Rant: Wish you were here...

[Hirazi Blue]

[rant]
Ever since the announcement that the Softimage development team moved operations to Singapore, we have heard next to nothing from this new crew. The only real exception to this has been Chris Chia’s bug thread over at the xsibase and some occasional appearances on the fabled Mailing List. Initially I tried to provoke some more interaction with the new team. Together with mattmos, moderator at the xsibase, we tried to arrange one of the xsibase interviews with the new head of operations, but our request was denied. When all else failed I tried contacting Chris Chia to at least get him to register on the si-community, but he declined the offer. So now we’re in a situation, where we lost our original development team to Maya and from an online community perspective got nothing in return. As the Softimage community as a whole has always been blessed with active members of the team, this is sort of a letdown. Just to illustrate, Luc-Eric Rousseau still makes a lot of appearances on the si-community (and he should by all means keep on doing so, BTW) and he doesn’t even work on Softimage anymore, while the new Singapore team remains a black-box without any meaningful interaction with the forums. And I know I can’t force forum-life on anyone, but after so many years of active online interaction with members of the development team this new silence doesn’t really help me to keep the faith, so to speak, in the future of the product. Online participation by team members can be considered an important part of PR these days, especially in the case of Softimage, where this participation has always been excellent, and in that respect the new team has failed IMHO.
[/rant]

[EricTRocks]

While I respect your thoughts on how the new team isn't taking the opportunity to reach out, I think you may be remembering the previous interaction in a brighter light than it actually was.

Previous to the new team and post AD acquisition the only people really active were Stephen Blair, Graham, Manny, and the occasional post from Chinny (which went away with all of the distrust the community showed to him). Stephen, Graham, and Manny are still active and Chris Chia as well. Good on them. Other than that no many of the devs posted. Occasional posts from Luc-Eric came here and there but not as much as he has been. I attribute this to having much seperation from the project and thus more free to talk about things with a more personal take on them.

In all honesty I'd rather have them working hard on the product instead of coming onto to the forums. I think they should have a dedicated community ambassador that can help rely information better and not just the voluntary participation from the various sales reps and support staff. Nothing wrong with those people chiming in as well but someone dedicated and well versed on policies, pricing, and information would take some pressure off them.

[Hirazi Blue]

While I respect your thoughts on how the new team isn't taking the opportunity to reach out, I think you may be remembering the previous interaction in a brighter light than it actually was.

You might be right, but maybe the high-profile of the ones who did participate (especially Luc-Eric Rousseau) gave the exaggerated impression of more interaction... And I still remember Chinny's activity on the xsibase and one or two others. But I admit, my view of the past might be skewed "ever so slightly".

I think they should have a dedicated community ambassador

That would be nice, I'm not saying the whole team should register, but IMHO there should be one ambassador from the devs (a Singapore "version" of Luc-Eric Rousseau if you will) and an ambassador of sales, PR and all kinds of related stuff (the role Jennifer Goldfinch sometimes played in the olden days IIRC - but in my original post I have already proven not to recall everything correctly so never mind) and this second ambassador needn't be a "Singaporian"...
;)

[Tekano]

Oh, Guillaume was pretty active !

[Bellsey]

to put this into some perspective, you don't get many of the Maya, Max, Mobu, and Mudbox devs posting to the forums either, so its hardly as it Softimage is being singled it. I think the problem is that people have just go used to seeing certain people in the past, they've kinda accept it as the norm, which frankly it isn't. Participation in these forums (by ADSK people) is very much a personal choice (and not policy), and shouldn't be forced.
It's great that there are these types of forums and communities but it's hard for the developers to put themselves out there, as they would literally get bombarded by people, which has its good and bad points. Also, you have to remember Autodesk's stance on many things in that it's hard to get people to commit to anything specific on certain issues.

That isn't to say that we should just ignore people, but I would like things to be alot more focused. I'm trying to work with the Softimage Creatives group on how we can improve things in terms of improving our engagement, particular with the dev teams.

