putting down a perfectly reasonable question, but we really do have 250+ other forums for people who are ready to think about other things.

But really, what fun is that? 🙂

For the record, the forum I’m posting most in these days is the Film History & Appreciation Forum. That one was originally created to talk about that very thing, but has also morphed a little to include chat about what’s on the air and in the theater now, as well as some thinking about THAT aspect of industry trends. We’re having some fun piling on Netflix’s misery this morning, but other recent threads have included the 100 best comedies of all time, and a nifty thread on ‘Notions of the Cinematic.’

So anyway, there you go.

Tim
COW

[Bill Hall]

Although I haven’t been posting at all, I’m an avid reader of this forum. It has played a big part in helping me determine where my team is heading when we upgrade editing software.

Additionally it’s not bad to have a place to debate and let off steam. Most importantly it keeps all of the angry rants off of the help forums.

The discussion in this forum needs to happen. Many of us are islands of knowledge without peers to offer counterpoints. Having this forum allows us to conduct the point counterpoint arguments we need to move forward.

[Jim Giberti]

It’s the place I visit regularly knowing it will be the first place to find out about the awaited update.

Oh, it’s here.