Interview with Patrick O'Keefe -- iFroggy founder, Managing Online Forums author

[Zulehan]

(Originally from my forum until shut down, and now posted here so people may still get a chance to read it. The interview is broken up into parts due to the character limit; I will post the rest as comments.)

Pt. 1

Patrick O'Keefe is a website developer and manager—in short, a webmaster. He specializes in website and community management, writing, and social media. His experience in community management has even prompted him to write Managing Online Forums, a comprehensive guide book on the subject. Mr. O’Keefe began developing websites for clients in 1998, eventually shifting to managing his own sites. He has run the iFroggy Network, his network of websites covering various interests, since 2000. The websites under his care include, but are not limited to, phpBBHacks.com, KarateForums.com, PhotoshopForums.com, and ManagingCommunities.com. In addition to maintaining numerous websites, Mr. O’Keefe is often found participating in speaking engagements and web/podcasts having to do with matters of the Internet, social media, technology and more. Finally, he has served as an expert reviewer for SitePoint, and has written for several online publishers.

For this interview with Mr. O’Keefe, I wish to start by asking a few “basic” questions that will tell the reader more about the man and his work, followed by questions related to his area of expertise. After that, I will end the interview on a more whimsical note with miscellaneous questions. While I am talking about the format of this interview, I should also disclose the manner in which it was conducted: as Mr. O’Keefe maintains a busy schedule, I thought it best to take questions I decided on, and hand them over via email for him to then answer at his own pace.

Now, without further ado, here is the interview:

Kevin Malone: Mr. O’Keefe, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. To start, I was hoping you could tell me about your educational background?

Patrick O'Keefe: Thank you for having me. I was homeschooled for grades K-12. Not being at school for 8 hours a day (plus having homework on top of that) allowed me the time to experiment with entrepreneurship. I graduated a year early and decided to run my network of sites full time.

Kevin Malone: So is developing websites primarily how you earn an income?

Patrick O'Keefe: Yes, it is.

Kevin Malone: College prep English emphasizes a writing process from pre-writing to final draft. However, there is room for deviation, and each writer goes about the process in his own way. What is your writing process?

Patrick O'Keefe: I guess it depends on what I am writing. With the book, for example, I wanted to make sure that I could write it before I started pitching it to publishers. I began by making a note of everything I wanted to talk about. I would be on one of my communities, would deal with a situation and then would say “hey, I should write about that.” Eventually, this list of notes grew to a respectable size. I organized it and began to write it all out.

And then I went over it several times, adding things, adjusting things and rereading it. After I signed with my agent, Neil Salkind (http://www.salkindagency.com), we went back and forth on it and I bulked it up even more. When we signed the deal with AMACOM (http://www.amacombooks.org), it then went through their editorial processes. Basically, this was going through a few rounds of edits, from a development editor, associate editor, copy editor, etc. A final round of checks and there is your book. I probably read through it fifty plus times.

But, obviously, writing a blog post or article length piece is a bit shorter of a process. I’ll have the idea and just starting writing the article, doing whatever research is necessarily. Once finished, I’ll then read through it at least one additional time once it is done before I publish it. Nothing too complex.

Kevin Malone: How was your experience with your publisher, AMACOM?

Patrick O'Keefe: Overall, it was a good experience. Generally speaking, when you are pitching a book, most people aren’t interested. When someone (in this case, the executive editor on the project, Jacqueline Flynn) believes in your idea and the company will put money behind that belief, it means something. I was pleasantly surprised by how well the whole editorial process went. They improved my work and made the book as good as it could be, while also allowing me to make the points I wanted to make.

It was important to me to work with a publisher who could make the book available in stores, as well, and they managed to do that – it was in pretty much every Barnes & Noble store in the country at one point or another and that was really cool and an honor, because most books don’t even make it that far. So, I’m happy.

Kevin Malone: Why publish on Kindle and eBook?

Patrick O'Keefe: Generally speaking, I believe that it is a good idea to make your book legally available through the avenues where people will look to purchase it. And with the book being on a web topic, it only makes sense for the book to be available digitally through eBook and on the Amazon Kindle, as well as other reading devices. In the interest of disclosure, I am an Amazon.com shareholder.

Kevin Malone: I understand you are on a speaking tour, and have several events related to that coming up. Also, you informed me that you started speaking after your "book was announced and the book itself was released in April of 2008." How has the experience been for you? How much do you enjoy public speaking?

Patrick O'Keefe: The experience has been good, overall. It’s very rewarding to get on stage, give a talk and have people tell you that it helped improve some aspect of their life or business. It can be nerve wracking and stressful, but I do enjoy it. I hope for it to become a larger part of my life, as a paid speaker.

Kevin Malone: In your interview with sparkBB’s Chris Davis, you answered the question of how it is like to manage several high-traffic forums by emphasizing how all your concerns are magnified. You mentioned having to be tougher in your commitment, and having to put in more time and effort. Additionally, you stated in your “About” page on ManagingCommunities.com that you write content and copy for the entire iFroggy Network. That said, what are some of the things you have done to lessen the stress of managing so many high-traffic communities? In other words, what have you done to ensure you stay committed without encroaching too much on your other responsibilities?

Patrick O'Keefe: I think that routines help. Having specific times when you do things, rather than trying to do them all the time or at random moments. It can be very tough and I am feeling that right now and having to make choices as to what I dedicate my time to – even having to step away from projects in some cases. Keeping notes of things I want to do is helpful for me, as well, because it removes it from my mind and I can refer to it later.

Also, it is important to simply take breaks and do other things. As an entrepreneur, it is challenging to have a life outside of your work because you love your work and you don’t have a 9-5. Every waking moment is an opportunity to improve your business. But, there are more important things in life, like your family and health and you have to be careful not to neglect those things because they will pass you by and one day you’ll look back and wonder “what happened?”

Kevin Malone: I read your blog post wherein you described a member equating your suggestion to use a different post color as racial profiling, and in which you mentioned being called something so vile that you could not recall any worse. In that topic, I clicked the link to a related one wherein you alluded to several more examples. However, you also pointed out, in that second article I alluded to, that the haters out there do not represent “even a noteworthy number of people.” Even so, does it not contribute to stress? Certainly, though you may not let it pull you down, it must be there to a degree, especially for someone as busy as you? Do you sometimes find yourself having to take a vacation from any one, or all, of your communities? If yes or no, what would you suggest to your fellow forum administrators out there who deal with the stress and wonder how to lessen it?

Patrick O'Keefe: In that post, I said that I have come to terms with the fact that people will hate me, but I would differentiate that from “haters.” I didn’t actually use the word hater in that post, because I am really mindful of how I use that word. I think it gets overused today. Too many people dismiss criticism or simply different taste as hating. And crazy people aren’t always “haters,” they are just crazy people.

But, the answer is yes, it does contribute to stress. Over time, you get used to it and most of it, you can easily dismiss as some random lunatic. Then, what becomes stressful is when someone does it who you expected so much more from. Someone you may be familiar with, someone you may have liked, someone who may have made some legitimate contributions to your community. The closer you get to people, the more able they are to hurt you. But, that’s no reason not to get close to anyone.

Vacations are good, regardless of what line of work you are in or whether or not you are dealing with some major stress at the moment. Everyone needs to take a break, recharge and consider where they are.

Sometimes, you just have to let something pass and there isn’t much you can do about it. It may weigh on you for a bit, maybe a couple of days, but eventually life will go on and you will get back to business. When you are feeling that stress, sometimes there isn’t much you can do. But, different people respond to it in different ways. Whatever relaxes you, do that.

 

[Zulehan]

Pt. 2

Kevin Malone: Michael G. Kimsal, a reviewer of your book at Amazon, expressed the wish that you had more to say about the major forum software packages available. This reminded me that, since I joined the phpBBHacks.com Support Forum in June, 2004, and the next year when I discovered your CommunityAdmins.com, you were using phpBB2 for both. In fact, to this day, those two forum communities are using phpBB2. I cannot say if your other forum communities were using phpBB2 years ago, but after looking at them recently, I see that they are now. Certainly, though, you must have strongly considered using a different forum software package before you started your first forum community? If yes, what was it that tipped the scale in favor of phpBB2 for you? Also, was there ever a time after you settled on phpBB2 when you considered converting at least one of your communities (well, besides phpBBHacks.com) to another forum software?

