Hi ehMacians. ehMax here. ;)
Long time no chat. Almost 2 years in fact.
Wanted to pop in an say hi to everyone. Maybe chat for a bit. Give a few updates. Take some heat. Say hi to old friends.
A lot has happened over the past 2 years... Career changes, marital status change, and struggles with health issues made for quite a challenging period on my life, however... things are much more positive these days. I have some more free-time on my hands right now, and some things I am doing made me think about the community here, so I thought I would stop in.
I've just started taking a course right now on social media management and online community management. Really, really interesting stuff. I can't help but constantly think back to ehMac and what I did right, and... what I did wrong. (Quite a bit in the latter).
I think the idea I had for ehMac was noble, and the intent on making it a brightly-lit, friendly place on the web do discuss all things Mac and Canada was a good idea. That was fun, and I really cherish the early days of ehMac, it's humble beginnings and growing.
As I get to the sections in my courses on Community Management, I start to see all the things that I did really wrong. There really wasn't a manual on how to run a community and I winged it, and made some terrible decisions and did some really bad, inconsistent moderating. I thought my job as moderator was to play judge on conflicts, and make a decisions on issues and hand out "sentences" or reprimands. I was bad at it and hated doing it. To boot, once in awhile, I would let my frustration get the best of me.
I want to say to those that were affected and frustrated by that, I apologize. I wish the courses I'm taking now were available 6 or 7 years ago. I think I would still be owning and running ehMac and there would of been a lot less frustration for members. I did wrong and disrespected a lot of valuable community members who spent a lot of their time contributing to the community. A lot of the things I thought needed to be eradicated from the site in order to maintain a strong, positive community were the very things that actually make a community strong. My focus was too strong on trying to keep it a bright-clean place. (Or too much like Disneyland as some would say).
Still, like a lot of memories, the bad ones fade and the good memories remain (Bad marriages notwithstanding). The early days of new members joining... The early Unreal Tournament frag-fests. I loved the excitement around those early Macworld's and Steve's announcements, and the real-time chats. I still have my ehMac Mug. There was some fun times at some of the Apple Store openings in Canada. I'm still so very proud of the fundraising we did for the MS Bike Tours, Movember and Kiva.org. I also was recently going through to memorabilia, and I saw the card that was made to me by many ehMacians for my birthday, when a U2 iPod was given to me. Still, one of the nicest gestures I ever had, and I still have it and always will. Happy times. :) (I'm going to search the forums for what Sync said about U2's free album. :lmao: ;)
Would love to chat and be a part of the ehMac community more. Maybe I'll be welcome... maybe I'll be lynched out and told to f*ck *ff. :) That's a big part of where I got it wrong. Realizing how much ehMac IS the community. How the community evolves naturally is what the community is, you can't moderate or direct what the community wants to be. The community after a period of time, will begin to self-moderate itself. (Which it seems to be doing quite fine right now). Heated debates and opposing point of views and polarizing figures are one huge aspect of what makes a community interesting and fun.
So speaking of polarizing figures...
Hi. :)
Long time no chat. Almost 2 years in fact.
Wanted to pop in an say hi to everyone. Maybe chat for a bit. Give a few updates. Take some heat. Say hi to old friends.
A lot has happened over the past 2 years... Career changes, marital status change, and struggles with health issues made for quite a challenging period on my life, however... things are much more positive these days. I have some more free-time on my hands right now, and some things I am doing made me think about the community here, so I thought I would stop in.
I've just started taking a course right now on social media management and online community management. Really, really interesting stuff. I can't help but constantly think back to ehMac and what I did right, and... what I did wrong. (Quite a bit in the latter).
I think the idea I had for ehMac was noble, and the intent on making it a brightly-lit, friendly place on the web do discuss all things Mac and Canada was a good idea. That was fun, and I really cherish the early days of ehMac, it's humble beginnings and growing.
As I get to the sections in my courses on Community Management, I start to see all the things that I did really wrong. There really wasn't a manual on how to run a community and I winged it, and made some terrible decisions and did some really bad, inconsistent moderating. I thought my job as moderator was to play judge on conflicts, and make a decisions on issues and hand out "sentences" or reprimands. I was bad at it and hated doing it. To boot, once in awhile, I would let my frustration get the best of me.
I want to say to those that were affected and frustrated by that, I apologize. I wish the courses I'm taking now were available 6 or 7 years ago. I think I would still be owning and running ehMac and there would of been a lot less frustration for members. I did wrong and disrespected a lot of valuable community members who spent a lot of their time contributing to the community. A lot of the things I thought needed to be eradicated from the site in order to maintain a strong, positive community were the very things that actually make a community strong. My focus was too strong on trying to keep it a bright-clean place. (Or too much like Disneyland as some would say).
Still, like a lot of memories, the bad ones fade and the good memories remain (Bad marriages notwithstanding). The early days of new members joining... The early Unreal Tournament frag-fests. I loved the excitement around those early Macworld's and Steve's announcements, and the real-time chats. I still have my ehMac Mug. There was some fun times at some of the Apple Store openings in Canada. I'm still so very proud of the fundraising we did for the MS Bike Tours, Movember and Kiva.org. I also was recently going through to memorabilia, and I saw the card that was made to me by many ehMacians for my birthday, when a U2 iPod was given to me. Still, one of the nicest gestures I ever had, and I still have it and always will. Happy times. :) (I'm going to search the forums for what Sync said about U2's free album. :lmao: ;)
Would love to chat and be a part of the ehMac community more. Maybe I'll be welcome... maybe I'll be lynched out and told to f*ck *ff. :) That's a big part of where I got it wrong. Realizing how much ehMac IS the community. How the community evolves naturally is what the community is, you can't moderate or direct what the community wants to be. The community after a period of time, will begin to self-moderate itself. (Which it seems to be doing quite fine right now). Heated debates and opposing point of views and polarizing figures are one huge aspect of what makes a community interesting and fun.
So speaking of polarizing figures...
Hi. :)
via ehMac.ca http://ift.tt/1C7yoxY
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