Hey Everyone!
Hope all is well with you all as we continue this slog towards the end of the pandemic (if that will ever happen... haha)
I wanted to start a thread with regard to some upcoming changes, as well as some ideas floating around, and generally to have a "forum level" conversation about our group.
Quick update from my end
My son is just past two years old now, those first couple of years are a doozy, but boy am I ever feeling back to pre-baby Josh.
Keeping our family business going strong will likely always be a stress inducing time constraint, but lord knows I am looking forward to a meetup at some point.
1) Meetups - How should we be handling meetups as we march slowly towards vaccine rollout?
Let's not let this devolve too quickly, as the USA has shown that this topic can lead to infighting pretty quickly, however I would love everyone's thoughts and opinions.
I am not sure it makes sense to even host meetups until a predetermined point, nor do I know what that point would be. Neither do I want to feel like we're policing meetups..?
Video is always an option, should we start doing something regularly in this regard?
2) Sponsor - We have been approached by a potential sponsor
We'll have more information as this conversation rolls forward, however if anyone has thoughts, recommendations, concerns, or previous lessons learned, I am keen to hear them. Feel free to message me in this regard if you prefer.
We've had the benefit of some great guidance from members with specifically related experience in the past (@CalgaryPT and @Dabbler both pop to mind, but many more too), so welcome your thoughts.
3) Forum Hosting / Costs - Probably more changes coming down the pipe
Fun milestones:
We recently passed 1,000,000 forum pages viewed!
We're growing at a rate of 46% per year (over a three year average)!
Less fun milestone:
We're growing at a rate of 46% per year... We're likely going to out grow the current hosting solution. So, I am starting to plan out a migration for us ahead of time, instead of once there are issues from the strain like last time.
We actually migrated to a cloud server a few months ago, and while that can expand near infinitely, the cost to expand adds up quick. We're actually talking about phasing out this server at the office too, as it's costing the business thousands each month which we're not recouping most of, of which our forum makes up a portion.
For these reasons, I am likely going to swap our forum to a Calgary based server, for which I have a few that I can donate some space+cycles on.
You won't have to worry about the details too much, and I do a pretty good job of preventing downtime during that sort of thing, but I'll give everyone a heads up before pulling any levers on my end.
For the sake of sharing: I've actually been engineering and implementing a distributed server cluster across three locations in Calgary. It's been mainly a learning exercise but the natural redundancy means we should be able to host this website on that cluster without much trouble for a good long while. @Janger, @Alexander, I recently shared that I ordered one of those StarLink satellite internet dishes, this cluster is the reason why. I wanted to ensure the cluster has access to the internet even if shaw goes down.
The one detail to discuss with this plan as it relates to our site: I didn't actually build that cluster with hosting a website in mind. Starlink covers us if the internet drops, but I figured a power outage would take home's power offline anyways, so wasn't worried about it. As such there is one spot of weakness in the idea: power outages.
Two options for discussion:
1) We can just accept that the website would go down if the power in South Calgary goes out?
--> This is not what most would consider "production ready", by any means, but we're not actually hurting that badly if the website goes down for an hour or two, not like a tech company would be bleeding revenue by the minute. We would just be down for a bit.
2) Even with a generous $200 donation recently, we're ~$700 shy of the cost to put a (used, old enterprise gear) fix in place for this one, but I am not confident the expense makes sense, if we can just bear the downtime?
Either way, we'll be free from a big chunk of our expense in the forum, a lot more future proof than I thought we needed to be, and also independent of my work, so that's all a step in the right direction. Also, the website will be in Calgary, so Calgary area members will likely experience a faster website, as we can cut out a bunch of speed optimization cruft for those members. (See: cloudflare)
There's probably more going on, but I am headed to bed, will add to this thread tomorrow if I've missed anything!
Next Morning Edit:
4) Advertising - What if we can generate revenue without bothering members with ads?
Right, I had a point I was getting to. Though my stance has always been against banner ads on the site, when speaking with a colleague in the advertising space, he floated an idea which I wanted to run by everyone:
What if we put some banner ads on the forum, but the moment anyone logs in, regardless of member level/status, the ads disappear?
Basically, 99% of people who even care enough to read this post don't see any ads, but the bulk majority of users who come once to read a specific forum post they found on Google, support the forum via ad revenue?
Google had a forecasting tool, which seems to think we would pull in ~$1100 per month (which I doubt) but it does have me thinking.
Otherwise, sometype of fundraising may be in order?
5) Chapters - Planning for future
I participate in a charitable organization (related to leveraging data and analytics expertise to help non-profits sort through their data to become more effective at helping canadians), one aspect of the organization I volunteer at, which I keep thinking about as it relates to CHMW is the concept of different "Chapters" representing different locations.
We had previously began making location specific sub-forums, but in total they have something like 15 threads, for all locations other than Calgary Area.
This idea was on the right path, but it's missing one key element which was important to the Calgary Area's growth. Meetups, and generally local community.
The issue with meetups, outside of there being a pandemic, is my general inability to host meetups all over the place directly. We need boots on the ground. But equally I don't expect anyone to just stick a hand up and start sinking time into hosting meetups on a regular basis at the start, when they would be missing the very community which incentivises hanging out with CHMW in the first place.
The idea of attracting volunteers to new cities who wear the hat of "Chapter Lead", and generally work towards building a local-to-them community is probably just the kick we need to increase activity in new cities.
Generally getting the full support of our organization, but having a specific meetup requirement (quarterly?) would probably be a good balance?
