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Invision Community Blog

Managing successful online communities

Team Talk: Your favourite 4.4 feature?

Release parties at Invision Community are a fairly tame affair. You'd think after months of planning, coding and testing we'd want to cut loose and dance the night away. The reality is we send each other a few amusing GIFs in Slack and then wait for support tickets to start appearing while our developers crack their knuckles and prepare for bug reports to be filed. It's a nig…
Matt

Matt

9

Team Talk: What do you want for Christmas?

Famously, all Maria Carey wants for Christmas, is you. This is great news if you're a Maria Carey fan. As the holiday season draws closer and our staff chat channel turns to egg nog, twinkly lights and why is wrapping so hard, we asked the question: What would you like for Christmas? Brandon With so many children, Christmas is more focused on them and the family than myself. My eldest…
Matt

Matt

8

Team Talk: Where in the world would you like to live?

Sun kissed beaches or snowscapes? Bustling cities or quiet villages? The question we posted this month was: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? In theory we could work from anywhere in the world that has a decent internet connection, but where would we choose to live? Mark Wade It was only a few months ago that I was asking myself this exact question! I've alwa…
Matt

Matt

10

Team Talk: What's your favourite movie?

This month, I thought I'd ask a trick question. "What is your favourite movie?" I fully expected to be told "but Matt, we work so hard on Invision Community, we don't have time to watch movies." just so I didn't have to complete this month's entry. But no. Apparently, most of our team have MULTIPLE favourites. Hmmm. And here they are. Jennifer Favorite movies are a pain to choo…
Matt

Matt

21

Team Talk: What's your favourite feature?

It's not often that we get to blow our own trumpets. That's not just because we don't own trumpets, but also because we like to keep our heads down and focused on producing fantastic software [Ironic trumpet blowing - Editor]. Many of our team also run their own Invision Communities. So this month, we asked: What is your favourite Invision Community feature? Here's what we said. …
Matt

Matt

10

Team Talk: What would you do with $1,000,000?

This month, we ask the team the age-old question: If you won a million dollars (or denomination of your choice), how would you spend it? The question was almost guaranteed to bring a raft of hilarious replies that showcase our amazing humour and wit. Once again, we fall short and instead worry about taxation and retirement. You can't give it away these days. Marc S I couldn't dec…
Matt

Matt

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Team Talk: Which job would you be terrible at?

In between complaining about the temperature of the United Kingdom, a hot topic in staff chat was what jobs we've done in the past, and which jobs we'd be terrible at. Mark said that Matt would be terrible at being a software engineer. Once all the laughter and clearing desks and leaving the building immediately had finished, we settled on these answers. Jennifer I'd be a terrible runw…
Matt

Matt

4

Team Talk: What's on your bookshelf?

Benjamin Franklin once wrote "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." Fortunately for me, he'll never see this blog entry. The Invision Community team are a smart bunch. When they're not being support heroes, fixing code or writing cool new features, they occasionally like to pick up a book, although I guess download a book is more apt these days. Here's what…
Matt

Matt

17

Team Talk: Show us your workstation

You have probably spoken to us in support tickets and on our community forums, and you've likely seen our photos. But what about our workstations? What do they reveal about our personalities? Do none of our team have lights in their office? Mark H This is an old picture [Not as old as your Facebook photo -Ed], I now have a 4K monitor in the center, attached via Thunderbolt to my MBP. B…
Matt

Matt

28

Team Talk: Who is your celebrity look-alike?

For most of us, at some point in our lives we've been told we look like someone famous. Maybe it's an actor from a favourite movie, or a member of a popular band. This has certainly come up a few times among the team in chat. We often joke about our more famous doppelgängers. We've often wondered who'd play us in the movie version of Invision Community. I'm holding out for Ryan Reynolds [Keep…
Matt

Matt

11

Team Talk: How did you first come across Invision Community?

