Ever visited my projects page? Probably not, but if you had, you might have spotted a section towards the bottom called “looking to partner up”. I also wrote a brief blog post on the subject a while back, but recently, I’ve stepped up my efforts to find suitable people to take this forum project forward.
The problem with trying to launch something by yourself is that you can all too easily start to miss the big picture, and end up with tunnel vision. Whilst you might ask what is there to get tunnel vision about when creating a forum, I can assure you its quite possible, especially considering that I am by no means looking to create “just a forum”. Plus it will be centered around a pretty competitive area (webmastering), so it will need something special!
When I refer to smarter webmastering, I’m really talking about a smarter webmastering forum (or social network, whatever you want to call it). The point is, there are a lot of forums out there that deal with different aspects of webmastering; some are good, some are not so good, but I feel that very few go that extra mile in terms of innovation. If there are a number of forums on a paritcular subject already out there, then the only sensible thing to do is (as long as the market isn’t already saturated) create a more useful one. Webmastering is a huge area too, so focusing on a certain direction, and maximising its potential, will be key too.
Right now, as I mull it all over in my head, I think a direction I’d like to focus on would me more of a project collaboration network, combined with education for users on the different aspects involved in creating a web project. That means a lot of webmastering discussion, and helping people to discover what they are best at. A team collaboration needs some specialisation after all - can’t have 8 CEOs!
Some places I’ve looked / am looking for inspiration include digitalpoint.com, sitepoint.com, experts-exchange.com, and a couple of social networking sites. I’ve come away with a sense of wanting to achieve better organisation of information / discussion, better management of repeat / useless discussion, more engagement of users through more interactive features, and letting them do more than just talk. But again, this is why I’m so keen to get the right group of people together before pushing forward with the re-development. For all the inspiration I might have, other people will see the same things in different lights, and produce a different answer or result - that’s good for the project, because it reduces the potential for tunnel vision.
Coders, marketers, content writers, even the mythical ideas men - all are required for a project like this to be a success I feel. If you become interested in the project at any point, feel free to contact me. Here’s the site as the moment. It’s cleaned out of content, but there is already a lot more to it than your average forum.