Camen Design Forum

Kroc's Appreciation Thread

append delete NickPfen

Appreciation fuels the soul. Appreciation for yourself helps you realize that nothing is lacking in your life and that, essentially, you are life and not separate from it. Appreciation is the doorway to true generosity, which leads to abundance.

Appreciation to others helps your fellow friend realize their greatness, feel safe in the world, and allows creativity to flow in and through them. Giving appreciation is the highest form of giving.

How to give appreciation?

1. Appreciation needs to be specific to actions and circumstances, and

2. Appreciation needs to be about how you see yourself and others affected.

Bad example:
"Kroc, your great at what you do." This is not specific to actions or circumstances, therefore, not helpful. "What you do" is not specific.

Great example:
Kroc, making your camendesign.com CSS code available to me and the public has inspired me to focus on clean and creative code that focuses on the end user. When I was stuck in my own programming knowledge and creativity, having your coding skills enabled me to cut through the bloat and greatly improve my HTML and CSS skills. You have opened the doorway for me and probably many others to be conscious of our code output and stick to our principles. Thanks to you, I feel unlimited in what I can do with HTML and CSS. Thank you.

Notice how powerful that appreciation is? It is specific to outcome and circumstances, and it shows immediate affect.

So there you go - how to give appreciation.

By the way, Kroc, the _great example_ is true. :) Thank you.

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Replies

append delete #1. Kroc

Thanks Nick, this is very nice of you and I appreciate the gesture. It won't however change how I feel about Camen Design. You see, I know that people see my source code, I know that millions of people have seen Video for Everybody -- I get plenty of 'appreciation' by way of traffic, and I'm glad that lotsa people are benefiting from that. What's missing is co-operation. The Internet is all about take-take-take with very little giving; it's quite literally how it's engineered and it affects all of us no matter our intentions because none of us has the time and commitment to give back for everything we take from the Internet.

I am myself no better than anybody else and so therefore I do not expect of anybody to rally behind my cause anymore than I would anybody else's.

But if we're talking about what really helps me (and by extension Camen Design), then it is co-operation. When people file bugs, send me suggestions, write code and in general be a part of what I am doing, then I am motivated to help.

I went through all the effort of practically rewriting NNF to be able to support translation because a user requested it, but I have not heard back from him yet whether what I did solved his problem or not.

It's hard to know where to go with improving things if really you're not getting feedback in the form of suggestions, bugs and code/design contributions.

With NNF you lot have contributed a _massive_ amount! These features exist because users either asked for them or contributed the code themselves.

* The new theme
* Translation support
* No-HTAccess mode
* Running NNF in a sub-folder
* Thread locking
* Sub-forums, nested sub-forums
* Forum locking
* Markup, especially the nice code syntax
* Opera speed dial

And probably much more I've forgotten.

Your appreciation is just fine, you don't need to feel like you have to pour out your love for me to make me feel better. I'm going through a really turbulent time in my life and keeping checks on everything is hard. I appreciate that I have my followers and I read everything on the forums, even if I'm not always feeling up to replying.

My advice is that if you really get something out of Camen Design and you want to see more, try and contribute, you'll be doing a favour for hundreds or thousands of users.

Some come here and they are just starting out their journey in developing for the 'Web and that's really special to see. I really want to guide these ones in learning to do things the right way so that they can whiz past their contemporaries and go on to build great things.

Not everyone will therefore feel like they are able to contribute to Camen Design, especially if it stands as some sort of beacon of unattainable code cleanliness, but all are able to contribute in their own way. I don't think for a moment that someone who can't code is somehow not as 'smart' as I am; they may be the most amazing artist or musician but it's not their fault they don't know HTML.

_Showing_ one's appreciation and _giving_ it are two different things, and it is very hard to coax oneself into giving of one's appreciation (something I've been striving to improve as of late: http://camendesign.com/tenets).

I ask that if you want to show your appreciation for how Camen Design has helped to change you, try giving your appreciation via even the smallest act of contribution.

* Make feature suggestions, try play out the idea clearly in your mind and discuss with others to refine out the detail

* File bugs and feature requests for software directly at GitHub (https://github.com/Kroc)

* If you use my software, write about it on your blog (and let me know of course) or write your thoughts about it here

* Play with the code yourself and make improvements

* Translate NNF (ask for help here if you're not a coder)

* Contribute what you've learnt back to others via your blog, or here

* Ask me anything, especially if you need me to clarify what a piece of code does; there must be something I can do for you

* Make art or music if you have no coding knowledge. If you think you have no talent, contribute in whatever way comes natural to you even if it's just an e-mail, or a simple thanks here

As what is my main product right now, NNF has a long way it could go, but right now I feel very disconnected from people who are using it, so I don't know what problems they are running into or what I should do to improve it. Maybe part of that is that I need to communicate better, provide more queues for people to provide feedback. Perhaps NNF needs its own website. I don't rightly know.

