Joel R

For existing Invision clients, I think this is also a great opportunity to think about recruiting and converting Facebook groups to your community.  This enables you to become a "community of communities" on your IPS platform, with multiple sub-groups, clans, or tribes.  You can set them up with their own Club or integrate into your main community:
Provide a haven.  There are people deleting and leaving Facebook every day, especially in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  Why not provide a new space for those groups who are looking for a shared vision and mission without the constant privacy issues of Facebook?   Get revolutionary growth by adding a major block of new members.  It's hard to attract members on a one-by-one basis and the regular organic growth may be slow.  When you attract and entice a group owner, you bring his entire group over in one migration.   Build out your niche.  Add all the knowledge and topics of your sub-communities to strengthen your existing knowledge.  The new clubs can either broaden the relevancy of your niche, or deepen your community's authority.   Become an Admiral, not a Captain.  A captain steers one boat.  An admiral steers a fleet of boats.  It's a whole new level of challenges and rewards when you administer a community of communities where you lead multiple captains.  It gives you power in numbers to do more, with more members, more activity, more enthusiasm and creativity.     I think there's never been a better time to go fishing in Facebook's muddy waters, and to start poaching Facebook groups who are looking for a new home.  

Yeah, current Cambridge Analytica and Facebook SNAFU will hopefully make some people think and leave that toxic pit . Also a wonderful opportunity to try and hopefully convert users to join and be active, and as @Joel R stated give an alternative where people can feel safer privacy-wise.

For all of the fans who love clubs, here are some behind-the-scenes peek of Clubs in 4.3:

The new club index, featuring a world map of club locations.  I'm using the new "List View," which is great for a large number of clubs.  Notice how the STEM Club is "Read Only," which is the new type of club in 4.3.  
 

Club Home features a standard "About" widget for basic information on the club, Activity Stream of all recent items, and map.  The club block in the sidebar is optional depending upon your ACP club settings.
 

Club Blogs featuring the new grid view and featured photos.
 

Club Files with a list of files like the normal IP.Downloads.  My first file "HD Kite Wallpapers" is actually linked to URLs for both the files and screenshots, which is an existing feature of IP.Downloads.
 

Club Images shows 2 albums.  You can upload images without assigning to albums too.  These albums can be linked into your Club's Calendar Event or Club Blog Entry for cross-integration.
 

Club settings showing the new Paid settings.  It costs $100 to enter my club with renewal fees of $100 every 365 days.  Kites are expensive.

For existing Invision clients, I think this is also a great opportunity to think about recruiting and converting Facebook groups to your community.  This enables you to become a "community of communities" on your IPS platform, with multiple sub-groups, clans, or tribes.  You can set them up with their own Club or integrate into your main community:
Provide a haven.  There are people deleting and leaving Facebook every day, especially in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  Why not provide a new space for those groups who are looking for a shared vision and mission without the constant privacy issues of Facebook?   Get revolutionary growth by adding a major block of new members.  It's hard to attract members on a one-by-one basis and the regular organic growth may be slow.  When you attract and entice a group owner, you bring his entire group over in one migration.   Build out your niche.  Add all the knowledge and topics of your sub-communities to strengthen your existing knowledge.  The new clubs can either broaden the relevancy of your niche, or deepen your community's authority.   Become an Admiral, not a Captain.  A captain steers one boat.  An admiral steers a fleet of boats.  It's a whole new level of challenges and rewards when you administer a community of communities where you lead multiple captains.  It gives you power in numbers to do more, with more members, more activity, more enthusiasm and creativity.     I think there's never been a better time to go fishing in Facebook's muddy waters, and to start poaching Facebook groups who are looking for a new home.  

For existing Invision clients, I think this is also a great opportunity to think about recruiting and converting Facebook groups to your community.  This enables you to become a "community of communities" on your IPS platform, with multiple sub-groups, clans, or tribes.  You can set them up with their own Club or integrate into your main community:
Provide a haven.  There are people deleting and leaving Facebook every day, especially in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  Why not provide a new space for those groups who are looking for a shared vision and mission without the constant privacy issues of Facebook?   Get revolutionary growth by adding a major block of new members.  It's hard to attract members on a one-by-one basis and the regular organic growth may be slow.  When you attract and entice a group owner, you bring his entire group over in one migration.   Build out your niche.  Add all the knowledge and topics of your sub-communities to strengthen your existing knowledge.  The new clubs can either broaden the relevancy of your niche, or deepen your community's authority.   Become an Admiral, not a Captain.  A captain steers one boat.  An admiral steers a fleet of boats.  It's a whole new level of challenges and rewards when you administer a community of communities where you lead multiple captains.  It gives you power in numbers to do more, with more members, more activity, more enthusiasm and creativity.     I think there's never been a better time to go fishing in Facebook's muddy waters, and to start poaching Facebook groups who are looking for a new home.  

