Guild Wars 2

Zoso.8279:

Hey Chris! Was wondering what time of the day you’d be starting this glad to hear from you! Cant wait! This phase will be my favorite! I have MANY ideas for this one lol.

Hi Zoso,

Around 2pm PST.

Chris

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Hey Chris,

Though I work for a Logistics company and have an understanding for what you may be looking for under QoL and Logistics Management, I would think maybe some of our younger forum contributors and/or people not familiar with corporate speak might need a bit of description to tie in a definition of what you would consider Logistics Management and Quality of Life.

This may keep some submissions more clear and concise.

I will be sure to explain in the first post of the CDI. (-:

Thanks

Chris

Fallen.4317:

The last time I read about this CDI, I heard that GvG implementation is one of the topics.

Any idea how long it’ll take us to get to that topic? Is that one of the first or last topics?

It won’t be the last phase of the main topic and it will be included.

Chris

Grevender.9235:

awesome, thanks Chris!

p.s: can we clone you so we can multithread the process and speedup things noticeably? uh? can we? can we?

I doubt it (-: not this time.

I want to be able to give each phase as much attention as possible sorry.

Chris

No worries I am excited to and sorry for the delay.

chris

Morning All,

The Guild CDI will be starting on Wednesday 10th.

The Topic will be broken up into multiple phases with the first being:

Guild Quality of Life and Logistics Management.

Chris

I got the date wrong sorry.

Updated above.

Chris

Hi All,

Update on CDI and top ten list.

I am to busy this week to start the CDI so it will start on Monday 8th.

I apologize for the delay but I am rather busy and want to be able to give the CDI my full attention.

Chris

P.S: Top Ten list will be out before the CDI.

I will create a new topic with it on the general discussion page.

Chris

Morning All,

I hope you had a lovely weekend. I am going to try to post the top ten CDI discussions in relation to impact on game but note I am not get the list up until tomorrow.

Chris

Donari.5237:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning Zoso,

I am looking forward to it to. I will try to get the topic started on Thursday of next week. Just need to get some things finished so I can give the CDI the attention it will need.

Chris

To clarify, that means this very next Thursday Sept 5, not the next week after that, right?

That is correct Donari, Thursday Sept 5. This is the date I am aiming for. I have quite a lot of work to do early in the week but I will do my best (-:

Chris

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

NYG.2568:

Is it me or has the surge of “communiction” come to a halt? Seems as If they may think we have been pacified!

The next CDI starts Tuesday. It’s about guilds.

Afternoon All and Marcus,

I am going to try to start the next CDI on Thursday of next week. Meanwhile I promised that I would put a list up of the top ten areas that the CDIs have impacted (Note many folks have already put up much bigger lists in this thread. Thanks). I will do this by end of day tuesday.

Regarding devs posting: this is a long weekend and so many of the guys and girls are taking the time to relax with their families as well as many others who are at PAX.

We won’t always be very active on the forums as maintaining that cadence is dependent on work loads etc but we are going to try very hard to stay connected.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Speak with you soon.

Chris

Zoso.8279:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

We will starting a CDI soon on…….Guilds.

It will be broken down into time boxed discussion sections such as Guild vs. Guild, Guild Activities, Managing Guilds, Guild Content etc.

I will update when I have more details on when we start. I am very much looking forward to it.

Chris

I know it only says two days have past but it feels like forever! X.X I never knew I was impatient until I came back to this Topic and found out only two days have past! LMAO!!!
( Before I came to check how long it has been since you announced the topic I was thinking to myself “dang its been like a week when are we going to start this next CDI” LOLOLOLOLOL )

Morning Zoso,

I am looking forward to it to. I will try to get the topic started on Thursday of next week. Just need to get some things finished so I can give the CDI the attention it will need.

Chris

Hi All,

We will starting a CDI soon on…….Guilds.

It will be broken down into time boxed discussion sections such as Guild vs. Guild, Guild Activities, Managing Guilds, Guild Content etc.

I will update when I have more details on when we start. I am very much looking forward to it.

Chris

Hi All,

We will starting a CDI soon on…….Guilds.

