We broke our "most users online" record yesterday

[Corey]

We broke our "most users online" record yesterday. Hoop hoop.

We're over 5,500 members now too! That's not bad considering we culled out all the inactive users back when we went over to VB. Hoop hoop!

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[Derek]

Hoop hoop too!

I remember when reg members was at 1,978 .. back in the middle of testing AMS4.0
5,500 and climbing ... should soon be 1 million!!

[yosik]

Great to have such a growing community.
Next logical step would be a users event, maybe around one of the big expos?
Yossi

[Ted Sullivan]

No *that's* a cool idea.

[Corey]

I've been trying to wedge through some users' events for ages. User's group, trade show booth, contests, whatever, you name it... Ted can attest to that. It's been a process of infrastructure building for the last two years though, and we're in a better position now to offer a valuable experience than we were then. Anyhow suffice to say that much thought is going into your suggestion Yossi, something will shake loose from the tree eventually.

Trade shows ("expos") got a bad rap at some point as did User groups. My take on that is that amateurs don't do well at trade shows but they complain loudly whereas the pros do very well at trade shows and never complain. So my theory is that we only hear from group A in the media which leads to an unrealistic view of how things are going down.

User groups used to be very popular, groups such as Home Brew launched most of the great early Silicon Valley companies including Apple... But what happened to User groups is the exact same thing which happened to all forms of social grousp at one point, they became less and less feasible to maintain as everyone got married and had kids, and mortages, etc. The modern user group is still a great model, but due to poor leadership and maintainence most groups seem to fail. Also people try to make them too narrow in scope. Rather than having a "Multimedia Design" group, people always try to have a "Flash" group or a "Photoshop" group, this seems to be another large contributer to the failure of this model.

I've been meaning to start a user group here in Cowtown, maybe I'll do that this summer. Have a gathering each month where pro designers can come and swap secrets. You only need a dozen good members to make a group like that very exciting and fun. I've got lots of space here too. Hmmmm... I'll have to think about running an ad...

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[yosik]

Glad to hear that you guys are thinking along this way.
I , for one, living far far away.... (can you see sunrise over desert land...?), I am making a point to try and attend a professional event at least once a year (I was lucky in convincing my college that this is a MUST for us to keep abreast).
ALWAYS, I am learning something new (even with my constant internet monitoring) and you cannot beat the personal touch with people behind the names.
If something like that does happen, I think it should be IR's doing, but I would say that us users, should participate very substantially in the organizing of such an event. A few thoughts along the way:
1. Advanced seminars on specific issues/projects (maybe based on poles?)
2. Show and presentations of a few special projects, made by users.
3. "Third party" tools integration (Flash, Video Integration, Screen design...)
4. Next software generation preview (hint hint...)
5. Lottery and prizes
6. Get together...Get to know each other
7. Online webcasting of the event.
8. Plain fun and good time.

Just a few ideas....
Cheers,

Yossi

[Corey]

I could go for some desert sun. Year round skateboarding, aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh...

Excellent ideas Yossi, I love the way you think. Big time. Well, one good thing we do have going for us is that we are all strong individuals who are fully capable of any type of real-time idea sharing on our given spheres of expertise in an intelligent way. I've put in the suggestion a few times to stream short video interviews with our developers, each addressing a given "hot topic" and so forth. That's a big one in my eyes. Add a few each month, etc. and after a few years suddenly we're one of the leading online resources of developer related video clips, etc. Plus it helps people to really develop a relationship with us and get in on what we're doing. Worked for Borland, Sun, and others...

Live chats are a breeze to set up, I even set one up once on our site waaaaaaaaay back, but it didn't make the final cut. But I could try that again, maybe some scheduled, topical chats would be good.

I like your idea about users voting on what content they want to see. Ideally we'd like to give you guys exactly what you enjoy with none of what you don't.

Anyhow I'll start focusing back on this stuff soon. We did have some recent contest ideas which are interesting but we need to look into the legality of offering cash prizes.

P.S. At one point we were actually all set to launch the video clips idea but Adam refused to wear the Elvis Presley wig and, unfortunately, the entire project had been planned around that wig.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[yosik]

Ok Corey, whatever you guys will come up with, I am sure you"ll have all of our best interests in mind.
Good luck
Yossi

[Intrigued]

Most users ever online was 42, Today at 05:46 PM.

Looking good I.R.!

Close to getting on the Nealson rating system I think (wink, grin)

[Derek]

We should all 'meet' on here at an agreed time / date and see how high we can get it

[Ted Sullivan]

That would be rather neat to try. I'm pretty impressed with the amount of traffic we're getting on the forums. There's a lot of people just reading, of course, but they'll come around and start to post too!

The whole sharing of ideas, possibilities and solutions here is great. It certainly helps everyone to get the most out of their investment in both time and software. Also, the overlap into related fields is excellent too.

This is a great community. I love you guys - (wiping away a tear) *sniff*

[Corey]

I'm game but it's good to keep expectations moderate, those sort of events are hit-and-miss. What date and time do you suggest Derek? Let me know and I'll post a sticky thread announcing it.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[longedge]

And how about a little competition to guess the number - now what could the prize for the best guess be

[Corey]

If we arrange an event like this, and if we've had enough time to get the word around properly, we'll put up a copy of Speedy Training CD number 3, "Advanced Workflow" (out next week) as a prize to the person who guesses the right number. (in case of a tie we would do a random draw to find a single winner)

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[longedge]

We're not going to let the offer go unaccepted are we?
Who's got a 'world clock' on the wall?