For existing Invision clients, I think this is also a great opportunity to think about recruiting and converting Facebook groups to your community.  This enables you to become a "community of communities" on your IPS platform, with multiple sub-groups, clans, or tribes.  You can set them up with their own Club or integrate into your main community:
Provide a haven.  There are people deleting and leaving Facebook every day, especially in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  Why not provide a new space for those groups who are looking for a shared vision and mission without the constant privacy issues of Facebook?   Get revolutionary growth by adding a major block of new members.  It's hard to attract members on a one-by-one basis and the regular organic growth may be slow.  When you attract and entice a group owner, you bring his entire group over in one migration.   Build out your niche.  Add all the knowledge and topics of your sub-communities to strengthen your existing knowledge.  The new clubs can either broaden the relevancy of your niche, or deepen your community's authority.   Become an Admiral, not a Captain.  A captain steers one boat.  An admiral steers a fleet of boats.  It's a whole new level of challenges and rewards when you administer a community of communities where you lead multiple captains.  It gives you power in numbers to do more, with more members, more activity, more enthusiasm and creativity.     I think there's never been a better time to go fishing in Facebook's muddy waters, and to start poaching Facebook groups who are looking for a new home.  

For existing Invision clients, I think this is also a great opportunity to think about recruiting and converting Facebook groups to your community.  This enables you to become a "community of communities" on your IPS platform, with multiple sub-groups, clans, or tribes.  You can set them up with their own Club or integrate into your main community:
Provide a haven.  There are people deleting and leaving Facebook every day, especially in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.  Why not provide a new space for those groups who are looking for a shared vision and mission without the constant privacy issues of Facebook?   Get revolutionary growth by adding a major block of new members.  It's hard to attract members on a one-by-one basis and the regular organic growth may be slow.  When you attract and entice a group owner, you bring his entire group over in one migration.   Build out your niche.  Add all the knowledge and topics of your sub-communities to strengthen your existing knowledge.  The new clubs can either broaden the relevancy of your niche, or deepen your community's authority.   Become an Admiral, not a Captain.  A captain steers one boat.  An admiral steers a fleet of boats.  It's a whole new level of challenges and rewards when you administer a community of communities where you lead multiple captains.  It gives you power in numbers to do more, with more members, more activity, more enthusiasm and creativity.     I think there's never been a better time to go fishing in Facebook's muddy waters, and to start poaching Facebook groups who are looking for a new home.  

For the t-shirts, we have our own. We have 2 different versions so we've given away 1 of each and have done that twice in the last year or so that we've had them. 
The calendar is ours as well. It's a user-driven contest as well which generates it's own traffic. It's a pain and a lot of validating to ensure the photos are fit and legal to print but is worth it. Depending on sales of the calendar itself we will give a couple away in the new year. We have been doing this for quite some time and they love it.
Finally, we have vendors on our community that will contribute with free items. A t-shirt here, a coffee mug there or we'll get a free/discounted product to give away. These aren't branded for us but we'll throw in a "thank you" note with the item.
Overall, maybe 2-4 contests like this per year depending on what product we have and how things are going. Try not to over saturate it and keep the excitement.

I guess my most nerdy disposition is that I like to read through plans for and follow railroad projects closely. I'm a huge supporter of more rails transport!
Other than that it's mostly theatre (acting) and Netflix.

Nominating these to be the official IPS Mascot of 4.3 because ... fuzzy cuteness.

I'm well past the 'geeky' stuff - anything that used to be considered geeky is now the norm.
But we (myself and my wife) have the Guinea Pig bug.....we've got 12 of our own. A herd of 4 indoors (the mixed group below) and outdoors a herd of 4 (the goldens/reds below) and 2 pairs of 2 plus we are also fostering 2 at the moment for a rescue we help with. If you'd told me 3 years ago that I'd be like this I would have laughed in your face.

A couple of things for future consideration:
1. Highlight content in email - I want to second the concerns voiced above.  Some communities don't use Our Picks or social promotion.  They need to be given fallback options such as Popular Content or Leaderboard content.  
2. Review Response - something to consider for future enhancement is the ability for moderators or administrators to respond as well.  Usually the Mods and Admins are the most active users on the site and can interject sooner, can clarify site policies, or provide methods of recourse that regular users are not always aware.  
3. Typing - I love the idea behind this feature.  It's real time, immediate, and gets users hooked onto the activity of the website.  But the online user list (and hovering over a member) is not a common or noticeable place to look.  