It will be broken down into time boxed discussion sections such as Guild vs. Guild, Guild Activities, Managing Guilds, Guild Content etc.

I will update when I have more details on when we start. I am very much looking forward to it.

Chris

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

We have decided what the next topic will be and I will be updating the Call for Topics thread shortly.

Chris

Offtopic: Hi Chris, your inbox is still full, so I’m not able to respond to you.

Clearing now. Sorry have been very busy.

Chris

Hi All,

We have decided what the next topic will be and I will be updating the Call for Topics thread shortly.

Chris

IvanTheGrey.2941:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

IvanTheGrey.2941:

Mr. Whiteside, sorry to bring it up again, but can you clarify the changes in instance ownership? I believe that there’s a genuine concern for griefing, and I was hoping that you could put our legitimate worries at ease.

Thanks again for replying!

We have been discussing this for a very long time. Can you PM me so i remember to get back to this point when it is appropriate to do so please?

Chris

Will do sir, as soon as you empty your inbox :-)

Ah lol ok. Actually I am going to ask Izzy to chat about it.

Thanks Palador.

Chris

Note: he is busy today so it will either be tonight or tomorrow.

cesmode.4257:

I’ll say that I understand the commitments to development and meetings, etc…that the team doesn’t have the time to post anymore. But I do miss Colin’s frequent posting and his smiling face!!

We just need to build more time to post more, have better channels for communication and folks connecting us to discussions. We will do our best.

Chris

Ohoni.6057:

No doubt someone will say but you never did idea ‘x’ or idea ‘Y’ !!!!

Well that’s one of the reasons why we are reluctant to talk about the road map and secondarily we don’t always agree with what some want but we always stay informed.

Look. Some people are going to be upset no matter what you do. Promise something and never deliver? People will be upset. Never promise anything, leaving the future a murky Sargasso? People will be upset. So ignore that people will be upset and do what’s right. If you promise things and you have a good reason for not delivering, just explain what that reason is, any sensible players will understand and move on.

“Sorry, we planned to do X, but then we decided that Y would be a better idea, and it made X obsolete/impossible/time consuming, so we abandoned it and moved on to Z instead.”

So long as you’re open and honest with us, the bulk of the players will understand, and maybe suggest ways to make X still work, or improve Z to make it more like X, or who knows what we can accomplish together. You know how tons of bugs are never found until a million players are crawling over the new content? Sometimes design ideas are the same way, and the earlier you can get players crawling over the ideas, the sooner potential directions can become apparent. There have been plenty of features that have gone live, or nearly gone live, only for players to point out why that was a bad idea in the first place and it takes a while to fix it.

In any case, this game needs to do a better job of giving players hope. It needs to present a more distant future, however vague, that is more than two weeks out. We need to know where this game is headed in the long term, rather than just wandering in a fog. I’ve said this before, but it’s like on the West Wing, where the President said that sometimes you have to throw your hat over the wall, to make a declaration of intent, so that people know that you’re actually striving towards something and not just floating in place.

We know that you have a policy to not talk about things until they’re ready to launch, but that policy is toxic, and it needs to go.

This is a very good post.

Let’s see how the next CDI goes as I mention above.

Thanks Ohoni,

Chris

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I have a new take on “Communicating With You:” less is more, if you’re consistent. What I’d like to see is ANet picking any one of the ideas mentioned above (by ANet or players): stickies, blogs, CDIs, whatever, but just one. Then, commit to that method, regardless of what happens.

Communication shouldn’t stop because you guys get busy doing a release in China or the tinfoil hats come out in force. Instead, task someone with making sure we hear from you through good times and bad.

If the avenue of communication chosen becomes ineffective, modify or update it, or drop it and replace it with something else — but keep communicating.

The fact is, no matter how much you talk to us and how clear you are, it will never be enough. The best you can do is to make sure people know you are listening.

tl;dr Communicate with us consistently (and meaningfully), rather than worry about starting up a lot of new things as a reaction to recent events.