Your appreciation is accepted and loved, we all need to be told sometimes that people care and if I'm not doing that enough for my followers I'm sorry. You are all appreciated, it just doesn't come to me naturally how to bend this online form of communication to show that and I don't have enough time in the day for life as it is.

Kind regards,
Kroc Camen,

append delete #2. Impressed

I cannot code, make music, or art. But I appreciate your blog nonetheless. If we weren't married, I would be the most improbable reader of your words. I can make you a mean roast gammon on Tuesday - what do you say? :) x

append delete #3. Johann

He writes good articles I enjoy reading, because they make you think. He also makes slick forum software. That's all I know, but hey :P

Oh, and you make music, too? Is there, say, a way to listen to it?

append delete #4. theraje

“Oh, and you make music, too? Is there, say, a way to listen to it?”

AFAIK, neither Kroc nor Impressed make music. I know Kroc has told me on numerous occasions that he is tone-deaf. I was sharing with Impressed some software she could try out so she could make some tunes recently though, so who knows? :)

As far as appreciation for Kroc, I miss the inspiration I used to get from barking up World Trees. We used to get all kinds of crazy ideas and discuss them, and even though they were lofty/impossible, I got a real rush out of them. Maybe someday when things calm down we can talk more insanity. :P

Ah well, I guess until then I will just have to be a self-motivator. Oh dear...

append delete #5. Richard

“I went through all the effort of practically rewriting NNF to be able to support translation because a user requested it, but I have not heard back from him yet whether what I did solved his problem or not.”

I'm sorry, I often tend to forget about these kinds of things… Yes: it solved the problem and we're still happily using NNF for internal discussions. :)

append delete #6. Kroc

@Richard: Excellent, good to know :) I’m always interested in hearing from your experience using NNF. I’m always worried that my sweeping changes each version are causing you extra work.

Kroc added on

P.S. Anything else critically important for your use missing in your opinion?

append delete #7. Richard

“@Richard: Excellent, good to know :) I’m always interested in hearing from your experience using NNF. I’m always worried that my sweeping changes each version are causing you extra work.”

I've been fortunate enough to not have had major problems with any updates. In fact, it only makes my life easier!

As far as missing thing… No, at the moment I cannot think of anything. Everyone here loves it, because of the simplicity. And I've almost convinced the copywriting department to start using a similar markup style to replace HTML. :P

append delete #8. NickPfen

@Kroc
I work for Life is good and handle their media and web design in Portsmouth. I've used NNF as an internal discussion board and communication platform. This has eliminated the messy and poor communication through paper notes. Our company's processes and communication has improved greatly. We haven't had miscommunication since the birth of NNF at Life is good. Thank you for this.

I can't show you the finished product of NNF adapted for our company because it's a private discussion board.

Thank you for NNF :)

Peace,
- Nick

append delete #9. Kroc

@Richard / @NickPhen: Oh it's quite alright if it's private; that is after all probably the best use of NNF since it's not exactly grief-proof on the public 'Web.

I just wish to make you both aware that I am here to help and this is not a software product where you have to go through a help desk and can never communicate directly with the developers over an issue.

Understanding how NNF is used is key to me becoming a better developer. It is one thing to develop idealistic software, but it is another to put it in front of users and watch the train-wreck unfold. Where ever I can help your company get more out of NNF, I am there to listen to your thoughts. So, whatever you can think of that needs to be done, contact me or file issues at GitHub.

append delete #10. Impressed

@NickPfen: totally off-topic, but YOU'RE IN PORTSMOUTH! Very close to us! Woo hoo and three hoorays for Portsmouth!

The week after our wedding, kroc and I decided to just get on the bus and go places, be wild, live a little - and we picked Portsmouth! Unbeknownst to us, the Stagecoach bus route map we found seems to be a bit off-ratio. After three and a half hours on the bus, we felt like born-anew when our feet touched solid ground. And a bit like the newborn lambs, our legs almost buckled under us. In an unexpected bout of originality, we had lunch at Giraffe, got half-lost in town, went shopping in Argos, ate dinner at Pizza Hut, got back on the bus to endure the next three and a half hours of travel. A memorable day for all the wrong reasons - but still hilarious. What exciting life we lead! :D

I digress. If you are ever in Worthing, do let us know. Any friend of Kroc's is welcome at our for a cup of tea. :)

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