Creating this thread for watercooler discussions and what-not.
If you’d rather not have a thread meant only for chit-chat then I would understand.
Its that time of year again. The Promise production is going on right now.
Here is the website for those of you who are interested.
https://newhope.cc/thepromise/
We are performing live and live streaming it and professionally filming it this year.
TL/DR:
I am in a play this year! This is my costume. Watch it if you can.
Nice, you look the part…beard does the job 
Thanks! Many of the other years, I have played Peter. This year, I am playing Caiaphas (the High Priest) . However, Peter is a role that I can’t do this year due to time constraints.
Geez Dan, never thought I’d see you dressed like that 
Here’s an explanation for visitors who may be unfamiliar with SWIFT. It’s (currently) in the title of this subforum. What is SWIFT?
Taken from the old KD, SWIFT = SolidWorks International Forum Team . It is a userbase-generated title for regular members who offer wisdom and advice, and answer other users’ questions. There’s a “badge” image that Roasted By John designed.
It could be argued that this is now a vague misnomer, or at very least will be odd to continue to use outside of the official SWx Forum as it is.
I feel that the badge is intended to honor helpers, and lives on outside of scope. You may disagree.
We need a new acronym IMHO.
SToFU …Support Team of Forum Users
It’ll be SWIFT for a long time.. only guessing
Sorry, I forgot to use my sarcasm font.
maybe we should merge the two thread into one only ?
Jokes Thread (Keep it Clean) + Watercooler Talk
to have only one thread for : general discuss, internet meme, funny gif, internet news, etc…
Wow. This site is actually getting more traffic than the the official forum.
It’s pretty much just the 3DSwamp thread and the Kiddy Dump that keep circling the toilet bowl before they go down.
I wonder what this will look like by April 2nd.
I’d like to discuss the future. I’d really appreciate some feedback, and eventually some teamwork to make this place useful.
I’m sorry if this is too superserious for Watercooler Talk, and maybe this discussion belongs somewhere else.
We need Noobs. Noobs asking ridiculous questions and asking us to do their homework. OK, I joke a little. We still need noobs. Questions and answers = content.
The users here that have joined, in response to what’s been going on where we were, are mostly experts. Having a place to chat among experts is one thing, but few of us normally have a question or a problem that we can’t solve or find out on our own how to solve.
The owners of the old forum and their VARs are never ever going to direct new users here. They’ll scrub mentions of this forum from the data that will transfer to 3DSwym. After that, what? How will those who do not know this is here find us?
I have a few ideas, and as usual they’re not all great. Bad ones reinforce a better one.
Promotions: advertising ($$$), search engine optimization (I assume has reasonably been filled in), networking (word of mouth), cross-link efforts / incentives
Content. Content. Content. Content.
Google: our eggs - in that basket - right?
We already talked about money in another thread. Money is super useful for buying goods and services to achieve a goal.
It has been 20 yr since I did SEO promotions, but iirc Google still ranks content by reputation as well as content. Reputation represents popularity in the sense that many other sites will link to this site. This currently does not exist, and will not exist unless we make it so. This is the intent of what I mention above as cross-link efforts. We could have a reciprocal link page if that even helps anymore - I feel so Web 1.0 right now.
Without some legit content, we aren’t going to have the content portion of Google results to attract users.
It will surely take us some time to populate content of our own without noobs asking questions. We can do that. It’d be a large effort, and I would hate to see that effort amount to nothing within a few months.
Furthermore, this is nobody’s job. See above about money. Any effort should not be the burden of one or a few users, but shared somewhat by the strong members of the team. No one needs a new hobby to burn out on.
And lastly for now, when we do get questions and answer them, please keep it professional, for the love of ortho. The very last thing we need is a visitor to write us off because of snark and nonsense in a technical topic. We do have off-topic areas for that stuff. You can discuss a silly thing there, referencing context with a link, and keep the context itself unspoiled. I take this one on the chin, because admittedly I do love me some snark and nonsense. See above about money.
