Fiverr NY City Office 60 Second Tour and the new Fiverr Community Team

[hotwebideas]

My name is Bruce and I am one of the pioneers of the new Fiverr community team. On Monday, November 14, I attended the first meeting in New York City and took a quick 60 second video that is a tour of their office.

Enjoy!

Feel free to leave your comments below about the office!

Also, attached is a photo of our 6 of the 7 members from our new community team where we had our first meeting last night. This photo was taken by Fiverr’s own Beth Wiesendanger. Thanks, Beth!

So, what is the new Fiverr Community team you ask? We will be helping Fiverr organize community events and meetups. I am excited as our plans are for workshops and other types of fun and educational events. I look forward to meeting some of you at these events in both New York, San Francisco and other cities around the world as Fiverr has them.

Just a little about me: I have been on Fiverr for 6 years as both a buyer and seller and as a songwriter and recording artist, have worked with over 30 Fiverr sellers who have been on my albums, etc, but I do other things on Fiverr as a seller.

Fiverr is good for kinds of goals, people. Use it. There are many great sellers and gigs here.

I am looking forward to your comments below.

Bruce

[emmaki]

That’s the same office that Xmas Party was done in 2014, I believe. That was the same office party that the CEO invited ppl to join, as the CEO would be delivering an exciting live Q&A session.

What we got was a very lame 50-min live-ish shakycam vid with poor lighting and QC of people drinking and partying, while the CEO called off the Q&A (fair enough… it was a party) and we were promised an interview at a later date, as well as the official video.

Neither have materialized. I can probably dig up the post tomorrow, but what is the new community team’s purpose? Were you put together by the brand-new marketing team–as I note that a couple (Tamir Jerby, ex Senior Director of Growth Marketing and Adam Swart, ex Senior Director of Marketing) jumped ship very recently and within a couple of months of each other.

Either way, you have your work cut ahead of you: there are currently 7 meets/events listed to the right. I believe half the podcasts are still out since the last forum outage (others can verify or correct me), and you also have a seller who is hosting numerous meets in Miami (well, 2, last I counted–one was cancelled due to inclement weather) which is receiving no official help, such as being featured by Fiverr onsite in its blog or other official channels. Other than a little swag, but it was mixed up with a load of other crap swag (sorry if you’re reading this Pete, but I would have come for the beer and left the crap merch on the table). There was apparently a MasterChef or two there, but it was so poorly reported and organized (this is true, Pete) that I can’t really tell you how it went. I think a handful of people attended?

This is also not including community details–and here I mean the forum community–such as the fact that quite a few categories are botched up with some weird attachment problem, and the forum itself is suffering numerous outages. That’s not even mentioning the ridiculous downvote/upvote functionality debacle of just this past month (currently inactivated/killed)

Bruce, the office is a shoebox. I can already see exactly which one Gary Vee used, and I almost suspect some camera trickery was used to make it look bigger. Fiverr needs to sort its problems out, and it needs to do that by listening to its community and what it wants, rather than display anodyne PR posts like this with a tour of the office.

So, are you and your community team going to be a real link for issues on the site and with the community to HQ, or is this just some generic PR fluff? You should have a Fiverr logo in the bottom right of your forum pic, rather than a 2.

It would also be nice to introduce your fellow team members, rather than have a happy pic of people we don’t know.

All in all, those are my comments. Welcome to the new, uh, job. 😉

EDIT: I found it. http://forum.fiverr.com/discussion/fiverrnyc-community-event-on-dec-3-2015-how-you-can-participate/ You could argue this is nothing to do with you, and you’d be right, but you’re the Community Team, so… be nice to get some answers, even if it is 2 years late.

[psychicbunny]

Heeeeey what up’s Bruce

[taranko1]

Hello Bruce,
Its really nice.Thanks for sharing the video. Fiverr is good for kinds of goals, people.

[cyaxrex]

I don’t really get this. I have two buyers who are from Malta where I am based. I also know that there is a bit of a booming Maltese free-lan-cer community in the capital Valletta, but they mainly use another platform.