---

PS it wouldn’t hurt to make a point of telling us when you fix things: a lot of recent updates fixed some annoying, little issues, but there’s no mention of them in the patch notes. (INB4: I’m not going to list them, since I want ANet to toot their own horn.)

Yep agreed. it comes down to time though. its good to be back and chatting though.

We really need to build a foundation that allows us to be able to build time to engage more effectively. At the moment I am posting because I have a little free time for example.

We are working on it.

Thanks for your thoughts.

chris

munkiman.3068:

One of the most powerful tools we could use as individual communities is our own discussions. We could easily document individual group discussions and bring them back here. I’m going to try and organize a discussion group on our server once this CDI kicks off, gather the feedback and present it to the thread. Not sure how successful that will be, but it’s worth a shot.

It would be awesome to have community members not only do this but be champions of various areas.

Chris

Shpongle.6025:

Mike O Brien.4613:

I know some are concerned about whether ArenaNet is communicating with you and listening and responding to your feedback. As you saw with yesterday’s announcement, we do. All of us at ArenaNet play the game with you, chat with you and read your forum posts, and work on the things that we think will most delight and entertain you.

We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.

Don’t read that as meaning that we don’t want to talk with you about the longer-term roadmap. The intention of the CDI threads is to talk with you about the roadmap. We want to talk design philosophy with you and hear how you want to see the game evolve. When those discussions trigger development, we’ll work internally until we have something we’re proud of before we’ll announce it.

A lot of the questions I’ve seen posted this week are as simple as this: does ArenaNet have an agenda to never do something? That’s almost never the case, and if it is the case you deserve to know and we’ll make sure we get more clear. In general the simple truth is this: when we’re not currently working on something, it’s because we’re working on something else instead that we think is more important for the game and community.

Our developers post on these forums on a voluntary basis, and in addition to developers, we have a community team who can clarify and be the bridge between players and developers. They’re ready to engage you on these topics. And I know it’s hard for the community team to engage players across all the forums and sites where these questions are being discussed, so I’m going to support the team in consolidating and focusing as necessary, so that we can be clear to the community where you can go to get a response.

See you in-game,
Mike O’Brien

So basically, you don’t even know what you’re doing or what to do. You have no clear goals, no focus and no direction to go into with a determined state of mind. You just make things up as you go along.

Alright, got it. Thanks.

Incorrect.

15 characters rhubarb rhubarb.

Chris

leviathan.2148:

Mr. Whiteside first let me express my admiration, you have the nerves of steel, I wouldn’t endure half of the angry posts!

I have to say that I understand both angry customers and developers… I work in software development so I know how hard it is to deal with the customer and of course sometimes things don’t work out as planned. I understand the policy of silence until the feature is developed. I also understand the angry gamers.

I’ve been ok with this development so far, but only mostly because I am an altoholic (working on my 11th character) and achievement hunter (nearing 14K achievement points). I love the design, the combat is perfect, however I miss many things also, but this is not the place to discuss it.

Living Story is great, in my opinion, I like the episodic playing, but I am also one of the people that would love to see an expansion. I am ok with no expansion if I have always something new to find, explore and experience in terms of content regularly.
I have many things to praise, however I have always felt that the communication and PR is lacking, but who am I to judge (a person without any experience in this field). Still, I think that the roadmap would solve many issues and it would calm many angry players. Why? I guess you know, it has been said here a lot… we don’t know where you are heading. We want this game to be successful, we want to express many and new adventures and we want to look forward to coming things.

You don’t want to disappoint us, I also don’t like dealing with angry customers that demand the product on time despite the unforeseen circumstances and flaws and changes.

We are ok with you saying: “Guys, a problem has come up that made us postpone this long awaited feature, but we are working on it.” Or “Things have changed, we had to stop develop this in order to bring you something that”. This all is ok, just please be more transparent, we understand that you have limited resources and are only human, just let us know. The uncertainity is very strong thing, we are completely uncertain about the future and that can lead to fear, anger, panic, just like we don’t know what happens after death, that’s why many people fear the death. And we may fear the future for this wonderful game. (whoa what a metaphor!)
Feedback is very important for the developer. It is also important to us. To establish a healthy developer-customer dialogue is very difficult, but let’s try that! Don’t let the whiny babies discourage you, ignore the trolls, just keep on with the communication and the community will appreciate it.

