Introducing our new Forum – 20 years in the making
Conversation and discussion have always been the heart of TechWhirl since our humble beginnings as an email discussion list managed by Eric and Deb Ray back in 1993 (then TECHWR-L for Technical Writing List). Under Deb and Eric’s leadership, and later INKtopia’s, TechWhirl has grown into a popular and valuable online community for professional communicators and the people who want to learn about the world of Technical Communications and Content Management. Our Email Discussion List, by far the most vibrant in the world, still has over 2500 members generating around 400 – 800 conversations per month, while our main site –TechWhirl.Com—has grown 30X in visitors since April of 2011.
TechWhirl Vision
A world that understands and embraces the power of great content effectively communicated. We want to liberate ideas from experts and put them in the hands of our visitors.
Each day we strive to make our vision a reality and to provide unquestioned value to the many people who have chosen to visit our site, follow our social media tools, and participate on our Email Discussion Group. Over the years, TechWhirl.Com and the email discussion list have largely been two entities under one umbrella separated by technology. This separation of two great sources of conversation has been a challenge that for roughly 14 years went unmet.
However, we’re proud to announce that, late yesterday, we took a major step toward uniting our communities and creating the most dynamic online community in the world for professional communicators with the launch of TechWhirl Community Forum. A free resource to join and use, TechWhirl Community Forum is an online location for anyone and everyone who wants to ask questions or start discussions on Technical Communications, Content Management and Customer Experience Management.
Today’s launch is part one of a two-part act. Part one was introducing a new commenting system for TechWhirl.Com and the online forum. The new forum is not empty—far from it—since all previous comments from articles, polls, and other resources have been migrated to the new forum. These comments originate from 400 of the best and brightest minds in the industry, so you can enjoy engaging conversation starting on Day One.
The second act, scheduled for later in the autumn, will migrate our TECHWR-L Email Discussion list members to the Community Forum as well. We’re thrilled that the solution we found means that they will see virtually no impact to their day-to-day interactions with the list if they don’t want those interactions to change. Our community platform makes it easy to start and continue conversations via email (even using the same email address they have for years), just as TechWhirlers have for more than 20 years. And now they can also comment, question, and discuss topics online in the community forum, and even share discussions through their social networks on Facebook, Google and Twitter.
The launch of the TechWhirl Community Forum is made possible by the generous support of Doc-To-Help, which has been a longtime partner and sponsor of TechWhirl and the TECHWR-L Email Discussion List.
We have updated support pages, rules and expectations and privacy and service policies as part of this community launch. We will write about some of the features of our new site including private messaging and boards, gamification and Question\Discussion capabilities, on our company blog and share those posts on our main Twitter account, @TechWriterToday, and company Twitter Account @TechWhirl. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit the TechWhirl Community Forum and register to become a member.
We welcome your feedback on how we can improve the forum and engage our community.