Now with that other platform, it is perfectly fine to exchange personal contact details and meet up or whatever. In fact, this has been key to me scoring two big out of Fiverr projects this year. (Also payments were still made through the other official platform as it was actually easier and safer for everyone involved this way).

The only problem is that even if there was a Fiverr meet up here in Malta, I wouldn’t dare attend. I’d have my phone or tablet with me and that could result in the dreaded, “oh look, someone is using the same IP as another seller, quick ban them.”

Also, from past meetups/conferences/parties in my old career, the key goal was for people to network and exchange contact details with a view toward potential future collaboration. - But isn’t this kind of thing banned on Fiverr?

Given all of the above, (and without wanting to sound too critical) maybe the new Community Team could think about trying to find a way to make Fiverr a little less frightening.

i.e. I have recently met a professional vocalist and opera singer. She is looking for work and I would really like to start adding voice overs to the videos I make. In this case, I would like to introduce this person to Fiverr and actually buy her services if I did.

The problem If I do this?

1. We would be occasionally sharing the same IP since we meet up regularly at the same cafe for coffee and both of us use mobile devices.

& 2. If I did introduce this person to Fiverr and bought her services, I know full well that at some point this would be flagged as a review exchange and possibly result in me being banned.

Solution: Not only should I not introduce this person to Fiverr, but I perhaps shouldn’t even mention Fiverr to them. What I can do, though, is introduce them to the other platform where I wouldn’t have to worry about such needlessly adverse consequences.

The solution to all of the above? As a Community Team, perhaps start thinking about finding a way to give established sellers some more freedom and peace of mind when it comes to actual networking and being part of building Fiverr as a community. Even if something like this took the form of a dedicated Fiverr email app it would be a start.

i.e. If I meet a business owner locally in the real world and say “hey, I can offer you a cheaper alternative to Google 360 degree business photography using animated video,” it’s simply not practical for me to then say, “contact me further by visiting this website called Fiverr and searching for my profile.”

What would be easier (and better for creating a direct sales funnel) would be for me to say, “contact me at cy@fiverr.com” where I could then discuss their needs in more detail before sending them a custom offer. In fact, this is exactly what I do, just not with Fiverr because as well as being needlessly complex, it doesn’t feel safe.

In like regard, for established sellers who can network, do want to introduce people to Fiverr with a view to future collaboration, or even just want to go on vacation and log into Fiverr from a different location, there needs to be some kind of way for Fiverr to facilitate this without fear of accounts being suspended.

Community starts with trust and actual communication. At the present time, Fiverr seems to be becoming more about fear for sellers.

[writer99025]

Excellent points.

[hotwebideas]

Hello PsychicBunny. Are you in NY City?

[misscrystal]

Hello Bruce, thanks for the information. It sounds like you have a really fun job, traveling around for events. Thanks for posting.

[zubairfb]

Wish fiverr to open some office in Asia too and give some official tickets to visit as well lol 🙂

[zubairfb]

well said, fiverr should less threatening…

[psychicbunny]

Nope, Vegas

[emmaki]

It’s pretty funny that Bruce only responded to you!

Do you also have a sideline in Elvis impersonations?

[fonthaunt]

Can’t disagree with much here. I wasn’t aware of this new thing and don’t really know what it is. I would love to see more information for the entire community instead of siloed/fragmented ideas. Your points and others in this thread would be worth serious consideration if staff becomes more interested.

[logoflow]

Thanks for the tip its really help full…

[emmaki]

Well, if Bruce does return, I’ve got some evidence of censorship to show him, and I would like to ask him why a critical–but honest–post with doulbe-digit upvotes and no downvotes was deleted, along with several others.

Can’t be because it criticized a community leader, could it? I note that once again, Fiverr isn’t letting one of its longest-running admins know of any new changes to the forum.

This seems to me more evidence of a marketing dept in absolute disarray–and looking at some of the latest reviews on Glassdoor (which should be taken with a pinch of salt, admittedly), I’d say it’s more than that.

To add to what @cyaxrex said, TrustPilot is damning across the board about Fiverr’s lack of trust for sellers–and of course, ample complaints from buyers regarding a whole host of issues.