As for trying to get an interview with the 'head of operations', I don't think that was realistic. I don't know who you may of tried to contact, but any requests like that should really go through our PR/Marketing.

[Hirazi Blue]

to put this into some perspective, you don't get many of the Maya, Max, Mobu, and Mudbox devs posting to the forums either, so its hardly as it Softimage is being singled it

True, but I never claimed it was. I am very much a Softimage user, not an Avid or an Autodesk supporter and I was talking here from an admittedly slightly skewed perspective, comparing what we have to what we had ("the olden days"). I was not addressing or even attacking Autodesk policy in any way. I wouldn’t dare…

As for trying to get an interview with the 'head of operations', I don't think that was realistic. I don't know who you may of tried to contact, but any requests like that should really go through our PR/Marketing.

True and PR/Marketing would have rejected it also! I only mentioned the interview “that never happened” to illustrate there had been some effort to get “them” to participate. We didn’t sit idly by, so to speak…

Luckily I marked my remarks as a rant... ;)

[Daniel Brassard]

Good "rant" Hirazi Blue,

Maybe an official invite to join the forum to the team would work? Sometime attracting them with a friendly invite to participate and a welcome from the community works! Attracting bees with honey so to speak!

Who knows, they may be listening and monitoring this site as we speak!

BTW, is it not time to remove the "unofficial" from the label name of this forum, I think the forum is now well established to no longer be "beta"!

My two cent! Cheers!

Dan

[ActionArt]

I can understand a new team being very hesitant to say anything public for fear of getting into hot water with Autodesk. It's easy to say something you shouldn't and regret it later and a big corp like AD might take a very dim view of that. They may even have orders from AD PR not to be on the forums. Also, considering where the new team is, language may be an issue and the last thing AD would want is a translation error to be taken the wrong way. The new team may be playing it cautious for good reason and also they're probably up to their noses in issues to deal with.

In time, this may change. I certainly would like to hear from them a lot more but I can understand why we don't.

[Mathaeus]

I can understand a new team being very hesitant to say anything public for fear of getting into hot water with Autodesk. It's easy to say something you shouldn't and regret it later and a big corp like AD might take a very dim view of that. They may even have orders from AD PR not to be on the forums. Also, considering where the new team is, language may be an issue and the last thing AD would want is a translation error to be taken the wrong way. The new team may be playing it cautious for good reason and also they're probably up to their noses in issues to deal with.

Yeah I also fully understanding if someone don't want to appear in public.
All in all, great advantage for small companies these days, let's see what Side FX have under 'company'.

[luceric]

there's actually quite a few of dev and managers from maya posting on cgtalk; it's matter of recognizing the names. Customer engagement is encouraged at Autodesk, but you won't see me engage Maya communities for years, if ever - it would take a long time to get the confidence to do that. I can only imagine how it must be if you weren't in the 3d industry to begin with. But the new devs are engaging people - in beta forums, on support threads, etc. they're not isolated.

In any case, this forum is fun, and good especially on the ICE side, but I don't necessarily think this is really representative of Softimage user base: there are fewer active pros than the mailing list and xsibase posting. Most key customers are not reading or posting here. As far as I can tell, there is no one from Japan posting here either, and that's more than half of Softimage's user. It's literally just someone's personal forum, that a bunch of people joined in anger over the softimage.com forum change. It's not a respected industry "neutral" ground like cgtalk, or the official XSI mailing list. Personally I believe it would be best for the community and the engagement if xsibase.com finally died and people regrouped on cgtalk and/or The Area. There is no need for 6 or 7 forums for this tiny use base, and chatting about the software on remote island prevents exposing the software to the rest of the industry.

[Tekano]

whats so scary about the Maya crowd, other than the sheer numbers involved?