It doesn’t have to be detailed preview, but for example a blogpost twice a year telling us about the predicted next direction would be awesome! I loved the state of the game blogposts by Colin Johanson. Of course nobody expects you to tell us there about everything, just leak some interesting info that will make us look forward to the future additions!
Mr. O’Brien, Johanson, Whiteside and others, please think about it. We love the game, we care, we want it to be successful, we want all to enjoy it for a long time. Communication is vital in every relationship, and this between you and us is no exception.

Of course I don’t speak for everyone, mainly for myself and some of my friends, so just our two cents.

Hi leviathan,

Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts. The level of detail is great and I understand your point entirely.

Can I ask that we see how things go with the next CDI and then internally and externally have a discussion about policy?

I plan to be more inclusive in the next CDI and I would like to see how that is received both internally and externally.

Chris

IvanTheGrey.2941:

Mr. Whiteside, sorry to bring it up again, but can you clarify the changes in instance ownership? I believe that there’s a genuine concern for griefing, and I was hoping that you could put our legitimate worries at ease.

Thanks again for replying!

We have been discussing this for a very long time. Can you PM me so i remember to get back to this point when it is appropriate to do so please?

Chris

Lheimroo.2947:

leviathan.2148:

It doesn’t have to be detailed preview, but for example a blogpost twice a year telling us about the predicted next direction would be awesome! I loved the state of the game blogposts by Colin Johanson. Of course nobody expects you to tell us there about everything, just leak some interesting info that will make us look forward to the future additions!

I dunno if that’d honestly work, given how changeable they’ve explained to us the course of development is. I’d go in the exact opposite direction, more informal and frequent. Let us be a fly on the wall in those daily or weekly dev meetings, at least in some senses.

Either way.. the situation right now, where one guy is volunteering his weekends and family time to keep reassuring us while remaining muzzled on ‘the issues’ by company policy.. s’gotta change. I appreciate what Chris is doing, but hopefully the higher-ups hear that and start helping him out.

Yes, I know, Chris has already said they’re dedicated to that. Bring it on!

Just to be clear because I think this may have an inserting affect on all of our discussions and for the sake of visibility it is worth pointing out that I am one of the higher ups. Thus when I say we could be doing a better job it is coming from the whole team. Think this is important to explain because it isn’t that I am some special case in the company, we all care, I just have a more forgiving wife in regard to how i spend my time (-:

I also talk as a player who plays a lot (well when i have time).

Chris

Romek.4201:

who ever read this? seriously

cdi is just a hype to make spammors feel important but at the end this thing is just an Placebo to make ppl silent

when you rly read this than how bout this thema?:
Is Feature Presentation now a Living Story too?

pah

Hi Romek,

In answer to your question:

Around 50,000 player’s have been reading this thread and 100,000s have reaad and contributed to some of the CDIs.

Here comes the broken record again (Sorry to those paying attention)

The CDIs have have had different levels of impact on the game based mainly on how mcuh time dev’s have had to engage and contribute to the discussion.

I can assure you, like many others have that CDIs and community discussion have had a huge impact on the game.

Finally as i have said before. if you think communication with us is pointless then don’t partake, and don’t berate others for doing so. Or you could help us all get better at communication and come to the discussion with a valuable contribution.

Cheers

Chris

Blind Jimmy.1634:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

ananda.5946:

Chris, since you are actively posting in this about communication, can you tell us if the Mac client is being looked at? It crashes all the time in large events and there is no active support in the mac support forum.

If you don’t mind i will get back to you on this on Tuesday.

Chris

Hi Chris!

First of all thanks for all thanks for all the work you are doing on your personal time on this thread.

Now that Tuesday’s update information has been released, and the “Performance Updates” section is presumably what you were waiting for, did you have additional information on what this means for the mac client in particular that you can provide? Are you able to confirm that the crashes the mac beta client users were seeing were performance related, and if so that the performance updates mentioned today have been tested on the mac client and in fact reduce, if not eliminate, the problems?