Agree with Joel on those points there.
If the typing thing is hidden away as a tool tip, it seems a bit of a waste of the potential extra resource usage especially on a huge site. Hopefully it's a toggle option at least. I'm really not sure if that improvement is a hit or a miss. 
The review option being on top of the comments option really bugs me as people use reviews to comment not actually review, plus comments were around a lot longer than reviews and sites often seem to have more of them than reviews, so it often looks like is no responses if there are no reviews on an item.
In the calendar reviews being on top of comments often makes no sense for the majority of events, who reviews Acension Day or Christmas Day? Fortunately you can switch them off in the Calendar settings.
I recall a mod for that but I've always figured it should be an admins preference setting. I usually end up disabling reviews except on Downloads files.
Some really good ideas here though, but feeling particularly selfish righ now, I'm desperate to see member engagement increase by being able to automatically import RSS/XML feeds as Pages Articles built in, as well as be able to import and layout third party content via XML and JSON into blocks and widgets.
 

A couple of things for future consideration:
1. Highlight content in email - I want to second the concerns voiced above.  Some communities don't use Our Picks or social promotion.  They need to be given fallback options such as Popular Content or Leaderboard content.  
2. Review Response - something to consider for future enhancement is the ability for moderators or administrators to respond as well.  Usually the Mods and Admins are the most active users on the site and can interject sooner, can clarify site policies, or provide methods of recourse that regular users are not always aware.  
3. Typing - I love the idea behind this feature.  It's real time, immediate, and gets users hooked onto the activity of the website.  But the online user list (and hovering over a member) is not a common or noticeable place to look.  

Just checked back on my records and I jumped on board in January 2004 - converted from a hosted UBB.x site to IPB, with a converter I wrote myself in a Lotus Notes (Domino) database using LotusScript. I've even managed to find the database itself and have been marvelling (i.e. horrified) at the code I wrote to perform the conversion - there's even a comment in there stating
We purchased our lifetime license at the time.

I have been with you guys for 15 years! And how it has grown and i definitely made the right choice back then.

A couple of things for future consideration:
1. Highlight content in email - I want to second the concerns voiced above.  Some communities don't use Our Picks or social promotion.  They need to be given fallback options such as Popular Content or Leaderboard content.  
2. Review Response - something to consider for future enhancement is the ability for moderators or administrators to respond as well.  Usually the Mods and Admins are the most active users on the site and can interject sooner, can clarify site policies, or provide methods of recourse that regular users are not always aware.  
3. Typing - I love the idea behind this feature.  It's real time, immediate, and gets users hooked onto the activity of the website.  But the online user list (and hovering over a member) is not a common or noticeable place to look.  

A couple of things for future consideration:
1. Highlight content in email - I want to second the concerns voiced above.  Some communities don't use Our Picks or social promotion.  They need to be given fallback options such as Popular Content or Leaderboard content.  
2. Review Response - something to consider for future enhancement is the ability for moderators or administrators to respond as well.  Usually the Mods and Admins are the most active users on the site and can interject sooner, can clarify site policies, or provide methods of recourse that regular users are not always aware.  
3. Typing - I love the idea behind this feature.  It's real time, immediate, and gets users hooked onto the activity of the website.  But the online user list (and hovering over a member) is not a common or noticeable place to look.  

A couple of things for future consideration:
1. Highlight content in email - I want to second the concerns voiced above.  Some communities don't use Our Picks or social promotion.  They need to be given fallback options such as Popular Content or Leaderboard content.  
2. Review Response - something to consider for future enhancement is the ability for moderators or administrators to respond as well.  Usually the Mods and Admins are the most active users on the site and can interject sooner, can clarify site policies, or provide methods of recourse that regular users are not always aware.  
3. Typing - I love the idea behind this feature.  It's real time, immediate, and gets users hooked onto the activity of the website.  But the online user list (and hovering over a member) is not a common or noticeable place to look.  

All my future feedback will now be written entirely in emoji.  

What a lovely, lovey compliment.

Hours.
 

Screenshots of the Album view from 4.3 Dev Board:

Album view on desktop
 

Album view on mobile
Screenshots of the new lightbox view from 4.3 Dev Board:

Lightbox on desktop view. Image controls and information on lightbox (such as image title, followers, image tools, etc) only appear when you hover over the lightbox area. Otherwise, it's a pure black lightbox. The green message is the "content message", a feature from Invision Community 4.2 for moderators to add highlighted commentary. 
 

Lightbox on mobile. Invision Community 4.3 supports swipe controls left-right.