I would like to submit a suggestion for improvement.
I would like a fast and transparent first level contact for the community in the forum and on facebook.
I think it’s good and right that the DEV team takes care of the implementations and doesn’t bog down in Facebook or the like.
On the other hand, a 2 week sprint target was announced, which was then dropped unannounced.
The Facebook group is practically unmoderated.
It lacks in-between updates and a few informational teasers to keep the community informed.
An example of how it can go great is Daniele de Rosa’s projects (Bricksforge). This can be used as a blueprint for community communication.
None of this is the end of the world, but first level support would a) free you up from beginner questions / community links / requests and b) significantly increase transparency.
Also the community satisfaction would probably increase significantly.
I am also aware that staff costs money. But have a look around in the community. I’m sure there are people who would be happy to take care of the community as “fan support”.
Bug reports in the forum are answered and dealt with in a good manner.
As a marketeer, I must agree though.
The empathy, transparency and communication were unique selling points.
As Bricks grew communication had become less and less. Updates with video’s have been replaced with a list of changes.
The only videos coming out are by the community.
Yes - the community has it’s role. But Bricks is not just a builder. It’s a company. It needs to connect to it’s audience.
I don’t care if the update takes 2 months. What I do care about is a small message. Just connecting.
It was what was lacking at the other builders - and was so refreshing to see it differently.
So I’m with you. In no way to bash Bricks, but much more so because I want to see it flourish.
Many different opinions on this. But I wouldn’t see a single reason why not to communicate. a few lines couldn’t take more than 10 minutes. But would have such an impact.
Now might be a good time to plug my post from February too which still has yet to be addressed as well, I feel it brings very valid concerns around the ideation process which seems to have lots of room for improvement.
Though I understand your point, and I don’t want to bring your point down, that’s not what this post is about.
It’s about the communication with the community.
I.e. for the two week sprint. Instead of going back to it, the post is a request for a simple message stating something like.
“In december we announced a two week update cycle. As you all have noticed we didn’t follow through on it. The influx of people using Bricks has caused a burden on support we didn’t calculate when we send out the message. We want our service towards our customers to stay high, so we lost some momentum because of it.
Next to that we are currently working on a couple of large updates which we want to implement in a right way from the get go. There have also been a couple of hard to solve bugs that are taken us longer than expected but we want to fix, like the builder lag & classes that dissapear.
After the next three releases we hope to get back into a more frequent update cycle. But at this moment we need to get a couple of good updates out before we can.
The entire team thanks you for your patience, reports and enthousiasm using Bricks. Looking forward to see your projects in the Bricks forum ‘showcases’! “
-!- NOTE -!-
I made this up - there is not a single input from Bricks on this so do NOT take this as truth, it’s purely an example what this thread is about.
Ah, you’re right. Sorry I missunderstood about that. I just re-read your post and Bricks to align.
Turns out I missed something, thanks for letting me know.
Thank you so much for this very well-worded & thoughtful wish, @sebastianberger
100% spot on. The level of communication & a consistent approach to it has been very much lacking lately.
We are committed to getting back to our roots and communicating more often & openly. Like in the good old days
I hope the Bricks 1.7.1 FB post (Bricks Community | Facebook) can help start the conversation on how to best serve the community with much-needed non-code updates.
And that yesterday’s “Sneak peek” FB post (Bricks Community | Facebook) about the upcoming menu builder can provide an idea of how such a communication can look going forward. Although I am very much in favor of a forum-first approach.
The 1.8-beta + video post is something we’ll share here on the forum and only share a quick post + forum link on FB. Maybe also sending out an email as well.
Still figuring out how to come up with a concrete communication strategy.
I am not on Facebook and do not intend to. But I miss all these great announcements, could you please post them here in the forum too? I think this forum is much more preferable than Facebook, I thinks there are more Bricksters who are not on FB and this would be a great place to hold it all together, also in terms of searching solutions . I also think for some people an email would be great, but don’t make it to hard for yourself to put it on all channels. Keep the discussion centralized.
@grafikundso Facebook is NOT the new communication channel. It is the channel that we have been mainly using SO FAR. It’s not a personal preference of mine. It is simply because it’s the channel that allows us to reach & engage with most users. Way more than here in the forum.
I am quoting myself here as you seem to have missed this part in my last message:
“I am very much in favor of a forum-first approach.”
We currently are in the process of finding the communication channels & strategies to reach more of our users effectively.
Personally, I prefer the forum too. Also because it’s public and we are not at the mercy of Facebook. Which behaves weirdly sometimes.
I am voting for newsletters … this way all if us, who do not have facebook and forum open all day, would be directly informed immediately and personally…
why not trying some kind of automation or at least just make an official forum post with same infos as on facebook? or forum post with all infos and facebook with a link and only partial infos (would mean more work, so wouldnt recommend)
i think copy paste from forum + keeping forum as main channel would be a good way. i am no fan of keeping most infos on a channel (fb, twitter, whatever) not owning myself. means, always keep the main content on channels i own. like a forum
I don’t use Facebook, and probably never will. Love Bricks, but am missing out on stuff because of FB postings. Newsletters, short vids on new announcements (with longer explainer videos to follow), etc. would be great! Thanks, Thomas.
Pretty much agree with the overall opinions expressed in this thread. Not on fb or any social media for that matter and think it’s crucial to have one “news central” which is accesible without any kinda account.
The best way (in my opinion) I’ve seen others do is to have some sort of a blog on the site where everything gets published (news, announcements, sneek peaks, etc). From there everything is pretty much automated. Latest posts get sent out via Newsletter once a month for people who like mail and articles are posted on whichever other platforms on which users are most active, in this case fb.
In an earlier post a mobile menu builder sneek peak was mentioned. I’d love to see that but won’t create an fb account for that haha. Those types of posts though show what kinda stuff is currently under development which I believe is important news to share.
I know it’s under progress on the board but given that the original date of creation on the board is so far back, I have no way of knowing whether it will come in a week, a month or a year.
I’m of course not asking for any dates or specifics since those are hard to plan and promise. But, seeing it Pop up as a sneak peek at least gives me an idea on how far along it is and builds my anticipation for it / makes it clear that it’ll likely come within whatever time frame.
I’m the last person that wants to be like “are we there yet” every couple days haha so just an ocasional surprise sneak peak or whatever it may be, accesible to everybody, would be wonderful
Thomas, don’t feel you have erred. You are an excellent developer with two great products. We live in an age of being unable to tolerate waiting for something. Yes, communication is important and always appreciated.