And in order to stay on topic, would it be possible for this information to be communicated in the mac tech support forum where it best belongs instead of buried deep inside this thread? We would love any updates you are allowed to give, or even acknowledgement that ArenaNet is aware of and working on the issues with the mac client.

Hi Jimmy,

I have asked that we give an update on the mac client.

Chris

cesmode.4257:

Im not sure what 19 pages are about here…All Mr Obrien was stating was their reasoning for being hush hush about certain things. Don’t think we need to discuss it.

The only thing Id like to discuss that abstractly relates to this, is the discussion and/or development effort of things that we do not ask for VS things that we ask for over and over and over again. Id like a little more transparency on that.

No one asked for Ascended gear. We got it.
No one asked for Living Story. We got it.

We did ask for precursor crafting/scav hunts, and still don’t have it.
We still ask for expansions.

Things like that. I know Im over-generalizing here in terms of the scope of my opinion. However, in and out of game these are the things I see most popping up on fansite forums, official forums, in game chat…

Crumbs there are a lot of assumptions here specifically in terms of who wants what to be in GW2 and not.

Chris

Hey All,

Ok we are going with option 1 and we will see how it goes.

We should also discuss how to improve the process at the end of the next CDI, such as tech, topic choice etc etc.

Thanks all for sharing your thoughts.

I will speak to the team about what we want to discuss and will update soon.

Chris

Hi All,

I am getting back up to date on the last page.

Chris

The Great Al.2546:

Hi Chris,
To what extent does player feedback drive priorities? For example, if somehow tomorrow a 40 page thread appears about <insert feature here>, does current work get reprioritized to make room for that?

As a software developer myself, I’ve found that the end user of the software drives about 80-90% of the prioritization, with the rest coming from developer knowledge (for example, if something of a less priority is a ‘quick win’, it generally would happen sooner, and also some flexibility on pushing back massive projects if they would take a long time). I would expect similar practices at Anet. Why then, for example, do seemingly ‘quick wins’ like many of the profession bugs or unused traits/skills stay that way for such a long time?

Thanks again for all of your hard work and interaction with the community!

Just wanted to pop in and say I am up to date. Enjoying relaxing with the family.

Player communication and feedback does indeed have impact on priority (-:

It is one of the benefits of working in a live environment and we are very agile so we can re prioritize pretty easily dependent on the size of the work load however.

We have a road map, which can be effected by evolution of features in the live environment and the community.

No doubt someone will say but you never did idea ‘x’ or idea ‘Y’ !!!!

Well that’s one of the reasons why we are reluctant to talk about the road map and secondarily we don’t always agree with what some want but we always stay informed.

And thanks Drak (-:

Chris

P.S: Will reply to some of the posts from today tomorrow. Thanks for being so patient.

Lheimroo.2947:

Those megaserver changes.. they read like addressing the individual bullet points from the feedback thread. I have to give kudos.

Seriously, though.. having that on the boil and yet not telling us sooner did the atmosphere here on the forums a lot more harm than good. I understand not giving details or timelines.. but surely the motivation was fixed to address the issues ‘soon’ months ago.

We always do our best to listen to the community and read the forums, we just don’t always have the time to reply and engage, and it is our goal as expressed last week and over the weekend to build a better relationship with you all.

Chris

dlonie.6547:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Huzzah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjftsPeef_s

For ALS Awareness and fun!

Chris

“Come back, we’re not done — it’s all about iteration!” LMFAO, 10/10. I’d love the opportunity to do that to a couple of my former managers :-D

Back on topic….

Some of the interesting CDI ideas above gave me an idea, especially the point that ranking a la reddit does disrupt linear conversation, which is a big turn off for me as well.

The suggestion of a subforum would be nice, but would quickly grow unwieldy, as we’ve seen in the past.

Some sort of hybrid would be nice, and might be worth the development time to roll your own if there’s nothing off the shelf available. A medium where:

1) Threads are ranked with up/down votes, but not comments. This preserves the discussion on the topics, while allowing more popular concepts to float to the top.

