Hello all.
I think we are all a little frustrated at the lack of having a voice and not being heard. I see many on here asking questions to Bill in the form of comments and blog posts without any responses from Bill himself. Is he hearing us? Does he want to communicate and discuss options and ideas with others or just preach to us? I know that sounds harsh and I know he is very busy and says he has stuff in the works and we need to be patient and not just rush into things. There needs to be a plan and a process and it is going to take time. But emotions are high right now. It would just be nice to see Bill commenting now and then to see that he is paying attention. It would be better to be able to have a way to communicate to him directly than just throw up a random post or comment in hopes that he may see it. I have only had replies from Scott Ott with the contact form on this site.
That being said. There should probably be a statement page on this site with information on the shows and what exactly goes on here. From what I can gather on my own, it seems the Stratosphere Lounge is a way to interact with Bill. It is a live stream that you can comment on, from what I have seen, and only know that from watching an older episode. There is a TSL link in the menu bar under Stratosphere Lounge. Again, I had to find this myself as there is nothing that explains what options you have on the site and I think there should be with the influx of new members excited and eager to get involved. This looks to be a recurring live stream on Thursday evenings. If anyone else knows more about it please comment so we can have more information about it. Even a Welcome Email would be beneficial for new members that explains more about what Bill is trying to do and how to get involved. I am grateful we have what we have here and think some small improvements can go a long way to make a better initial user experience.
One other thing I would like to mention for those chomping at the bit to get involved more is to private message Michael Piz. He has put a lot of hard work into a statement document (Link below) for all of us and has information if you would like to be part of a Skype call on Wednesday evenings. I have not yet participated but plan to this Wednesday, although it is during my working hours and I don’t know how much I can actually participate. I will try to make it work.
I hope this helps anyone that is new to this like myself and looking to be more involved.
UPDATED LINK:
https://billwhittlecom.wpenginepowered.com/please-read-declaration-of-sovereignty-v0-2-0/
12 replies on “What Can We Do As A BWN Member??”
That link isn’t to my document. Mine is here.
But thanks for the shout-out. 🙂
As far as I can determine, Bill doesn’t ever even look at the blog or comments. As you said, he’s busy as hell, but it’s damn frustrating given that we’re trying to get moving and a little encouragement or guidance would help a lot.
Also, I PM Scott fairly often (we have things in common besides the site; for example, we used to live in the same area, we’re the same age, and we went to the same college for the same four years, though we didn’t know each other until I joined here). Usually my questions for Scott are about site issues but sometimes I ask questions to be passed on to Bill or questions about site policy and such. Scott is great at answering the site issue questions but he completely ignores all the others. Steve isn’t involved with anything here but Right Angle. I think there’s no way to PM Bill directly. There are some Bill Whittles in the Member Directory but they have member numbers so high that I’m sure they’re not actually Bill.
If anyone reading this would like to get involved with what we’re doing to advance MB2A, do send me a PM. For new members who don’t know how to do that yet, tap on my picture to get to my profile page and you’ll see the big blue “Message” button.
Ok changed the link 🙂
Yes. Some encouragement or commentary once in a while would boost morale I would say. Looking forward to having discussions and meeting you all on the calls.
What is Bill busy with? And if it is his job, doesn’t the increase in donations make him not have to do his job anymore?
I’d say that, if anything, it makes him more busy. That’s assuming he’s using the new money to work on what he talks about in the MB2A videos. I’m sure Scott is a lot busier with site admin stuff.
I wish he’d get in touch with us about our own efforts on that…
I’m also new here. I wrote two blog posts so far and there are people answering. From how Bill was talking I expected a bigger member space. There are a decent number of blog posts each day (at least since I’m here). But I don’t think I will have any ideas of my own to post from now on. I do think a forum and a introduction site would be helpful for this community.
Blogs kind of have the limitation that they disappear as soon as the next ten come in. That way a meaningful conversation is not really possible.
And a bit more transparency in general is always helpful. Like what are the currently running projects? The shows by date is about the best thing into that direction. But it isn’t that user friendly.
And for someone who likes to change the world it seems to be surprisingly little conversation between the show hosts and the members. At least I haven’t seen any. Seeing what they do with the money would also be nice.
I do think forums have the advantage that in there you can group things by topics. And there could be the topic of what Bill is working on and so on. Also it would be helpful in case someone is not interested in every topic out there. I personally am more interested in what Bill is actually doing and I also like to discuss some topics. Local politics and gossip isn’t in my interest. And those kinds of comments will make the blogs I’m interested in more difficult to find. And with that my interest in participating gets smaller. But if we had a forum which is organized by topic then I could just look at the ones I’m interested in and it would be more motivating and more engaging.
If it keeps on staying as it is I do think the risk is high that I stop participating after a while. And when Bill doesn’t appear to make any progress (no matter if he does or not) I also lose interest in spending my money on him. The only reason I do spend money is because he seems to do stuff besides talking.
I agree. I think you should try the Stratosphere Lounge like I plan to do on Thursday to see if there is any better interaction. I am with you on the forums and money transparency issues.
Which time is it? Please add the time zone since I’m from Europa.
9 pm ET. This is the link found under the Stratosphere Lounge in the menu:
https://billwhittlecom.wpenginepowered.com/tsl-live/
That’s 3pm for me. I guess I won’t attend…
Bill is looking at what’s being said here. If you listened to his vid from 1/11 he said what he said (at least in part) to what is going on here.
IDK Bill’s schedule, but I’m sure he’s quite busy.
I do agree if we can hop on a live with him would be great. I think TSL is about other topics, but it seems he does some “news” type stuff at the beginning.
Hi, Robert! The Stratosphere Lounge has offered the best chance of getting a question or suggestion to Bill and getting his feedback. It doesn’t happen every show, but some weeks he posts a call for questions in advance of the livestream and he generally prioritizes them by number of upvotes. This used to happen on Facebook (and might still; I am not on Facebook so I don’t know), and there have been at least a few times when Scott posted the call for questions here on the member blog. I don’t think there has been a question show lately but they come now and again. Bill also has an eye on the chat during the livestream, and will sometimes notice and answer questions posted there. Unless I’m mistaken, Twitch is still the place to watch the livestream and join the chat. There’s a Twitch player embedded in the “TSL LIVE” page here but I just watch directly in the Twitch iPad/iPhone app. TSL episodes get posted to Bill’s YouTube channel shortly after broadcast (if Bill remembers to record!). Hope this helps. Bill is indeed a busy guy, and I’m sure he appreciates all the support and struggles with wanting to be able to keep up better with an ever growing subscriber base. Glad to have you on board here!
Thanks Troy! Yes I am excited to visit the Lounge! Thank you for explaining more about it for myself and any newbies that catch this post 🙂