This is just an idea I wanted to run past you guys - as you know, I’ve been mega, mega-busy the past few months with music-related stuff, and indeed a lot of the team have been run off their feet with various things.
I don’t know how many of you guys know, but with the help of forum member Sonia Lai I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to get in touch with Bernard Hoffer in the hope of conducting an interview with him for this site. Well, a couple of days ago I had this PM from Nick Mills, our forum member and the guy who put together that excellent TCats audio documentary:
Now, I’ve been really impressed in my dealings with Nick over his documentary, I think he has a lot of media savvy and is a very dedicated, intelligent and professional guy. I could fancy the idea of working with him to see what we could come up with, as it could help ease my workload - plus (and here’s the stinger), although I would want to work with him on a trial basis before heading any further, I was wondering what you guys would think of Nick joining the ThunderCats Lair team? Like I say, I feel he’s somebody with a lot to offer, both to the site itself and to a project like ThunderCast - I can visualise bringing a real multimedia aspect to some of the interviews in the Cartoon Section with Nick’s help!
Anyway, no worries guys, but would really appreciate your feedback!
I really like what he could potentially offer to the site. He’d be amazing on ThunderCast as well. I’ve spoken to him a lot in the past two months and he’s a great guy from what I’ve gathered in our conversations.
I know he wanted to help with ThunderCast a while back (made a thread about it on the team forum), and I think he could help me jumpstart the podcast. He’s actually going to be co-hosting the next episode with me in the next two weeks or so.
If he wants to join, I don’t have a problem with it.
I am however, feeling lonely… With MannyC leaving for Germany, we only have two (plus one Canadian) on the team. I’d feel more comfortable with more US people on the team!
Well, given that you & I seem to be of the same mind, MannyF, and given that he’s already hopping on board for ThunderCast - how would folks feel about him joining the team with immediate effect? Obviously I don’t have the authority to do this myself, and for myself personally I’d also like to know the opinions of others on the team as well, but, it sounds like it could be a good move!
In the meanwhile, if you’re cool with this Manny, I’m going to enlist his help with the Bernard Hoffer interview - as he’s keen I think it could help me out, and I have some exciting ideas…!
LOL! Well, if it helps Manny, I can talk with an American accent…!
Sorry guys Ive been gone quite a bit…finally got housing on post but Im still away with no furniture, and even without the basic stuff like phone and internet. Soon enough though…
My take on Nick…well, he seems like a great guy with tons of media savvy, eh what the heck I think he would be a great asset to the team esp on the media and podcast side of things. Two thumbs up from me .
About Lynxana…she is being herself, quite frankly I think she has toned down from what Ive heard. She was honest with her opinion…cant knock her for that and truthfully her posting on the forums I think has helped a bit. She sure makes for interesting topics and posts. Until she gets out of line like she did at EOT then there’s not a whole lot we can do
Well, I think if we were gonna go with it, it would be best coming from you! I was just curious what others on the team such as Kyle, Neil & Mark thought about the idea before going ahead with it, but FWIW I think it’s a good idea!
I take it we’ve heard nothing else from those other three guys who responded to our advertisement for new team members? I know Kyle e-mailed them about writing for the Encyclopedia and had heard nothing back, don’t know if that’s changed…
I’m not a big fan of her posts - sometimes she can be really cool and great to get along with, and other times a complete *****! I believe she’s a recovering alcoholic, and I imagine the erratic nature of her posts is probably influenced by this - she’s been banned from EOT, a site she used to co-own, because she got drunk and made racist remarks to a poster over there.
She likes me for some reason, but if you head over to the thread about Nick’s documentary, you’ll see I’ve responded to her comments!
I’m okay with Nick joining the team, but must admit I’m wondering if we’ve already got enough folks on the team?
Are we reacting to some of us being a bit busy, or away from home for a while? Because that is only temporary.
What would Nick’s role be exactly? What would he do that we’re not already doing ourselves? The rest of us all have a specific section to manage, and then work on things like Thundercast and other site changes basically on volunteer or consensus. How would the addition of Nick’s role change this?
Again, I have no major issue with Nick’s addition as I don’t see it impacting my section and I agree he’s a fundamentally good choice. I want to make sure we’ve thought this through though.
The addition of Nick wouldn’t change very much. He would probably be more focused on helping with the podcast since that’s his expertise. I know Chris requested him to help with an interview.
This is all assuming he’d be interested in joining of course.
Mark, these sort of insightful posts are exactly why I wanted your input!
In terms of Nick’s role on the team, basically the position I’d be looking at would be for him to be working under me as a contributor to the Cartoon Section - in particular focussing on interviews.
