The last 14 days have been exhausting and thankfully an agreeement has been reached.
Ultimately GSTF didn’t have the focus and business drive for it to succeed in justifying any further investment of my mentors time, money or patience with my incessant emails and scattered direction.
I’m going to have a serious think regarding the respective futures of coffee / flowers – niether, either or both – for business or for pleasure? Really – I tried to do both – one hand ‘just for fun’ and the other hand ‘while you send someone flowers online’. A business based site is a very different focus than a water cooler, community led and sometimes ‘fun’ site.
I realise that my attention to detail on the tech issues has been poor, rarley taking the time to get into the detail and understand what does what:
Either way my passion behind building a community has consumed me – but for what?
I don’t feel there was a winner and I’m working on the lessons I have learned and will clarify my intentions in due course. Recent posts and comments related to the domain issues here at coffee are password protected and I appeal to all visitors to respect this as they are in the process of being removed.
We wipe the slate clean, we move on and we learn with new writers preparing to get on board and some not returning.
I ask you, the community and recent visitors - what you feel the future holds for flowers / coffee and how we can harness this energy and passion for a more positive online experience.
All are welcome – thank you – I’m off to the gym.
Hi Jim – Sounds like you’ve been through the mill that’s for sure.
It may be the painkillers of course but I’m not really sure what you’re proposing / asking with this post….
1) Moving things back to GSTF
2) Staying here with a new community/direction at GSTC
3) None of the above
I do know that any delay in making a direction choice will cost readers, views and could potentially bring the GSTF’s water cooler experience to a very quick end – sure we’d all hang out together but it wouldn’t have that global appeal – essential for any long term viable ‘business’ platform.
Whatever you decide Jim – let us know. There’s a lot of us that have also invested a great deal of time in posts and comments etc and I’m sure I speak for all when I say none of us want to see that go to waste.
If you’re there, then lets all head back to the garden – either that of continue to hang out at the coffee shop – either is preferable.
Jonathan.
P.S here’s the latest i’ve found on GSTF’s domain:
Registrant:
Rehan yar Khan
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: GOSMELLTHEFLOWERS.COM
Domain servers in listed order:
NS7.FASTSERVERS.NET
NS8.FASTSERVERS.NET
Looks like Rehan is now the ‘official owner’ (registrant) of that domain??
Purple13´s last blog ..From July 2008 archives – mighty mouse stops scrolling
Hi Jonathan,
Rehan is approving transfer of GSTF back to GSTC – I’m just awaiting the authoristation code.
Thanks for your comments and input – will let you know what is what when all this has cleared up,
Rgds,
Jim
Whew, huh? Ultimately, you should do what is in your heart, right? (the soul knows). We’ll be there either way.
Cheers Kathleen!
Your health posts will work at coffee or flowers….
Jim,
I’m glad that things worked out…this post was quite a welcome surprise. I know that now is not the time to act, if you have the time, it important that you have time to let things settle down emotionally. You’ve been through quite a bit in a short span.
Ultimately, you have to decide what is best for you and not for everyone else. I’ll still be here or there for you no matter your decision. But, please take the time you need for things to settle emotionally.
Cheers!
cc
Clinically Clueless´s last blog ..My 42 Day Adventure!!!
Agreed CC – more of Jim in the gym!
Jim / Rehan,
Glad that you guys seem to have come to some sort of amicable agreement.
Let’s move on and decide what is the best way forward. Personally I believe the Flowers brand is much stronger than the coffee one and we should continue with that.
The key decision is if we want to make it commercially viable and how, rather than just remaining as a water cooler site.
Just what do we as contributors / visitors all want to achieve from Flowers /Coffee?!
Hi Arvind,
Good points and let me know what you’d like from flowers / coffee – that’s the key.
I imagine one will be the community (I’d aruge coffee has the community feel to it – look at what happened on friends) and that flowers could go back to exactly the way it was pre-community.
Travel pics, book in the offing and Emma with her fair share back as no daily input required….
Seriously, what is a water cooler site?
Well think the office – the place not the sitcom – people gather and gossip / chat around the watercooler…but some interesting issues can come out…
That’s it really!
Jesue, its a blog. If facebook myspace et al can’t make money what do you think is different here and how is your business plan / model so vastly superior to theirs? The only people making cash on line like this are those flogging ‘How to make money on line’ books, seminars, etc to suckers who don’t want to eork for a living.
Wake up & smell the coffee.
Sorry mate, someone had to say it.
Fair point Gareth, everything taken on board now!
It really is a shame that things came down to this. Clearly RYK was not a good business partner to have.
But as you wrote, it doesn’t sound like your plans/intentions for the site were completely clear either – to you or anyone else. Often, its confusion like this, which allows for conflict to arise.
We all make mistakes, and as long as we try to learn from them, then its all good, right?
Honestly, I don’t think the ‘coffee’ brand has gotten off to a very good start with all the brawling. And hey, I participated in that… had a bit of anger that needed working out, and it was clear RYK was up to no good.
Jim, if you can get really honest with yourself, that would be a good start. Then maybe you can get really honest with your readers as well. Its an excellent point to start again from…
This sort of website really isn’t cut out to be run as a business. I mean, even Facebook has troubles with that. Or they did before they went and got all evil and sold out their users. Twitter is yet to be profitable…
All that said, it’d be a shame if either GSTF or GSTC didn’t continue.
My personal view is that letting RYK leave his rubbish comments everywhere here didn’t help him, but it also didn’t help you. Or the blog or your readers.
I know you don’t believe in moderating stuff, but sometimes its for the best.
Anyway, good luck working out what you want to do with your blog(s).
Svasti´s last blog ..Illumination
Thanks for your take on all this Svasti – it certainly got heated, that’s for sure!!
Rgds,
Jim
Jim -
I’ve discussed my thoughts on this by e-mail.
In this new era of glasnost & transparency my thoughts for others not party to our private e-mails can be summarised as follows:
you (or Flowers or Coffee ppl) need to decide & define your aims – whether you want it to be for profit or for for fun; in rare instances the two can co-exist, but usually one precludes the other; occasionally a site run for fun will grow sufficiently that it has the numbers to make some money (banner ads, subscription, paid content, etc.) but this is a fine line to tread since the money aspect often kills the golden goose (eg. user numbers drop significantly once asked to pay).
Thanks for this O’DB, soon to be in the forest and a coffee contributor!
http://www.dubaieye1038.com
Tune in tomorrow sat 09:30 Dubai time, on Saturday extra and will raise this point.
Jim -
Do they have a listen again feature? Or a podcast? Been on the site but seems like they don’t, not for Sat Extra that you went on.
9.30 Dubai time is something like 4.30 (-5hours on GMT?) here in UK so a cr*p time to ctach in the UK. Sorry.
I know – timing was pushing ti but I’m receiving a recording tomorrow and will post then – interview went well but no pre-prepared questions – lasted just over an hour with an unexpected twist at the end…
I can see it now:
About time it was resolved – can’t see how anyone can claim there’s been any crime when the contents of what was ’stolen’ were never his to own. My past posts and comments were always for GSTF not for the benefit of a peddlar of intenet flowers. I personally think you’ve been too humble and forgiving. Have a long memory, as one day there will be an opportunity to repay the ‘debt’
Missed the radio show – can you post a recording or link?
As for the way forward how about returning to the format of 15-18 moths ago? It was a lively entertaining blog until you unfortunately listened to the flowerman. No moderation – we’re all adults and the world isn’t all roses. Some will be uspet by comments in discussions but so be it. It should be informative, challenging and most of all fun.