apteraforum.us

Hi:

I'm George Hughes and frankly, this is not my first rodeo with a forum.
Fact is, my forum experiences go back to that ancient online effort, compuserve's forums where I was a moderator in the early 1990s. I was also active on AOL's forums and was big into stand-alone computer 'zines'. Fact is I started one on online auctions and that ended up with me being auctioneer@auctionuniverse.com; later auctions.com (they paid dearly for the domain only to fail in the online boom ... and bust.

I have to say my first awareness of the BBS's was at the BBScon '95 held in Atlanta where I was recruited by a bunch of entreprenuers who were eager to exploit naked people pictures. I declined, not because I'm a prude, but because at that time I was married with a family and I wasn't eager to bring porn into the home ... as I was definitely doing stuff from home on the computer.

Started computing in 1978 with a commodore 8032 business computer with dual floppies and upgraded to PC's in 81 when I got a contract for syndicating an outdoor fishing program and also a consumer research project.

Online auctions were a hot topic in 97 but I started a zine about them in early 1996 that ended up being some of the 'sales materials' ebay used to pitch their proposed sale to Times-Mirror for like $44,000,000 ... a price too steep for the owners of the Chicago Trib, LA Times and tons of magazines (Times-mirror, inc)_ Yep, they turned down what would have been the buy of the century and picked up my contract instead. (I was editor of a small-town weekly newspaper in north Georgia.) Anyway, I was interviewed for and quoted two or three times in the book "The Perfect Store" a NYTimes bestseller about the rise of Ebay.

My first real experience with forums came when I was doing guerilla marketing for Auctionuniverse.com and I partnered with several of the leading online forums that spouted up around eBay. Since we were recruiting folks who liked to sell on the auctions, these forums became the best recruiting source for new members.

It was an interesting time and during that period I saw well managed forums and poorly managed forums. I remember one forum, which I want to say was sold to a new guy who thought that as owner, he was the boss of 'everybody' ... and that sucker died in a flame war that lasted what, 24 hours to forum death:)

My personal experience with forums was an forum I first launched for real in 2003 with promotion and contexts and all sorts of things. Got pretty creative with live studio video talk shows that had 1000s of viewers when a 100-year flood came to the hyperlocal community I hosted. We recorded over 4 million posts in a period of 13 years with daily post volumes of 2,500+ during the peak when we won national recognition as one of 15 Knight Foundation 21st Century Newschallenge Winners in 2007.

This local news medium actually lasted until local politics in Marjorie Taylor Greene's congressional district exploded over a plan, I supported, to make the Paulding airport a 'second Atlanta airport'. That notion didn't fit with the maga types who called such a local investment communist. They took out the local commission chair and others supporting the expansion simply because, they want to destroy everything they don't control.... that included my website. Oh, and I lost the race for a seat on the county commission in 2014.

I've also left out some other interesting aspects of my background. For instance, my first job out of college was in the Washington back office of the number three in seniority in the senate in 1973 - Arkansas J.W. Fulbright, which was a hoot. Returning to Arkansas after his defeat in '74, I ended up doing a daily TV report on the Arkansas Razorback football team, shooting film and recording stories for two TV stations. Left that for a job as a reporter for a daily newspaper in western Oklahoma where I ended up editor of a semi-weekly for about 18 months when I returned to Arkansas to take a job as a media director for an ad agency. The big deal here was we took away the national ad account for Ruud Air Conditioning soon after I arrived and I ended up placing millions in ad dollars including a magazine ad in Time and Newsweek the edition that had Mt. St. Helens exploding on the cover:)

BTW: you make a lot of friends spending money buying 'air-time' (think about that and parlayed that experience into syndication of the aforementioned fishing/outdoor program.

All this tells you is I've been around and seen a lot of things. DId I mention the summer internship at the international world assembly of youth held in Belgium in 1969? Yep, remember being on Icelandic Airlines - the last prop flying the Atlantic - as the gals in the row behind me debated whether they should be going to Woodstock instead of Lucky, lucky Luxembourg.

Oh, and I am sci-fi novel about Aptera ... there is always more until there isn't.

This is a good start and hope the info from the existing Aptera hosted community can somehow be ported over for historical purposes.

If needed I can continue to help moderating here as well.

Thanks for building this forum, much better than discord - though,that's not a major hurdle. We'll see where this one goes.

Biker wrote: Wed Jan 01, 2025 1:12 am This is a good start and hope the info from the existing Aptera hosted community can somehow be ported over for historical purposes.

If needed I can continue to help moderating here as well.

Thanks ... a bunch. I'm a little lost in the forum. It is just I've not used the interface and there is the shock of the admin forum view. I'm wondering if it is easier because I've not been in the seat in seven or so years and it was a different 'airplane' if you get the drift.

Had a snack and a nap. I just love the time shift power of message boards.

But if you have ideas on how to get formal assignment of the user-generated content, that would be good. We can't copy content wholesale but if, say I were a topic starter, I could make a claim on the conversation under the copyright I can assert personally that would absolutely allow a verbatim copy of the content I contributed as I still own it. As much valuable info is in the replies, GPT would do a good job of summarizing the balance of the topic as if a reporter. A similar summary method could be exercised on other discussions where we contributed to other's topics.

Of course if we had permissions for a wholesale archive, that opens possibilities.

Beyond that, give me a day or so to get you admin tools. Welcome aboard.

When this forum is established enough, it could be advertised it the Discord AOC and Amb servers.

Absolutely.

Look, if there is ZERO traction, then we know what happens But this ought to be a long-term project that builds over time.

There are lots of ways to engage folks.

I am going to have to get a plug-in for video on this board.

One idea, and I'll set up a forum for this as soon as I get the video plug in, is to chronicle all the new video content. BTW: I figure I'll get into that act sooner or later and most likely sooner.

Thank you George for your effort to put up this apteraforum!

I'll certainly stick around here.

Given my background in media extends to broadcast and even live streaming over a decade ago, I finally figured the base install involving wordpress kind of wonked up the ftp permissions to the degree it literally took me all day to figure out how to install the embed media tool.

You'll have to be in the full post editor but then, along the tool bar at the top at the far, far right is a monitor looking icon. Paste and highlight a youtube video and click that button and it puts the bbcode around the youtube file.

Things will get better .... things are getting better ... which reminds me: