- Feb 22, 2015
- 1,052
- 1,990
Hey everyone,
As we've arrived at the end of the year, I and all the other forum "staff" (for lack of a better term, but I mean @Aibohphobia and @confusis) have been spending a lot of time thinking about all that we've been able to do the last twelve months, and - more importantly - what we hope to do in 2016. I know that a post simply listing off accomplishments may come off a bit as grandstanding on our part, but I think it's a valuable exercise to look back and see all of the work and tangible progress that's been made in order to get us to where we're at now. So, just to highlight the biggest accomplishments of the year:
...and, in fact, we've just now able to add one more, as we're welcoming Jay (@Tek Everything on SFF Forum) as a contributor to SFF Network! He's got an excellent YouTube channel already, and moving forward he'll be complementing that work by writing hardware reviews for SFFN as well. It's a partnership that we think will do a lot of good, both for his channel and followers, and our community.
---
Interspersed throughout this timeline, we have lots of smaller wins, too, from new community projects sprouting up (and promotion of some of these on SFF Network); to budding relationships with component manufacturers and our first original product reviews; to a litany of new features, from Imgur and Sketchfab integration, all the way to user-requested options such as full-width content justification.
All in all, we've been thrilled with what 2015 has become, and the generally positive (and constructive!) feedback from you all has easily been the best indicator of that fact. Certainly, to get there, confusis and Aibohphobia and I have invested quite a lot - in the form of time, money, energy and sheer passion - to see things through... But even more of the credit goes to you all, as community members, creators, readers, and enthusiasts, for acting as the building blocks that have established a firm foundation for SFF Forum and SFF Network. Our work, and our technology, has simply been the mortar.
Tonight, we can relish in these successes, and celebrate our progress. Starting tomorrow, however, we forgo looking back, and begin to look ahead. And for 2016, we want to go farther. Much farther.
For me, personally, a lot of our greatest successes have come hand-in-hand with challenges, and opportunities to do even more. For example, while we've seen traffic to SFF Network and SFF Forum alike grow at a steady clip through the summer and fall, we're at a relatively level flow today. Furthermore, even as we have traffic that quantifies in the hundreds or thousands of unique users (depending on how long you're watching), the number of people that actually have accounts on the forum has remained relatively small, only passing 150 a few days ago. We seem to have a huge audience of lurkers that haven't yet created accounts, and haven't interacted with the community.
Other opportunities complement the work we're already doing. Our news content is improving, but we could really use more authors (thanks Jay!) and more posts. We've started to do reviews, but there's a lot more we can do to greatly improve procedure, and try out a more diverse set of components. And, of course, our ambitions and individual passions have emboldened us to set ambitious goals for the next 365 days, from aiming for dramatic increases in user count and engagement, to the development of everything from design contests and giveaways to podcasts and video reviews.
Now, normally, these sorts of conversations surrounding organizational benchmarks stay within the meeting room (or chatroom, in our case), but since we've been trying to maintain a high level of transparency in our work, it occurred to us that our very own community would know better than anyone else what we should seek to achieve for SFF in 2016. So, we turn to you all to ask - what do you think? How can we encourage more people to visit SFF Forum, and create accounts? How can we expand content on SFF Network? And what should we as staff - and us all as community members - try to do in 2016, in order to provide the most good to the SFF community?
---
Looking beyond this conversation, though, my sincere thanks goes out to everyone for your contributions and productive discourse over the course of 2015. Even as I've been pressed for time between studies, work, and beyond, every minute I've invested in supporting this forum and the news site has been exciting and joyful. I hope you've all shared in that joy, too, at least a little bit.
A happy new year to you all,
-PlayfulPhoenix
As we've arrived at the end of the year, I and all the other forum "staff" (for lack of a better term, but I mean @Aibohphobia and @confusis) have been spending a lot of time thinking about all that we've been able to do the last twelve months, and - more importantly - what we hope to do in 2016. I know that a post simply listing off accomplishments may come off a bit as grandstanding on our part, but I think it's a valuable exercise to look back and see all of the work and tangible progress that's been made in order to get us to where we're at now. So, just to highlight the biggest accomplishments of the year:
- Launched SFF Forum on February 22.