Why isn’t Fiverr making moves to do something about this? The complaints individually aren’t that important–but as a whole, they give a clear voice to issues that multiple people, both buyers and sellers are tired of. If Fiverr is looking for ways to improve the site, then fixing those issues is a great step forward.

I mean, it’s all good to say “Fiverr is good for kinds of goals, people” with some light fluff, but how about a seller who whose profile was deleted forever from Fiverr for going on vacation and accessing Fiverr on vacation? That’s what @Cy is semi-referencing.

Community leadership/team–be a voice of the community to HQ. Or just post fluff. I know the latter is more the CT’s mandate, which is just yet another incredibly poor decision from HQ. I don’t mind introductory posts, but who are the team? Are they all from NYC (the sole conversational gambit so far)? What are their names? What is their mandate in full? Solely to help out with events? In which case, why aren’t they more active in helping in the current Miami event?

[cyaxrex]

I think it’s relatively safe to say that:

“We will be helping Fiverr organize community events and meetups. I am excited as our plans are for workshops and other types of fun and educational events. I look forward to meeting some of you at these events in both New York, San Francisco and other cities around the world as Fiverr has them.”

When translated from Fiverr newspeak, simply means:

Hi, if you are photogenic and in New York, pop in to have your picture taken with us. Yey!

Bruce isn’t listening. There’s no one really on the other side, just trendy automatons.

[emmaki]

Yes, I read it that part as well. Nothing more than a vanity exercise to look good on the CV, really. However, if you’re going to basically assert yourself as a community leader, engaging with the community and being a known presence as well as interacting with the community should be a given–regardless of whether the community is being spiky or a cute and adorable wikkle puppy dog that just wants its belly rubs.

That phrase doesn’t really account for the fact the Miami meet’s not really going anywhere. Just look at this!

http://blog.fiverr.com/fiverr-community-events-1116-1122/

Oops?

Speaking of the blog, check this out:

http://blog.fiverr.com/tips-getting-featured-fiverr/

I draw your attention to this little snippet:

Become Part of the Fiverr Community: It’s a good idea to become active and join our seller forum. It’s run by our community and moderated by our ambassadors (sellers who we handpicked to work with the forum). Here you can find tips & tricks for sellers coming from sellers just like you."

Last time I checked, an ambassadors parachuted in to ask us to all get along before making an emergency exit when it didn’t go to plan, deleting a whole bunch of difficult questions in the process.

Meanwhile, @fonthaunt, arguably one of the most visible admin/mods/whatever is neither featured, nor an ambassador, nor a TRS. Yet Brucie boy gets the community leader role, despite being a largely invisible presence (much like the Ambassadors, for that matter) on the forum. It goes without saying that 90% of the posts on here are mindless, regurgitated drivel that would send most sane people running for the hills.

So, that blog, like most of them, is “feel good” bollocks of the worst kind: asinine at best, misleading at worst.

I’m going to skip the dire SM channels, as the poor b*****d in charge of that posts anodyne rubbish and has to field a near-constant barrage of demands for help. Couldn’t even capitalize on U’Work’s commission charges. Man, where IS the marketing dept? Oh, that’s right, they all left for greener (heh) pastures. I wonder why?

Positive Corner
Anyway, regarding your wanting to thingy with people in Malta, why not make use of that Fiverr Everywhere thing? There was a post from one of the Ambassadors (Ozzie, I think), that strikes me as it might work for your purpose. Or some of them. But yes, hardly a great fix when there’s much more natural ways to go about it.

Oh well, all the online free-lancing platforms are crap at the moment, so this isn’t really scraping the barrel anymore than we’re all used to.

[Anna]

I can understand your frustration Emma but I also want to point out that some of the Ambassadors indeed help out with the forum. There are things that are done in the background. Just because you guys don’t see them posting, doesn’t mean that they aren’t doing anything.
Posts are also not deleted or pulled deliberately. As mentioned before the forum has some major issues right now, including random posts disappearing for no apparent reason. All the issues have been reported. There is only so much we can do but the last thing we want you guys to think is that your posts are deliberately removed.