[bottleofram]

there's actually quite a few of dev and managers from maya posting on cgtalk; it's matter of recognizing the names. Customer engagement is encouraged at Autodesk, but you won't see me engage Maya communities for years, if ever - it would take a long time to get the confidence to do that. I can only imagine how it must be if you weren't in the 3d industry to begin with. But the new devs are engaging people - in beta forums, on support threads, etc. they're not isolated.

In any case, this forum is fun, and good especially on the ICE side, but I don't necessarily think this is really representative of Softimage user base: there are fewer active pros than the mailing list and xsibase posting. Most key customers are not reading or posting here. As far as I can tell, there is no one from Japan posting here either, and that's more than half of Softimage's user. It's literally just someone's personal forum, that a bunch of people joined in anger over the softimage.com forum change. It's not a respected industry "neutral" ground like cgtalk, or the official XSI mailing list. Personally I believe it would be best for the community and the engagement if xsibase.com finally died and people regrouped on cgtalk and/or The Area. There is no need for 6 or 7 forums for this tiny use base, and chatting about the software on remote island prevents exposing the software to the rest of the industry.

I've came to appreciate very much these straightforward and no-nonsense posts from Luc-Eric. The last part may not sit well with everyone, but I'm in full agreement (excluding "the area" bit). To be clear, I do not wish to downplay the efforts or insult the people who have obviously invested a LOT in developing and maintaining xsi sites/forums, nor do I think it would change anything related to what Hirazi wrote in the OP. However, as long as the English speaking user base engages in a communication on so many different places, things will stay as they are now. Slow and closed in.

My 2 cents


Btw, has Jason Brynford-Jones left AD? His linkedin page says he started his own company. Best luck to him in his endeavors.

[EricTRocks]

Yes he has. He's moved on to a new smaller start up focussing on rendering I believe. There may be more info coming around Siggraph time.

[Hirazi Blue]

Ah, the “Softimage Community Unification Theory” rears its ugly head again. Apart from the fact that the si-community most definitively isn’t “literally just someone's personal forum, that a bunch of people joined in anger over the softimage.com forum change” and the sily idea that a community only can be acceptable, if and when it represent the whole of the user base, the notion that the whole user base should eventually move to the CGSociety and/or the Area is laughable IMHO, considering the state the Softimage related forums over there currently are in. Anyone suggesting this has obviously not visited there recently. As to the xsibase, I for one really don’t think it should die and yes I do think the si-community and the xsibase both can easily coexist. We (the xsibase and the si-community both as far as I'm concerned) try to offer a place for the user base to discuss the many sides of Softimage ("the good, the bad and the ugly"). To lessen our effort of trying to spread of the good word “Softimage” might be considered somewhat spiteful.


PS Contrary to common belief this is not my “personal” forum, it was created by Owei, who owns the place and still makes the most important decisions, and is maintained by a couple of dedicated people (our “Team”). I am very much one of the crew (admittedly a sometimes annoyingly active one, I hasten to add).

[ActionArt]

Well, maybe on a purely marketing basis, unification might be good but I personally like this forum the way it is. I'm definitely NOT a fan of CGSociety, it's almost exclusively fantasy character art so that's really the only kind of people still visiting. It didn't seem to be that way years ago but certainly is now.

It would be nice if XSI base and this community could merge somehow since they target very similar audiences. Like it or not, the acceptance of the Area is very much an uphill battle.

So...this is still the best of the bunch I think

[Tekano]

CGtalk is too far up its own Arse to give a hoot about its marginalised forum users and as for 'The Area' as a viable alternative - ha! dont get me started. I still have not forgiven AD for the loss of the original Softimage user site - it was not 'changed' it was blatantly destroyed with some of the posts making it back into 'The Area' after a few months - but none of the functionality. for example, Autodesk still do not have any idea what an ICE compound is. So at the moment, this IS the only viable forum with Softimage interests at heart with XSIbase unfortunately infested with Malware according to google.