- Reached 1000 posts on June 2.
- Reached 2000 posts on July 11.
- Relaunch of SFF Forum (v2.0) on July 17: totally new UX and theme; mobile-ready, modern platform; new forum categories.
- Launched SFF Network on July 17: original reporting, editorials, and interviews; content integrations with SFF Forum; direct feeds to Facebook and Twitter.
- Reached 3000 posts on August 28.
- Reached 4000 posts on October 23.
- Reached 5000 posts on December 10.
- Updated SFF Forum to v2.1 with Resources section on December 13.
...and, in fact, we've just now able to add one more, as we're welcoming Jay (@Tek Everything on SFF Forum) as a contributor to SFF Network! He's got an excellent YouTube channel already, and moving forward he'll be complementing that work by writing hardware reviews for SFFN as well. It's a partnership that we think will do a lot of good, both for his channel and followers, and our community.
---
Interspersed throughout this timeline, we have lots of smaller wins, too, from new community projects sprouting up (and promotion of some of these on SFF Network); to budding relationships with component manufacturers and our first original product reviews; to a litany of new features, from Imgur and Sketchfab integration, all the way to user-requested options such as full-width content justification.
All in all, we've been thrilled with what 2015 has become, and the generally positive (and constructive!) feedback from you all has easily been the best indicator of that fact. Certainly, to get there, confusis and Aibohphobia and I have invested quite a lot - in the form of time, money, energy and sheer passion - to see things through... But even more of the credit goes to you all, as community members, creators, readers, and enthusiasts, for acting as the building blocks that have established a firm foundation for SFF Forum and SFF Network. Our work, and our technology, has simply been the mortar.
Tonight, we can relish in these successes, and celebrate our progress. Starting tomorrow, however, we forgo looking back, and begin to look ahead. And for 2016, we want to go farther. Much farther.
For me, personally, a lot of our greatest successes have come hand-in-hand with challenges, and opportunities to do even more. For example, while we've seen traffic to SFF Network and SFF Forum alike grow at a steady clip through the summer and fall, we're at a relatively level flow today. Furthermore, even as we have traffic that quantifies in the hundreds or thousands of unique users (depending on how long you're watching), the number of people that actually have accounts on the forum has remained relatively small, only passing 150 a few days ago. We seem to have a huge audience of lurkers that haven't yet created accounts, and haven't interacted with the community.
Other opportunities complement the work we're already doing. Our news content is improving, but we could really use more authors (thanks Jay!) and more posts. We've started to do reviews, but there's a lot more we can do to greatly improve procedure, and try out a more diverse set of components. And, of course, our ambitions and individual passions have emboldened us to set ambitious goals for the next 365 days, from aiming for dramatic increases in user count and engagement, to the development of everything from design contests and giveaways to podcasts and video reviews.
Now, normally, these sorts of conversations surrounding organizational benchmarks stay within the meeting room (or chatroom, in our case), but since we've been trying to maintain a high level of transparency in our work, it occurred to us that our very own community would know better than anyone else what we should seek to achieve for SFF in 2016. So, we turn to you all to ask - what do you think? How can we encourage more people to visit SFF Forum, and create accounts? How can we expand content on SFF Network? And what should we as staff - and us all as community members - try to do in 2016, in order to provide the most good to the SFF community?
---
Looking beyond this conversation, though, my sincere thanks goes out to everyone for your contributions and productive discourse over the course of 2015. Even as I've been pressed for time between studies, work, and beyond, every minute I've invested in supporting this forum and the news site has been exciting and joyful. I hope you've all shared in that joy, too, at least a little bit.
A happy new year to you all,
-PlayfulPhoenix