2) Threads may be sorted either by ranking or time posted. “What’s hot” vs. “What’s new”. So we don’t get so fixated on the popular ideas that we miss out on new ones.

3) Ongoing (daily) guaranteed replies/discussion in the top X “hot” threads. Not promises of deliverables, but well thought out, meaningful, insightful discussions.

Less important, but perhaps useful ideas:

• The multiple threads will allow focused discussion to take place with less jumping around, something that killed readability in the other CDIs.

• Comments may still be flagged as unhelpful, and may be hidden if an overwhelming majority of votes identify it as such (this would be helpful on the regular forums, actually. Let the community discourage “toxic” posters without feeding them).

• Heavy moderation would be needed for these discussions. Off topic posts/bickering/long meandering arguments should be removed (not infracted, unless a repeat offender) and the involved parties encouraged to continue the discussion via PMs/regular forums.

• Rank could be by “votes per unique view” to keep a fair entry barrier for newer concepts.

• Alternatively, rank could be a 5-star system, where we can apply some subjective ranking to ideas we like, but find flawed.

• As the discussions grow, there will be similar threads that contain different solutions to the same issues. A way of grouping these (single-word tags, perhaps?) would be useful, especially if we could filter threads by tag.

Like I said, it might take a bit of development effort to build the platform, but it sounds like some new technology needs to be purchased/written to come up with something manageable, anyway.

Oh, and a good search feature would be essential if we’re to have any hope of keeping one thread/topic. The forum’s search functionality is 100% unusable, which makes me sad when I can’t yell at people for making duplicate posts

Some really good ideas here thanks Dlonie.

By the way you order Reddit for it to be linear. Honestly I would like to be able to use something like Reddit for a CDI from a tech standpoint.

All of these points are spot on IMO.

Chris

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Communication isn’t only hearing what you want to hear.

This is a super important point on both sides.

Chris

Edgar Doiron.2804:

I just have to say, a big Thank you to Chris!

Now when I load up devtracker, there’s actually stuff to read!

Thanks to all of you to. The posts have in most part been really valuable and Its been really nice to connect again.

Chris

Kiwicharr.8051:

Hey Chris, thanks so much for all the posts and attention this thread is getting now! Really great to see some more Arenanet interaction with the players, its something that is really needed at the moment i think.

In the interests of transparency could you please explain why the atlas was removed from the website without anyone from Arenanet mentioning it? Also why do we get a lot of big changes not listed in the patch notes? Communicating things like these would really go a long way i think. People would really like to see why you make the choices you make with how you develop the game moving forward.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend!

And thanks for your feedback Kiwicharr.

hris

Kiwicharr.8051:

Hey Chris, thanks so much for all the posts and attention this thread is getting now! Really great to see some more Arenanet interaction with the players, its something that is really needed at the moment i think.

In the interests of transparency could you please explain why the atlas was removed from the website without anyone from Arenanet mentioning it? Also why do we get a lot of big changes not listed in the patch notes? Communicating things like these would really go a long way i think. People would really like to see why you make the choices you make with how you develop the game moving forward.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend!

I will speak to Steve Fowler about this who is our Head of Marketing and an all ground great guy.

Chris

minbariguy.7504:

Torsailr.8456:

Anet’s lack of communication is not a valid excuse to become a toxic member of the forums.

This is a circular argument. While your statement is 100% true, it is also true to state that the toxic behavior of some forum members is not a valid excuse to justify ANet’s lack of communication with the rest of the community. Someone has to break the cycle, and I believe it should be ANet, since they are the ones in a position of power here.

On another note:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Huzzah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjftsPeef_s

For ALS Awareness and fun!

Chris

Wow, Chris, the way you s-l-o-w-l-y drizzled that ice water over James was pure evil! LOL! But kudos to both you and James (especially James!!!) for taking part in the awareness campaign.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Having the CDIs in their own sub-forums was suggested in previous CDIs. I don’t believe it was thought to be a good idea. I can’t remember why. I’m sure you can read about it is the pertinent CDI, though. =)

Chris feared that it would reduce visibility which I don’t think is true (and a lot of people spoke up and disagreed) But maybe he’d reconsider?