Invision Community has been going strong for over sixteen years now. Many of those who work for us were customers first before they signed away their souls and became staff. This month, we part the mists of time and ask: How did you first come across Invision Community? Andy (Developer and man of mystery) Way back in 1998 I was involved with an online investment club in the UK (of cour…
Matt

Matt

22

Team Talk: What is the geekiest thing you do in your spare time?

We, at Invision Community, love nothing more after a relaxing day writing PHP code, making commits in git and fighting with jQuery to indulge in a little therapeutic "me time". Given that we've all chosen to work in a nerdy industry (nerds are cool now, we checked) it's no surprise that our down time is spent on nerdy pursuits. Here's how our team spent their allotted and begrudgingly gi…
Matt

Matt

23

Team Talk: What is your hidden talent?

We're a cool bunch here at Invision Community. You'll see us around answering support tickets, posting in our community and writing cool new features and hilarious blogs. But, you won't see what we get up to in our spare time. This month, we asked the question "What is your secret talent?" To which Andy replied "I can't tell you, it's a secret" making me rephrase the question immediately…
Matt

Matt

22

Team Talk: What are you looking forward to most in 2018?

The Christmas lights are twinkling, the mince pies baked and the egg nog has been poured. With Christmas just around the corner, we turn our thoughts to what 2018 may bring. Marc Stridgen (Tech support and kettlebell enthusiast) I'm just looking forward to 2018 being less of a mixed year, as 2017 has been a bit of a bad one on the side of family, yet good with regards work and personal a…
Matt

Matt

6

Team Talk: If you could only keep five possessions, what would they be?

This month we ask a very simple question that got our team thinking hard. “If you could only keep five possessions, what would they be?” Now, this doesn't assume that there is a disaster, so you don't need to think about things like food and water. It also doesn't need to include humans or pets. This is also not a "Desert Island" question so survival tools are not required. This got…
Matt

Matt

6

QOTW: This week we talk home automation

This week, we were inspired to discuss home automation after @Joel R raised the question in a topic. With so many commercial options available now, such as Alexa, Siri and Google Home, we started discussing what automation we have in our homes. This week we'll focus on the a few team members who have heavily automated teams. Although @bfarber's answer "I have kids to help automate the home" w…
Matt

Matt

2

QOTW: What is the one thing you'd like to do in life, but haven't got around to yet?

What is the one thing you'd like to do in life, but haven't got around to yet? This week, we get introspective and look at the things we'd love to do but haven't found the time to do yet.  Brandon (Senior tech support and development) Travel more. I've traveled a little bit, but there are still many many places I'd like to visit. Something tells me I'll need to wait for some of the kid…
Matt

Matt

6

QOTW: Let's talk about music

This week's question is inspired by liquidfractals's reply to last weeks question. What is your favorite music and which bands would you have loved to see live? We learned many things; mostly that our team have poor taste in music. Brandon (Senior tech support and development)  I like a lot of different genres. I grew up with rap and pop, but I like R&B, country, electronic and ro…
Matt

Matt

14

QOTW: Name the one thing you cannot live without

This week, the team have been discussing the one thing they can not live without. Some found this a hard question to answer. What is the one thing you cannot live without? A tricky question for some. Could you pick just one thing? Brandon (Senior tech support and development) My family is my saving grace and escape, and even though they're (collectively) the ones typically causing…
Matt

Matt

18

QOTW: What was your first computing memory?

This week, the team have been discussing their very first computing memory. This will probably reveal a lot about the age of some of our team. We recently worked out that when Matt and Charles first met and started producing community software, some of the younger members of our team were still in primary school. What is your first computing memory? An easy question for tech-heads as we've …
Matt

Matt

20

QOTW: What is your favorite TV show?

Welcome to the first of a new regular series we're calling "Question of the week". Each week, we'll ask our team a question and share the replies. To kick things off, we posed a very simple question: What is your favorite TV show right now? We may have over-estimated how much TV the average geek watches. Here's what our team said. Brandon (Senior tech support and development) …
Matt

Matt

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