which way is up?!?

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I really love the crew at rbc.

I used to love hanging out at the site.

Then chat failed, then the format changed, then chat changed again, then the talent talks got canceled, and now I can't find my way around.

Please remember that too much change is not always a good thing. Some of us need a little stability. And I need SEARCH BOX ON THE MAIN PAGE!

There is so much good information here, but I fear that too much change has made more people tune out than you intended. I hope I am wrong.

24 Comments

Comment by Maren Hogan on June 1, 2009 at 3:00pm: Wow, excellent synopsis. RecruitingBlogs.com has gone through quite a few changes in the last six months or so. Although chat has been one of the perpetual thorns in the side of this community, it was also a great water cooler and I miss it as much as you do. However, unless we can get everyone to mass adopt a new technology (which we couldn't) or if Ning decides to make their chat workable and stable, chat is for now, down for the count. You can certainly use it (if you do, avoid exclamation marks) and I hope people try.

As for Talent Talk Cafe, it suffered because of the chat issues and because there were so many people involved in working on it and promoting it, it was hard to justify the time when every week more people left because of chat issues. It's interesting to see the recruiting community come in and fill the void (almost immediately) with #talentnet but there's nothing like the good old days I guess.

I'm curious (or maybe a glutton for punishment) but recognizing some of the technical difficulties we have no way around right now, how would you (or anyone who wants to chime in) like to see RecruitingBlogs.com look? Tell me what you like, what you hate and what you wish could magically appear.

Comment by Heather Bussing on June 1, 2009 at 3:31pm: Yes! A search box would be really great.

Comment by Julia Stone on June 1, 2009 at 4:49pm: I think that RBC may have outgrown Ning at this point, if you really want my 2 cents.

I am afraid I am much better at making complaints than suggesting solutions. It is one of my weaknesses, but hey, we can't all be perfect at everything.

I know you have been reacting to Ning's changes and trying to do the best you can. When you first launch on to RBC, I think it looks like a foreign world now, not so easy to follow new things going on or where to find things.

Well, again, wish I were more help.

Comment by Maren Hogan on June 1, 2009 at 5:06pm: No that does help. So if I'm reading you right, the activity feed is good to have front and center and then maybe the latest forums and posts?

I can't comment on whether we've outgrown Ning, the thought is really, how do we feasibly take 20,000 and tell them we're moving the tent you know? Chat was a little micro test of that and it did not work well.

I appreciate you mentioning the issues. We'll work to make RBC good for everyone if we can. One cool thing is that you can see the activity happening at a much deeper level. People are becoming friends and posting stuff. It's just not under the chat, which made every day seem to go by a little faster, good OR bad :)

Comment by Slouch on June 1, 2009 at 7:56pm: Julia, have you looked at the top of the page on the right? there is a search box that I can see. Maybe it's just on my screen, I'll find out.

Comment by pam claughton on June 1, 2009 at 9:47pm: I'm sort of thinking out loud here, and hadn't really thought about this til I saw this post, but I do agree that the sense of community here has felt like it's fading away a bit here over the past month or so and I think maybe it's because the chats have died and the talent talk cafe went away. Those were lively conversations. I didn't always make them, but when I did they were always enjoyable.

It doesn't feel like there's as much conversation happening. Maybe one thought might be to have organized areas, bulletin board like, with running conversation threads on certain topics, so you can see at a glance....say an area on sourcing, recruiting, client development, current events, off topic, etc...

Comment by John Sumser on June 1, 2009 at 10:26pm: I really prefer for the design to remain stable, whatever it is. It's kind of like the furniture in the living room. Everytime it gets changed around, I bang up my shins. When the location of key items changes, I spend my energy finding them instead of contributing.

Comment by Maren Hogan on June 1, 2009 at 10:40pm: Pam that's a neat idea. I like it. I want to double check something, do you mean there is no search or that the Ning search is not very robust? Curious. Also, we do still have a chat and it seems to work quite well if you stay away from the exclamation mark. It's located at the lower right hand of the screen and you can pop it out and it follows you from page to page (which may creep some people out, I don't know). Maybe if we stop by once or twice a day and say hi, it will start up again. I remember when there were hardly any people on chat, but eventually the extroverts pulled it out. So for ideas:

-discussion threads or organized chats
-topically based rooms or categories
-whatever we do, keep it the same for a while.

What else?

Comment by Maureen Sharib on June 2, 2009 at 7:36am: It's kind of like the furniture in the living room. Everytime it gets changed around, I bang up my shins.
John, does that infer you're blind? Ain't we all?

Comment by Jerry Albright on June 2, 2009 at 8:57am: Normally I wouldn't bring up any of my personal opinions about RBC. It's been a great place. But for the sake of "community" I'll add my 2 cents.

I'm still confused as to why/which/what/where I am when I decide to see what's happening on RBC. For the life of me I can't figure out the benefit of the new "front page" vs. the "community" page which I think was the old front page?

Yes the new graphics are stunning. But I'm not here for the graphics. I'm here for the relationships and conversation. They're spread too far out. I'm still not understanding the thinking behind having "featured" posts up front and some of them having comments - then others having comments back here (community).....but maybe that has been addressed and I haven't noticed.

To say that the chat being removed is a downer misses the point. I realize JD would solve that in a minute if he could. It's just a bummer because it seemed to me that chat was a cornerstone.

So now there is no central place. The chat/watercooler/recruiter's virtual bar was the place you could say "Welcome to RBC. What do you do?" and the other chit chat/tell us about your day stuff. I'm not a big "blogger" and more often than not am not interested in putting together 3 or 4 paragraphs on a topic. So guys like me are more inclined to stop into a chat and have a conversation - rather than blog.

We need the chat. Sorry but that's a fact.

which way is up?!?

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