[Tim Wilson]

[Bill Davis] “perhaps a haiku”

The debate rages
Albeit with some less rage
Beyde zayn nitslekh

Oi gevalt, nu?
Mishegoss iz meshuggah
Gei ga zinta hait

[Tim Wilson]

[Thomas Frank] “Wow what miscommunication here!”

There has been no miscommunication.

Despite what a distributor for the company says, we have not heard from the company itself. They have our contact information. If they’d lost it, they could use the Contact links at the top of this page, or the phone numbers we have posted on our company information page.

Let me be clear about this.

CalDigit does not want to participate in Creative COW.

I do not understand why you (plural) keep asking us about it. We have a link at the top of the forum page explaining the situation. I have said repeatedly on this thread that they have not contacted us, and they have not. They are clearly not interested in supporting their customers here.

THIS IS CALDIGIT’S PROBLEM TO SOLVE.

THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO.

I would take it as a personal sign of respect if you would not make me keep saying this over and over. But I will anyway. LOL

THIS IS CALDIGIT’S PROBLEM TO SOLVE.

THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO.

I used to suggest that people contact CalDigit to try to change their minds, but I now believe that this would be a colossal waste of your time. Don’t bother.

The only GOOD use of your time to get support for your storage issues is to post your inquiries in the the COW’s SAN Forum, as well as the COW’s Storage Forum. In both of those forums, you will find the industry’s most experienced and generous experts on every brand of storage. They are ready to help you now.

Go to one of those forums now. Go to both of them. Do not hold your breath waiting for CalDigit. It is a waste of your time, and we would much rather you help you with your problems than waste your time.

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

I can only assume he’s kidding. 1000 posts in 3 years is next to nothing. 🙂

Just for grins, I checked: Steve, you have nearly 4500 hundred posts in 11 years. A lot more than my 3800-ish in 13.

The current recordholder is Jeremy Garchow, who exposes us all as the lazy slugs that we are: 27,557 posts in 10 years. There are actually 4 folks in the COW with over 20,000 posts. (Walter Biscardi, Shane Ross and Dave LaRonde are the others.)

Stats nerds can play along here.

[Tim Wilson]

I actually HAVE gotten good job offers from LinkedIn, and I’ve made some priceless contacts that it’s inconceivable to me that I’d have made any other way. It’s also my preferred method of staying in touch with business contacts. I’m more likely to want to know where so-and-so is working these days than how his kids are doing in soccer, so any other social media platform is useless to me. I’m a LinkedIn believer, and an enthusiastic promoter.

To a point.

I’m also a very early member of the Stop Endorsements LinkedIn group. It was actually started by one of this industry’s genuine wizards and true stars, Mark Schubin, of all people, and I was one of the first to join. For exactly the reasons you mention, Todd. Near strangers giving you a thumbs up for skills that you not only don’t have, but VALUE not having.

It really is kind of the equivalent of a “poke” on Facebook. It’s also ridiculous. I’ve got offers of endorsements in nearly 100 areas, whereas LinkedIn only allows 50 to be displayed. Welp, I don’t think I’m an expert in 50 things. This is crazy.

The Stop Endorsements group grew fast, and had some real influencers in it. (Me: early adopter, yes, influencer, no.) LinkedIn made some profound changes to the feature. For one, YOU CAN TURN IT OFF. If you go to Edit your profile, then to the Skills area, you can make all kinds of tweaks.

All those boxes are checked by default. When I made this screencap, I actually noticed some new ones, but you get the gist. There’s actually a nice bit of tweakability there.

Note that I’ve only added four areas of expertise: Television, Film, Teen Vampire Fiction, and Hair Care. THOSE are important to me.

I’m of two minds about the rest. Part of me has always felt like my next job would be nowhere near this industry. Nursing, library science, retail, ANYTHING but this, so I’ve completely let any kind of self-marketing slide.

But if I were to stay, things like “Product Marketing” and “Competitive Analysis” would definitely be skills I’d want to have people associate with me. So I may start accepting endorsements for those.

The thing is that LinkedIn recommendations used to be worth something. The job offers I got all cited my recommendations. I feel like endorsements have choked those out of the ecosystem, but I think I might should also start collecting those again.

Starting to ramble (who? ME?), but there’s the lay of the land.

Endorsements are annoying
You can manage them
LinkedIn is still worth cultivating
I’m probably overthinking my future

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

[Tim Wilson]

[Kevin Monahan] “Lurking? I’ve been a Creative Cow contributor for years.”

I knew it had been a while, so I looked it up: May 2002! I think that counts as “for years.” 🙂

Been too long since I said it, but I’ll say it again: thanks for everything!

Tim Wilson
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[walter anasagasti] “However as I read threads like this one in forums like creativecow, I see an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards the product from what appear to be video editing professionals.

Any explanations for this disparity in opinion?”

One basic one: the Creative COW Community itself.

People commenting in the App Store aren’t looking for help. They’re looking to vent. And while there’s obviously a component of that in the COW, by and large, even the venting is in the context of trying to actually get work done. That is, the venting has been along the lines of “I can’t do my job,” with responses suggesting ways that might help. Early detractors have become converts.

That said, to underscore the objective validity of the venting here in the early days, Apple addressed a number of the issues identified then. There’s still a list of dealbreakers for some folks, but it’s a lot shorter list for a lot fewer folks than was the case a couple of years ago.

Which is another reason why things are so much more positive here. A comment in the app store is a snapshot in time. It necessarily only reflects a single moment that will never be updated. There’s no telling how many of those people eventually came to the COW to get the help they need, and are now delighted. 🙂

It’s why I’ve been a believer in the COW as a self-correcting mechanism. As long as new experiences get added to the mix, whether within a single person’s life or the forum as a whole, voices gravitate toward practicality. Tones can get harsh when people can’t get work done, but once people ARE getting work done, positivity rises fast.