I kinda feel like we’ve had our equal and opposite reaction moment to some bad news. Once that’s passed, what vector are we even on: where’s this going? I’d rather consider this ahead of time, than have regrets in retrospect.
I agree 100%. As josh said, a good forum needs both gurus and noobs. With only noobs, you have a prime example of the blind leading the blind. With only gurus, they end up sitting around comparing the lengths of their beards.
I’ve got a few ideas for starters:
- Evangelize on Reddit, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, etc. Post links to previous topics with good content to draw more people. I don’t have access to any of those so you’ll have to do it. I know mattpeneguy has been doing some already.
- Start asking questions about things, even if you think you know the answer. You would be surprised how many different schools of thought are out there, and you will learn something new. This generates content for both the previous point and Google.
- Targeted advertising to draw traffic. Schools are excellent for this. We need a lot more people like The Cad Lad and Clark Jacobs to ask a ton of questions!
I’m way ahead of you, I got this covered! I might be able to single handedly fulfill this sites’ noob needs until 4/2.
Just my thoughts, but…:
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If you build it, they will come. …oh, wait, that’s not my thought, I stole it. but you get the idea. Focus on making something good and if there’s actually a need people will come. Conversely, Focus only on convincing people you have something they cannot live without instead of making it some thing good, the savvy consumers will ignore you. Also, forum people will laugh at you. (just my observation)
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Be accessible; make is visible to those who are already looking. I can only guess there are some realatively low cost ways to get Googlebots’ attention. My assumption is that Google wants to provide the best search results to their users, so if there’s good content Google will want to be the leader in getting people to that site. If you hide the content behind logins that don’t work and don’t provide a clear path for search indexing bots then there will be crickets.
Tom, yes, I agree, we need noobs. College kids are sent directly to the SW site. When that becomes inscrutable, hopefully this site will start popping up.
Just a couple of things:
- My vision for this place is A) a place full of great content and great experts and B) a place you can go to discuss stuff when there aren’t any real answers (like “What are the advantages/disadvantages of synchronous?”)
- I am working on a revenue stream. Talking to sponsors. If you have people you think might want to advertise and it’s a relevant topic, please send them my way.
- The best thing we can do to promote the site is writing great content. We can pose interesting questions, and discuss them.
- SEO can be useful, but the main things we have to know about getting Google ranked are: external links, important keywords associated with the site (so name your images with something relevant, avoid abbreviations - use SolidWorks instead of SW [I know I’m guilty of this], use keywords in subjects and repeat them in the body of your post.) Good content trumps everything else, because that draws people naturally.
- Link to other sites with high rankings (including social media) especially ones that might link back. We might get noticed by some industry or media wonks, published on a blog or interviewed by Connie Chung or something like that. When Al Dean tweeted about this place last week, we got a lot of Twitter traffic.
- You all have done an awesome job already with mentions and links on the SolidWorks forum. It’s fun to watch the member count go up and up.
- Keep the suggestions coming. It does get frustrating for me sometimes repeating myself, repeating myself, or trying to field conflicting requests, or stuff that’s impossible right now, or even sometimes repeating myself, but I can deal with that. I’m a trained expert in the field of frustration.
- I will be looking for help at some point, probably a couple of moderators. Not yet. I see that some of you don’t have day jobs because you’re posting all the time…
- My style is being open, maybe too open. Feel free to talk to me. Email, pm, skype, LinkedIn, etc…
- Thanks for everything you all have done to get us this far!
Looks like I got the privilege of being one of the few noobs on this forum! 
I see a lot of the college kids posting questions on Reddit. They probably already have Reddit accounts for other things. So there chance to find this forum is as good as 3dswym if they bother.
High level global meetings on Windchill can get quite…boring.
YAY! We’ve got another good one. Artem the macro guru is here.
Welcome to the community, artem !
Glad to see a Windchill user here…
At least now i know who i can rant together with 
No doubt, we tell each other it’s gonna be ok then go cry in our beer.