Over the past few months we’ve had a LOT of potential interviews come our way where we could really get some grade A content for ourselves and (let’s face it) establish ourselves as THE #1 ThunderCats site. However, because we’re all so busy, through no fault of our own none of these have been properly chased up. Here’s the list of people that I can remember from memory:
Stephen Perry
Peter Lawrence
Bernard Hoffer
Anthony Giovanello (hope I’m remembering his name correctly - MannyF knows who I mean)
…and that’s without really looking! Now, Nick says at the moment he has a lot of free time and is quite clearly good at interviewing folks - although I’d want to oversee what he was doing and probably chime in with some questions on my own, it would take pressure off me to have both someone to colloborate with and also potentially go through the pain-in-the-ass procedure of actually CHASING some of these people for interviews!
I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to the Cartoon Section and like to do as much as I can myself - however, right now I’m super busy and dipping in and out of being stressed out. I want to keep the Episode Guide work because I think consistency of writing style is important, plus (being totally honest) it’s not something I think anyone else would be able to do exactly the way I want. Whereas, I like Nick’s media savvy enough to believe that this is someone I’d be happy to entrust the other side of things (namely interviewing people for this site) to, both via e-mail or verbally for the podcast!
Also, on the subject of the podcast, I think he would make a very good co-host and again if we got snowed under may be able to host episodes, do interview segments with special guests, and/or assist with the editing side of them if that was ever needed.
Also (again), I’d love to get written transcripts, complete with mp3 links to the audio versions, of his interviews with Larry Kenney and Kim Morris into the Cartoon Section!
Now, I’m not trying to use this as some sort of sales pitch for Nick joining the team - in fact, to be quite honest, things are slightly messy on this front, as we had discussed the possibility of actually not recruiting any more team members but taking on Site Contributors instead - this partly influenced by my desire to harnass Queen Lynxana’s comics knowledge and get her writing synopsies for this site without making her a TCL team member (which I would not be comfortable doing). So, again I think there needs to be a proper discussion about which way we’re going to go with this - but, FWIW I think Nick would have a lot to contribute to this site, in whatever capacity!
Well, I don’t want to derail this thread, but I deleted Queen Lynxana’s latest post. I did a soft delete because I know you guys get annoyed when I do a permanent delete. The mods can decide what to do.
I probably shouldn’t have added the part about the competition in my post (not that I said anything negative to being with), but personally…I DO NOT like her and I’d rather she not be on the board.
Fair enough…soft delete is the way to go as it leaves proof of posts. Ive given her an infraction for the post and told her that for now there is no ban but she needs to refrain on making posts like that. Basically a warning
I agree with you - she’s entitled to her POV but needs to get her head round the fact that folks won’t agree with her, particularly if she has unrealistic expectations of something like Nick’s documentary. All of the points that have been made to her have been put over in a reasonable fashion, so I don’t know what her problem is - well, actually I do, she’s a screwed-up lady with a screwed-up life, although I don’t know for certain I imagine a lot of her posts are made “under the influence” but that’s no excuse…
Making board posts showing yourself making offensive gestures is not cool, irrespective of the circumstances - so, I agree with everything that’s been done here. I also agree not to ban her yet, but give her a warning. In my experience, when someone’s been warned like that they will 7 out of 10 times just leave the board anyway - expect some trash-talking about this site on Angie’s forum (she’s banned from EOT) any second now…
Hey Manny, could make sure you told “Queen” that it was you who sent the email and not me. She might think I sent that email I don’t want her to flood my PM inbox with profanity.
I’m letting you guys take care of her posts because I’d probably just ban her.
That settles it for me! Both Angie and myself have, at different times, worked hard to score interviews with Lynne Lipton and Peter Newman for our respective sites, with very poor success rates. Nick clearly has the Midas touch and I think we should harnass that before somebody else (such as Angie - love her to bits though I do, my first loyalty is to this site! ;)) can snap him up!
To give you an indication of the significance of this - this is the first fan interview with Lynne Lipton EVER. Her interaction with ThunderCats fans is practically non-existent, restricted almost exclusively to conventions. I have absolutely no freaking idea how Nick was able to even get hold of her contact details (I have a contact e-mail, but that’s all), never mind her phone number!
I will defer to what Manny says, but for my money - I want this guy working with me on the Cartoon Section!!
We’ve actually been talking a lot in the past month, and Nick actually told me about the Lynne Lipton interview a week ago! I think he has others lined up as well. I also asked him if he’d like to join the team and he accepted. I just want to clarify some things with him before we make it official.
Anyhow, I PM’ed Nick last night and asked him if it was possible to hold off linking to the interview via the forum so I can make an official page for all the interviews he has done in addition to his documentary. That way, it’s part of the site instead of being in the forums.
I’m gonna have that page up by the end of the weekend, or at least that’s what I told Nick.
Re: getting Nick’s interviews up - my own idea for that was that each interview be given it’s own page, complete with a link to the mp3 of the interview + a text transcript of each one. In that way, it would be easier to find each interview, plus making it look like we had a lot of content! However, if you think it’d be easier to put them all as mp3’s on one page that’s fair enough - at the moment I’m pushed for time so it may well be for the best…
I went with your idea Chris. Anyhow, I’ll be giving him access to the team forums by Tuesday night. If there are threads (may be like this one I’m posting in) you guys think should be removed before then, let me or MannyC know.
.