[jjservices]

It’s awesome. I’ve seen the youtube video. I liked your office

[fonthaunt]

Perhaps Bruce knows more than I do and perhaps he will respond. Of course, I am not an Ambassador and I can’t afford to host a big community event in my region. All I can do is to continue to work on the parts of the forum that seem meaningful to me.

To me, moderating is useful to the online community. Many of us individual sellers have financial, physical or other challenges that mean that this online forum is our main place to mingle and network with others. Not all of us have options to do in-person events. I will keep on doing my part here because I enjoy the forum and I have come to consider so many of the regulars here as friends.

It would be nice to if the moderators could count on being informed about changes. When we are informed, I always make an effort to come here and write a post for everyone reading. It would be nice to be acknowledged by Fiverr some for the efforts we make here. Maybe it just isn’t valuable enough.

Now, there are very real long-time community leaders who are Fiverr sellers and have worked their butts off to earn recognition. I don’t know all of them. I know some, and some of the people who have been ambassadors (not this new CT thing) for a long time have seriously done a lot for the entire buyer/seller community.

Many of the regulars here would know them by their participation in the Fiverr podcasts, their posts on the Fiverr blog, their forum posts with self-made webinars on topics like Fiverr Anywhere, or their published IFTTT recipes that help sellers work more efficiently. Even for the ones I don’t know, there is an official list and all of them have official tags on their accounts. They deserve kudos for their participation even if not all are currently active. I specifically wanted to make mention of them because real community leadership is important and has been taken seriously in the past. There are sellers who take it seriously too. I just see some signs that currently there is too much fragmentation and too little information shared. I define my community leadership on the forum for myself, but I don’t know how Fiverr defines community leadership in general today.

As far as missing posts, I’ll tell you the only information that I have available to me. There are some categories where comments are technically still there, but they just don’t show up. It’s weird because if Anna (annai80) or I move the posts to another category, a lot of times the missing bits appear again. So, that part is not due to intentional moderation that she and I have done. There are other categories where there are posts or comments just gone since the last update when the like button was removed. The voting thing came and went at the same time, but most of the broken bits happened during the entire process. So, to be clear, Anna and I are usually pretty obvious about it when we need to remove a post unless it’s plain spam.

There are other people who have rights to make forum changes and I don’t always know what they do, though. There are staff members who pitch in openly and others who do things quietly. I believe that in general they want to make the forum better and when they make changes, the intention is good. Intention just doesn’t always work out. In this case, the word that I “hear” is that the forum will still be fixed at some point. I hope it’s true and if I can, I’ll still be here either way because I enjoy helping.

A lot of words, I know, but now I know I’ve addressed some things that I believe. Fiverr is still a young company and a relatively small one. Mistakes happen. I do have some concerns, though, and I’m doing my best to be optimistic anyway. Some days I’m better at that than others. Ok, done. 😃

[emmaki]

Alright, that’s a fair point, and I had forgotten about the podcasts; I was more or less speaking about forum activity like writing stuff/opinions/help/visibly active moderation and so on. I’m not privy to what goes on in the back office, after all! I remain skeptical about the pulled posts…

You’re not featured or an ambassador either!

[miiila]

“All I can do is to continue to work on the parts of the forum that seem meaningful to me.”

And you´re doing a great job, @Maddie. I do dearly hope ‘they’ see and recognize that, and that maybe even someone will have a great idea regarding it, which one should think anyone who can think clearly should have eventually. At the least lots of new (and old) forum users see and appreciate what you do.
🙂

[miiila]

Well, I´d give a thumb up for the Kicker, and one for the windows, and one for the green plants, but why is almost everybody standing around chatting instead of at their desks… 😉

[miiila]

Good points indeed, @cyaxrex, it might be worth to ponder why it seems to work with other places and how it could work with fiverr too.

[miiila]

You´re harsh, @Emma, but still I´d highly recommend any fiverr staff person working a related job to read your comments on such things, and to take from them, what they can.
Also I still love to read your posts 😉

Forum threads need more ‘nestingability’ btw.