JW
Hope all is well with you all as we continue this slog towards the end of the pandemic (if that will ever happen... haha)
I wanted to start a thread with regard to some upcoming changes, as well as some ideas floating around, and generally to have a "forum level" conversation about our group.
Quick update from my end
My son is just past two years old now, those first couple of years are a doozy, but boy am I ever feeling back to pre-baby Josh.
Keeping our family business going strong will likely always be a stress inducing time constraint, but lord knows I am looking forward to a meetup at some point.
1) Meetups - How should we be handling meetups as we march slowly towards vaccine rollout?
Let's not let this devolve too quickly, as the USA has shown that this topic can lead to infighting pretty quickly, however I would love everyone's thoughts and opinions.
I am not sure it makes sense to even host meetups until a predetermined point, nor do I know what that point would be. Neither do I want to feel like we're policing meetups..?
Video is always an option, should we start doing something regularly in this regard?
2) Sponsor - We have been approached by a potential sponsor
We'll have more information as this conversation rolls forward, however if anyone has thoughts, recommendations, concerns, or previous lessons learned, I am keen to hear them. Feel free to message me in this regard if you prefer.
We've had the benefit of some great guidance from members with specifically related experience in the past (@CalgaryPT and @Dabbler both pop to mind, but many more too), so welcome your thoughts.
3) Forum Hosting / Costs - Probably more changes coming down the pipe
Fun milestones:
We recently passed 1,000,000 forum pages viewed!
We're growing at a rate of 46% per year (over a three year average)!
Less fun milestone:
We're growing at a rate of 46% per year... We're likely going to out grow the current hosting solution. So, I am starting to plan out a migration for us ahead of time, instead of once there are issues from the strain like last time.
We actually migrated to a cloud server a few months ago, and while that can expand near infinitely, the cost to expand adds up quick. We're actually talking about phasing out this server at the office too, as it's costing the business thousands each month which we're not recouping most of, of which our forum makes up a portion.
For these reasons, I am likely going to swap our forum to a Calgary based server, for which I have a few that I can donate some space+cycles on.
You won't have to worry about the details too much, and I do a pretty good job of preventing downtime during that sort of thing, but I'll give everyone a heads up before pulling any levers on my end.
For the sake of sharing: I've actually been engineering and implementing a distributed server cluster across three locations in Calgary. It's been mainly a learning exercise but the natural redundancy means we should be able to host this website on that cluster without much trouble for a good long while. @Janger, @Alexander, I recently shared that I ordered one of those StarLink satellite internet dishes, this cluster is the reason why. I wanted to ensure the cluster has access to the internet even if shaw goes down.
The one detail to discuss with this plan as it relates to our site: I didn't actually build that cluster with hosting a website in mind. Starlink covers us if the internet drops, but I figured a power outage would take home's power offline anyways, so wasn't worried about it. As such there is one spot of weakness in the idea: power outages.
Two options for discussion:
1) We can just accept that the website would go down if the power in South Calgary goes out?
--> This is not what most would consider "production ready", by any means, but we're not actually hurting that badly if the website goes down for an hour or two, not like a tech company would be bleeding revenue by the minute. We would just be down for a bit.
2) Even with a generous $200 donation recently, we're ~$700 shy of the cost to put a (used, old enterprise gear) fix in place for this one, but I am not confident the expense makes sense, if we can just bear the downtime?
Either way, we'll be free from a big chunk of our expense in the forum, a lot more future proof than I thought we needed to be, and also independent of my work, so that's all a step in the right direction. Also, the website will be in Calgary, so Calgary area members will likely experience a faster website, as we can cut out a bunch of speed optimization cruft for those members. (See: cloudflare)
There's probably more going on, but I am headed to bed, will add to this thread tomorrow if I've missed anything!
Next Morning Edit:
4) Advertising - What if we can generate revenue without bothering members with ads?
Right, I had a point I was getting to. Though my stance has always been against banner ads on the site, when speaking with a colleague in the advertising space, he floated an idea which I wanted to run by everyone:
What if we put some banner ads on the forum, but the moment anyone logs in, regardless of member level/status, the ads disappear?
Basically, 99% of people who even care enough to read this post don't see any ads, but the bulk majority of users who come once to read a specific forum post they found on Google, support the forum via ad revenue?
Google had a forecasting tool, which seems to think we would pull in ~$1100 per month (which I doubt) but it does have me thinking.
Otherwise, sometype of fundraising may be in order?
5) Chapters - Planning for future
I participate in a charitable organization (related to leveraging data and analytics expertise to help non-profits sort through their data to become more effective at helping canadians), one aspect of the organization I volunteer at, which I keep thinking about as it relates to CHMW is the concept of different "Chapters" representing different locations.
We had previously began making location specific sub-forums, but in total they have something like 15 threads, for all locations other than Calgary Area.
This idea was on the right path, but it's missing one key element which was important to the Calgary Area's growth. Meetups, and generally local community.
The issue with meetups, outside of there being a pandemic, is my general inability to host meetups all over the place directly. We need boots on the ground. But equally I don't expect anyone to just stick a hand up and start sinking time into hosting meetups on a regular basis at the start, when they would be missing the very community which incentivises hanging out with CHMW in the first place.
The idea of attracting volunteers to new cities who wear the hat of "Chapter Lead", and generally work towards building a local-to-them community is probably just the kick we need to increase activity in new cities.
Generally getting the full support of our organization, but having a specific meetup requirement (quarterly?) would probably be a good balance?
JW
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ratings, instead of just likes, if I recall correctly.) In place of hosting fees, we take on some electrical cost, but that's small compared to Google fees.
