BootsnAll Travel Community

We’ve got a tonne of technical projects on our plates here at BootsnAll HQ (the first half of the year is always the busiest), and that includes projects for the community. I’m excited about the things we’ve got planned, and I hope you will be, too.

We listened and synthesized what y'all have been telling us in emails, on the boards, and in the feedback forum. I’m posting them here so you folks can see what we’ve got planned for 2007, what we’ve accomplished and what’s still left to be done. I’ll be (and Jessie) coming back to this list and updating it as things get checked off the list and new things get added, and I’ll try to remember to let y’all know we’ve edited the original post!

We encourage your feedback, as always.

TO BE DONE SOON:

• Stock up on and create more BnA giveaways for members that are traveling soon (stickers, etc.)
  
• Update BnA staff info page (pictures and descriptions - some of that stuff is old!)
  
• Update “member benefits” page so why peeps should join is more obvious.
  
• Figure out a way to do more date-specific searches of membership for monthly awards (back-end)
  
• On each “travel guide,” the “current discussions” list should be location-specific, not draw from everything on the boards
  
• Add Tagging to threads for better organic organization and search as well as virtual boards. (more later on this)
  
• Board/forums organisation per go north sugguest - we envision tags helping us to this in a big way.
  

NEEDS FURTHER DEVELOPMENT:

• Member search function needs to be enhanced (especially to be able to find other members by location)
  
• Search function on boards needs to churn out better information so it’s more useful
  
• Insider link/revamp – maybe have its own logo (link is currently hard to find)

IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE:

• Separate forum just for member meetups?
  
• Calendar of events – including meetups and travel industry events?
  
• More of the cheap/free city guides? Easier way to add them?
  
• Generating a list of potential volunteer tasks? Lotsa folks ask how they can help us. Thanks! Publish a list of stuff that will help make the community stronger, better, bigger, easier to connect with others.
  
• Where is this place game? with points and DING, DING, DING functionality. We bought the domain name whereisthisplace.com and think it could be a fun as hell sorta game...not that it isn't now of course.

COMPLETED ITEMS:

• New karma title structure in place
  
• Link to the “meet the mods” post on community links (upper right-hand corner of community pages)

Thanks for everything! I really like how you guys are constantly looking for ways to improve things - I've frequented other sites that are stuck in the past and never change.

i think for the separate member meetups forum, maybe you could create one of those bolded threads under "travel buddies." Unless you feel that there is enough interest to make it a separate forum...I think as a test run maybe you could make it one of those bold threads (i have no idea if they are called something special). If that goes well then look to make a new forum...

those are my two cents on that one.

Board/forums organisation as a means to making Boots especially user friendly to newbies did receive some sort of a reception.

I would have thought the benefit/effort ratio would have been gigantic enough to have it right up there.

A lot of stuff can be like communications development where there is possibly a lot fancy functions that people hardly use and perhaps it would be of value on resourcing to undertake a detailed use assessment.

gonorth,

added your board re-org thread - thanks!