POPULARITY
Welcome to How to Save Your Vacation Rental, a 10-part educational podcast series hosted by vacation rental advocate Dana Lubner that will teach you how to solve your business’ greatest looming threat -- unfair regulation -- from the ground up. In this episode, you'll learn the critical importance of host group communications to the advocacy effort and the challenges we all face in bettering them. You'll learn how to improve existing efforts, and how emerging virtual community platforms fit into the Covid-19 age and beyond. This episode is brought to you by TRACK powered by TravelNet Solutions, providing integrated solutions to transform the way vacation rental hospitality works. Resources mentioned in the show: Expedia's government affairs contact: govermentaffairs@vrbo.com Dana’s public contact: help@danalubner.com VRMB Communities: https://community.vrmb.com Nation Builder: https://nationbuilder.com Invision Community: https://invisioncommunity.com Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com Mighty Networks: https://www.mightynetworks.com Zoom: https://zoom.us We’re also grateful to Ascent Processing for helping us get the word out. Ascent Processing is THE destination for payment solutions in the Vacation Rental industry to help clients and partners be more successful. Thank you to our featured guests: Debi Hertert, Host2Host Phil Minardi, Expedia Group Bruce Hoban, VRON Jonah Mechanic, Seabreeze Vacation Rentals Patricia Moore, Citizens 4 STR This episode was produced by VRMB Communities at Mangofish Studios. Our theme song is the ‘STR savior theme’ by DJ Andy Lubner
We have a great guest joining our podcast today. Mr Matt Mecham, the Co-Founder and Development Director of Invision Community. He joins us from his home base in the UK and we enjoyed the chat so much, we are pusblishing the entire unedited edition. I think when you listen to the podcast you will know why. Matt's insightful journey and story of his career from community developer to Co-founder of Invision is a great one indeed. Plus listening to some of Matt's personal thoughts on today's community manager's challenges will give you a sense as to why he is a sought after resource in our industry. I hope you enjoy and stay safe my friends.
Welcome the Expert Focus podcast hosted by the social media pro, engagement growth specialist, and entrepreneur Claire Dowdall. If you’re looking for a boring business podcast, you’re in the wrong place. On this weekly podcast, Claire features fantastic guests from all realms in the business world to discuss their specific specialty as well as offer tips, tricks, and stories from their journeys. Claire is an expert interviewer and gets to the heart of what you want to know. Welcome to your new favorite podcast. In this episode, Claire gets behind the mic with Matt Mecham the co-founder of Invision Community which specializes in independent forums since it’s birth in 2002. Matt talks about an insurgency in brands needing independent forum services, the cause, and trends surrounding that. Claire and Matt talk about Facebook communities and how they don’t touch the depth that forums and other online communities can offer. Listen to find out: What limits Facebook groups/communities? Why is there more passion and a stronger connection to community forums versus social media platforms? What do people consider hindrances when using forums? Why is metadata not as important on forums? What are the landscape and people are like within different forums? Don’t have to have a high level of tech knowledge. What are the positives of being a part of or leading an online forum/community? About segmenting content to cause a sharper focus Forum/platform structure “Forums lower the cost of a company’s spending on support.” “When you google something, you ask a questions and a load of forums show up.” “A lot of women pretend to be men because they feel they get taken more seriously [within forums].” “If Facebook decided to shut down groups/communities, what happens to your people?” “What would happen if ‘this’ disappeared? How can I still have contact with this group of people?” More of Claire: Claire's LinkedIn Profile The Expert Focus Facebook Group The Expert Focus podcast on iTunes More of Matt: Matt's LinkedIn Profile Invision Community's Website Matt's Facebook Profile Interesting Mentions: Film: The Circle
W pierwszym odcinku mojego podcastu zdradzam kilka metod na monetyzację forum Invision Community.
W tym odcinku opowiadam trochę o swoim doświadczeniu z Invision Community oraz o tematyce tego podcastu.
