Noble~

I've been with you since the days of Ikonboard, so you I love you. However, I'm starting to grow concerned after reading that IPS have made a specific, conscious decision to start restricting features (albeit with the first) to cloud-hosted SAAS customers. It's perhaps akin the to the controversial Marketplace changes. As a multi-license customer, I'm saddened that there is a visible "It's our way, or the highway" style approach that seems to be increasing these days.
This statement feels like it could be the start of a paradigm shift, and if so, one that I'm concerned is edging gradually towards a pretty slippery slope. I'm concerned that a moment of realisation will inevitably follow such a shift, where more of the latest, long awaited or most requested features could no longer be available to self-hosted clients.
I realise with SAAS you have more or even total overall control of the environment which is good from a support perspective, and it's been stated that if you could have a do-over with today's tech, SAAS would be the way to go from the outset.
SAAS certainly has its benefits, to both sides of the provider/customer fence, don't get me wrong, but I still find the cloud-hosted IPS on offer here (which as your main showcase, it should be super slick, speedier than The Flash using a bathroom and instantly responsive), to be more sluggish and generally slower than many self-hosted sites I come across; even though I'm using a 40Mbps fibre connection (thanks rip off, overselling BT, I'm still paying for that 80Mbps Infinity 2 connection, you know... yeah, that's right, you hear me!).
And then there's this risk, it does happen...

On the way to the point where more features are restricted, how many restricted features will it take before self-hosted clients begin to feel like they are getting the light version or feel less valued. The software is expensive (aside from a couple of the recurring add-ons which a fairly priced), self-hosted clients money is of course just as good as that of SAAS clients, and after all, wasn't it the self-hosted user base that helped get IPS to where it is today? So I would ask IPS to at least consider this approach and also, if you propose removing lesser used large features from products (like Commerce) that's fine but please don't forget to reduce the price accordingly.
Thanks for listening.

This is a bit of a slap in the face to self hosted clients. Nothing to celebrate here. 👎

Got my answer on another thread

This would definitely be a good use for reaction -1.

I'm sorry that you've had a poor experience, but that doesn't mean we're not listening to the community.

The marketplace changes have been much discussed, but on the whole most people are very positive about them now. We recently made a change so that even when you have an expired Invision Community license you can still access paid-for marketplace items. This change was directly from feedback.

Your issue sounds very much limited to your set-up.

Hi Joel!

I struggled with a single title to encapsulate Jordan's role within Invision Community.

In terms of Jordan's presence on this forum, then Community Advocate is a fair fit, but even that doesn't cover everything.

Our community is more than just this forum of course. There are (neglected) social channels, email communications with customers, face to face conversations with enterprise customers and so on.

To break down the excellent points in your post:

How will he triage, prioritize, and escalate client feedback to the IPS team, all of whom can and do visit the forums themselves?
This is really the core reason we're now hiring more non-development roles and roles that don't directly tie into pure technical support. We're growing as a company and part of this growth means that we have to put focus on other areas. Our development team do and will continue to interact with the forums but they have less time to collate and manage feedback, complaints and so on. Having a single person to collect all that information, break it down and then feed it to the team to be planned into future releases makes sense.

What are the parameters for clients to help highlight and channel our feedback in an effective manner?
Sometimes feedback is quite formal "I want this feature". Sometimes it's a complaint "I can't seem to get this to work" and sometimes it's just in conversations.

We do very well in collecting feedback from enterprise clients. We get a lot via email. We also get a lot with regular calls but we've become less adept at collecting feedback from this forum.
Jordan will be a familiar face that people can speak to. Clients don't need to do anything special to get his attention. He'll go through feedback and make sure that everyone gets a reply and everyone gets heard.
And finally, as a community advocate, what does he actually advocate?
As part of our growth, it's very easy when planning development to overlook some suggestions. I want Jordan to be a champion for our customers and represent them in our team meetings.
Invision has attempted multiple community engagement tactics over the years.
Yes indeed. We always look for ways to improve. We can create effective strategy but without the required person-power, it stalls quickly. Making new hires in these areas will help us move forwards.
To be blunt and on behalf of all of your retail clients, we don't need a Community Advocate to post memes.
I will defend Jordan's right to bear memes and emoji. If you are judging him based on his output so far, that is unfair. He's settling into his role after a fairly intense week of onboarding within our team.

We need a Community Advocate with the power to deliver and communicate on meaningful actions to drive our communities forward.
Couldn't agree more. Jordan is an experienced community owner who has achieved excellent growth over multiple platforms (including his own Invision Community, Twitter, Instagram, etc). Jordan is an excellent communicator with a very open and friendly personality. I want him to have freedom to learn more about our customers and make more meaningful connections to get richer feedback that we can use when planning future releases.
 

I like this 👍
I will use it in one of mine for sure.

That would be really nice! +1

Your existing attachment limits will already apply. 🙂 At the end of the day, these images are nothing fancier than attachments, just with a nice UI to submit.

Nice job IPS looking forward to 4.5

Please Add Server Load

I have actually seen an uptick in interest in RSS from our corporate clients lately. Things tend to come and go in phases.

please add "last online" to the admincp user profile view 

Vampire
But the sparkly cool ones, like from Twilight.  

Invision Power Services: Making ACP warp speed look blindingly good. Or something.  
@Matt promised me that he had enough vegemite to feed the team to do a couple more updates in 4.5.      
Also, I recommend that you be promoted to our sound mixer for releases.  Your "BUM BUM BUM!!!" was on point.  Most people will be blind by then due to the ACP, but at least we can listen to you.

I applied for Braintree long ago and they denied me with zero explanation. Only said my site was unfit. No option for appeal. They can kiss my ***

😍 Thanks for the kind words.  Also, thank you to IPS for letting me be a guest blogger for one day.
I should have tried to join the IPS staff, they're handing out million dollar checks to staff members!! 
On a serious note, I think there are always things to learn for community management, no matter your experience level or years of administration.  There's so much to learn, from socializing concepts and behavioral theory to actual implementation and execution -- and I'm hoping that IPS can become a knowledge community where we can learn, share, and rely on each other.