Yes the more threads and forums there are the greater the degrees of separation in regard to awareness and keeping up with all the conversation. This doesn’t mean that I am against the idea of having a CDI forum though if for example we consolidated the vast number of our other forums.

FYI I am going ‘planning’ to spend the day with the family today and therefore will be semi afk from the discussion and back full time on Tuesday (This said I am not sure tat I will be able to stay away)

Hope that’s ok.

Chris

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Huzzah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjftsPeef_s

For ALS Awareness and fun!

Chris

And on that note (-: I hope you have a great night/morning, I am going to watch a film.

Chris

Huzzah!

For ALS Awareness and fun!

Chris

Note: I am up to date on the posts, thanks for continuing the discussion.

Chris

ALS challenge complete. Link soon (-:

Chris

Right just stepping out to give James Smith (Dev Director at Anet) a shower of freezing cold water.

http://www.alsa.org/

BrB.

Chris

Hey All,

I am up to date and semi afk.

Chris

minbariguy.7504:

A bit more on the subject of managing expectations. I found an article by Annie Pace Scranton on Forbes.com titled “The Top Five Tips For Managing Client Expectations”.

The “meat” of the article is as follows:

Here are the five steps I always try to follow for managing client expectations:

1. Be Honest From The Get-Go. Though it may sound counterintuitive, I always tell potential new clients in the very first initial conversation about possiblyworking together that there are no guarantees. As with most things in life, there are too many factors at play to make any grandiose promises. I can’t predict whether a producer will like a pitch, or a reporter will quote my client. Although it may feel uncomfortable, I think that saying this clearly and in no uncertain terms, positions the client to take a leap of faith in your work and also helps them to understand the process behind your work.

2. Under-Promise , Over-Deliver. This old adage is one to live by! I promise my clients that they will have immediate & constant access to me and my team; that we will, every day, work on their behalf through pitching and meetings with the media; and that if nothing else, it is guaranteed that they will become known to key members of the media. After that, when big interviews start rolling in, it’s much more appreciated!

3. Anticipate the Client’s Needs Before They Know Their Own Need. This one definitely takes time and practice, but think about it: no one knows your business as well as you do. You know when things are going great and when you need to ramp up your efforts. It’s so important to share that with a client through a simple email stating “I’m going to spend extra time this week working on your project – I really want to get you out there as much as you do.” It can go a long way.

4. Constant Communication. If you’re in the service industry of any kind, that is what you do – serve. That means being bubbly, bright and (almost) always available. While of course it’s important to set boundaries so that you can maintain a rewarding personal life, it’s critical that your clients know they can gain access to you as needed. Hopefully just knowing you’re available and ready to jump on a project as needed will be enough so that your client’s won’t abuse your generousity with time.

5. Reports. Probably not anyone’s favorite task during the week, but reports show a clear delineation of work that was done over the course of a week or month. Remember – reports don’t have to be very long, or in a format that clogs up a lot of your time. A simple email detailing tasks completed for the week shows your clients what they’re paying for, and thus, keeps them happy.

Hopefully, by following these steps, you’ll be on a road to an even better relationship with your clients. By following this process, you’ll most likely achieve better results in your work, too.

I sincerely hope this is helpful.

Thanks for this. It would be fun for us to discuss this. Maybe tomorrow.

Chris

Going afk for a bit. See you soon.

Chris

Taygus.4571:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

No one is forcing you to do something that you think is pointless. So I would suggest not partaking in the CDIs if you think they are not going to bear fruit.
Chris

I feel for you, devs, you can’t do anything right XD

:P.

Bring on the CDI threads! (and inevitably the complainers.)

It’s all good. Looking forward to the CDI to. It’s been a lot of fun chatting this weekend though. Wish I had more time during the week, and thank goodness my wife is understanding.

Chris

ananda.5946:

Chris, since you are actively posting in this about communication, can you tell us if the Mac client is being looked at? It crashes all the time in large events and there is no active support in the mac support forum.

If you don’t mind i will get back to you on this on Tuesday.

Chris