Matt Mecham‘s code has powered far too many online communities to count. Developing popular online community software since 2001, he worked on YaBB and founded Ikonboard, before co-founding Invision Power Services, the company behind Invision Community. Given his long view of the industry, Matt sees the timeline of online community as progressing through a few eras: The early years, when he began developing software. The middle years, where platforms became more cognizant of UI considerations and SEO. The recent years, Facebook opening to the public and the resulting impact. And now, which he refers to as the “post-Facebook era.” Where will online communities go in that era? Plus: The community software business shift from licensing to SaaS (software as a service) New features vs. bloat Why he turned down a job offer from vBulletin Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Higher Logic. Big Quotes “Running a good community is transcendent of the software you use.” –@mattmecham “Facebook is very much about now, what’s happening now. You try and find, even in a group, even a moderately busy group, trying to find something from last week is chaos. It’s crazy. It’s really really hard to do, so I think people that have had success with Facebook Groups are now looking at the next step. What’s the next step that they’ve got to take? They understand that they can’t keep a Facebook group because it’s too chaotic, once you get to 5,000, 10,000 people posting.” –@mattmecham About Matt Mecham Matt Mecham is a print designer turned Perl developer turned PHP developer. He has been creating community software since 2001. Matt founded Ikonboard and then started Invision Power Services with Charles Warner in 2002. 15 years later, their product, Invision Community, powers countless communities. Matt leads development and social media marketing. He still codes and, even though he’s been doing it forever, really enjoys it. Related Links Sponsor: Higher Logic, the community platform for community managers Matt Mecham on Twitter Wikipedia page for Ikonboard, an old community software platform that Matt developed, starting in 1999 Invision Community, community software by Invision Power Services, the company Matt co-founded with Charles Warner YaBB, a long-running community software platform, where Matt was once part of the development team “Jarvis Entertainment Group Acquires Ikonboard.com” press release Forumbee, Zendesk, CMNTY, Open Social, Discourse and vBulletin, community software platforms mentioned in our discussion about the shift from the licensing business model to SaaS Bravenet and ezboard (Wikipedia page), two services that essentially offered SaaS forum hosting in the 1990s Community Signal episode with Mike Creuzer, where we discussed vBulletin’s platform changes “Managing Online Forums,” Patrick’s book Invision Community on Facebook Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you'd like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.
Audentio, the parent of ThemeHouse, is a forums-focused digital agency, with high profile clients like AVForums, Mac Rumors and Android Forums. There aren’t too many (any?) agencies focused this seriously on forums, working at such a high level. Founder and owner Mike Creuzer has been working in forums since he was 11, starting on an MSN TV, and they’ve had a massive impact on his life. Though currently focused on XenForo, Mike and Audentio have worked with many forum platforms over the years, giving him an interesting perspective on the space, and where it’s headed. Plus: How a Harry Potter forum taught him more about being a person, than about Harry Potter Why being a developer-friendly forum platform is important The forum platform Audentio is migrating people from the most Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Open Social. Big Quotes “Being [in forums when I was] 11 or 12, I learned how to formulate an argument and present it. The good thing about forums is you actually get to take your time researching, or putting together some type of thought. … Not only did I learn about managing forums, but interpersonal skills.” -@mikecreuzer “I don’t know where I would be without forums. I don’t know. It’s my career. It’s what I do. I wanted to play baseball, but instead I got forums. That’s just the way life works." -@patrickokeefe “[At some point, vBulletin wasn’t giving developers] the tools that they need. That’s the thing a lot of software companies forget. Who do you have to make happy first? The developers and the designers. They are the ones who are actually going to build out the third party resources. Every forum that I know of has at least a couple of add-ons that are third party. The developers are the ones who actually go out there and build those tools. And the developers are what make your community sustainable and powerful and a place where people will sometimes come to your platform just because of these certain features and tools. And I feel like [vBulletin] didn’t listen to what the developers were needing but other platforms were, and it wasn’t even a hard decision for a lot of people [to leave them].” -@mikecreuzer About Mike Creuzer Mike Creuzer is a UI/UX and digital strategist from northern Illinois in the United States, and has worked in communities and forums since he was around 11. It started as a hobby, and after wanting to grow his forum and getting quotes for astronomical sums of money (that he’d later grow up to learn were quite reasonable), and being a kid unable to afford these quotes, Mike set out to learn the skills himself. Some 15 years later, he now runs Audentio, a small agency that solves problems all over the world, most known for their forum-focused services offered under the ThemeHouse name. Related Links Sponsor: Open Social, community building for nonprofits Mike on LinkedIn Audentio, the digital agency that Mike founded and owns ThemeHouse, owned by Audentio Community Signal episode with Serena Snoad of Alzheimer’s Society, whose Talking Point community was recently developed by Audentio XenForo, a forum platform that Audentio currently does a lot of work with vBulletin, a forum platform that Mike worked more with in the past, and now sees a lot of migrations away from Android Forums, AVForums and Mac Rumors, other clients of Audentio phpBB, a forum platform that Patrick currently uses and has used more in the past CoSForums, or Chamber of Secrets, the official forums of MuggleNet.com, the first online community that Mike was heavily involved in Wikipedia page for MSN TV, a set top box that provided web browsing capabilities to your TV “DWx Has Been a Moderator for 10 Years,” a thread at KarateForums.com about a moderator that has been on Patrick’s team for more than 10 years “UCL Reconstruction,” a thread about that moderator’s recent UCL reconstruction surgery Digital Point, an online community that some people use to make money, as Mike did in the past Simple Machines, MyBB, ProBoards, Invision Community (referred to as IPB or IPS), NodeBB, Discourse and Flarum, other forum platforms mentioned during this episode Community Signal episode with Emily Temple-Wood, former Wikipedian of the Year, where we also discussed being a kid online WikiProject Women Scientists, led by Emily Temple-Wood Chuck Wadlow of cPanel, another Audentio client SitePoint, and SitePoint Forums, an online community that has been impactful in Patrick’s life Matt Mecham of Invision Community, formerly of Ikonboard ZetaBoards, which acquired InvisionFree Skin Zone Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan, XenForo developers Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon. Thank you for listening to Community Signal.