And since the professionals in the COW are all about get working done, the community, as a whole, over time, trends toward enthusiasm, even if most of the threads ever started here are from people who need help. They make those posts in faith that they WILL get help. Enough people get the help they need that we’re still around after 19 years, and still growing.

Thanks for noticing. 🙂

Tim Wilson
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Bill Davis] “Bottom line. This is a debate place, or it’s not. “

And indeed, this has been a place for healthy debate for 19 years.

The only two things I said were beyond the scope of reasonable debate are that a tiny handful of people who used to post here are gone (which is true), or that it reflects any kind of general exodus (false), or any significant reduction of the relevance of Creative COW as part of a rounded diet of FCPX-ness web-wide (likewise, false).

My comments about 2011 were in response to Gary’s riposte, which I took as no more than playful. But in stating the general calm now now, I felt it would be disingenuous of me to fail to acknowledge that things were in fact a bit of a zoo here at the time.

It was a reasonable point of reference. Somebody who bailed a while back necessarily has a false view of the current state of things. FCPX has changed, and so have we.

Perhaps for some people, neither has changed enough. LOL That’s one thing. To extrapolate from a handful of people to “PEOPLE” is another, especially when the number of PEOPLE coming here is growing so much.

I certainly apologize for the suggestion that YOU used the word dicks or anything of the sort. I never thought that you did. Absolutely not. That was all me.

It was my obviously misguided attempt to keep a playful vibe moving forward for that part of the conversation, acknowledging that I’m sometimes as bad about stirring things up here as anyone else. Being a dick and all. LOL Which I know I can be.

The rest, I was fully serious about.

I’m flabbergasted by the suggestion that I’m shuttering debate because I’m unwilling to let a baseless canard ABOUT the COW stand unchallenged IN the COW. My response was solely to falsehoods that didn’t exist here until you brought them unbidden.

I don’t care if it was quoted by you from sacred scrolls or from a bathroom wall. Bring bad information about the COW into the COW, and I will refute it.

For the rest, play on.

As we veer further off topic on this, I’ve said my piece. I’ll let anyone else who wishes to have the final word do so. I heartily invite anyone who’s interested to engage me further to contact me directly. I always love hearing from people actually doing work, rather than people like me who mostly just talk about it. LOL

[Tim Wilson]

Anybody who comes into Creative COW belittling its place in the world can expect a strong response, ESPECIALLY when it’s absolutely, flatly, objectively wrong. It’s silly to expect anything else.

Frankly, it’s just plain rude posting how poorly we’re regarded by the TRUE faithful, because of course the TRUE faithful have already left.

Now, complaining that we’re a big bag of dicks, well… LOL

In addition to the nonsense of the faintest suggestion that we’re declining in significance, complaining that we complain about X as our primary position is demonstrably false.

In 2014. In 2011, well….LOL

But that was a starting point. Since then, the stance toward X has evolved even more quickly than X itself has evolved to meet the VERY objections stated here.

And as has been pointed out on another thread, the wishlist here is very nearly identical to the one from my old friend Steve — with the added benefit of pointing out some better approaches than the limited ones he cited. In other words, the members here pointed out at least one problem of his that the experts here don’t find to be a problem at all when approached from a rationally different direction.

All of which goes to account for our growth by over 500,000 people per month since then.

Do those other sites have 500,000 visitors/month AT ALL? Because, again, that’s just our delta since 2011. Our X community is doing fine, thanks.

That said, to echo Mitch, post on.

Mitch, you’re a month away from your TWELFTH anniversary: November 7, 2002. I think that counts as “a long time.”

[Tim Wilson]

[Scott Witthaus] “The “debate” is over and this forum has become more about entertainment than about real usable information.”

This forum was NEVER about usable information. I was always shocked at the amount of usable information here. LOL Entirely by accident, and never our intent. This is a DEBATE forum.

For getting actual work done, we have the FCPX Techniques forum, and it is indeed one of our most popular. We also have a tremendous amount of FCPX-related discussion in other forums that touch on FCPX for other parts of workflow, including Resolve, After Effects, camera forums and others.

[Gary Huff] “Hey Bill, 2011 called, it wants its putdowns back.”

Thank you. I couldn’t have put it better. LOL

Just for grins, I thought I’d check our numbers for this summer, vs. the summer of 2011.

I know that you geezers will remember the chaos of those days. It was overwhelming. On Day Zero, June 21 2011, we had 12-15 posts going up every MINUTE. Absolutely staggering. Over 500,000 page views on that single day.

I haven’t counted today, but I believe that the pace of posting in this forum is now somewhat less than one every 4 seconds.

But the argument is that PEOPLE have abandoned us. So, what’s the number of PEOPLE in the summer of 2014, vs. the summer of 2011?

The number of PEOPLE coming here is UP by 37%!

Now, when I say “up 37%,” what am I talking about?

Over 1.8 million unique people every month.

A number of individuals have obviously, and in some cases, quite loudly, shifted their online energies elsewhere. Not a debate.

But I don’t want to hear for a single second that “people” “no longer” views us as a — if not the single biggest — center of gravity for FCPX information and conversation. Likewise, not a debate.

Not that we’ve ever needed even vaguely debatable topics to have a debate. LOL

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Suszko] “the take-away should be that there still are million-dollar ideas out there in areas you may not have considered.”

Exactly my point. Even without the million dollars. Just talking about happiness and maximum creativity. No contemplation of a career path should ONLY include options for staying on the CURRENT path. Certainly not in one’s 20s.