Patrick O'Keefe: When I started to look at options for hosting my own community (and moving off of a remotely hosted solution, which is where I started), it was back in 2000. Back then, we didn’t have all of the viable free options that we have now. The forum software landscape is blessed to have several very good options out there and that is a good thing for everyone.

I forget all of the options. But, there was UBB (Ultimate Bulletin Board), which was pay. There was Ikonboard, which was around version 1, I think. vBulletin was in version 1. YaBB was another one, also in version 1. I feel old. Everything was version 1. Heh. So, after evaluating the options, I decided upon phpBB (version 1.2.x, I believe, was the first one I used in a live environment). I just liked it and found it (after some practice) easy to customize and install.

I haven’t really seriously considered moving off of it since then. phpBBHacks.com was created out of need. It was the first site dedicated to phpBB hacks and customizations. There wasn’t a database prior to it. It has really set the standard for kind support within the community. I am so familiar with phpBB at this stage, and so tied into the community, that it is hard for me to look at much else. phpBB has a great community around the software, which is one of the main things that makes it great. As an aside, having all of my communities on one piece of software also makes them easier to maintain.

With the book, I specifically avoided software because that’s not what it was about. The book is about strategy and about the people aspects of online community, not about software. Software changes all the time, but good strategy doesn’t.

Kevin Malone: What do you think of phpBB3? Are you much interested in the future of the phpBB software, or are you only mildly interested at this point? Have you simply not converted any of your forum communities to phpBB3 because of the time it would require to implement it and then re-add the features you created, or because you do not think the benefit substantial enough to warrant the time and effort?

Patrick O'Keefe: From my experience with it, phpBB 3 is great. I look forward to using it and I am interested in the future of phpBB. The reason I have not yet converted is simply due to lack of time and resources. When it comes to these technical things, for the most part, it’s just me. To update 4 communities with all of the various considerations that they have is a time consuming endeavor. But, I am slowly making progress on it.

Kevin Malone: Shawn Hogan, administrator of the Digital Point Forum, refuses to add customizations to his forum that he did not create. Are you the same way? Why?

Patrick O'Keefe: Absolutely not. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that perspective, but I am not a programmer and the customizations that I have created are and will be very limited. Plus, even if I was a programmer, I wouldn’t want to reinvent the wheel every time I needed something. Obviously, I run phpBBHacks.com, so that would be kind of an odd thing to say! The community collective that releases customizations for phpBB is the greatest strength of the software and I fully appreciate it.

Kevin Malone: What are the ways in which you promoted your websites? What role did social networking play? Did you utilize “promotion forums,” or those forums built around the idea of giving members “services” with which to advertise their communities, such as post exchange deals, advertisements on the promotion forum itself (e.g., in the header, or in an active member’s signature), and reviews?

Patrick O'Keefe: I have never had any marketing budget, so most of what I have done is use free and organic means of promotion. Cross promotion between my sites and other sites, mentions in my profiles and signatures, partnerships with other people, etc. I really view quality as marketing. So, having a community with a great environment is marketing – it makes your community more attractive to visitors. Having good content is marketing. If you are familiar with inbound marketing, that is basically what I have done (before it was called that).

I view social networking as part of what some of my sites are about. But, as far as tapping into other social networks, that is something I have done as some of the main social sites have grown in popularity. (You have to remember, some of my sites were launched before there was a MySpace or a Facebook). Twitter is a consistent referrer for Bad Boy Blog and ManagingCommunities.com, for example. I don’t do as much as I would like, but I hope to do more in the future with Facebook and Twitter, especially.

I have not used any promotion forums. I just haven’t had the occasion.

Kevin Malone: In a topic at CommunityAdmins.com, you expressed the utmost confidence in your ability as a community manager, and with so much experience under your belt that is understandable. Even so, you had to start from somewhere. As you were working on projects and gathering experience, was there anyone in particular in your field of work that you looked up to, or continue to look up to? What advice or action from him or her was most memorable to you? For an example of “action,” perhaps how he handled a situation at his forum, or how he interacted with his members on a regular basis, inspired you?

Patrick O'Keefe: We all have to start somewhere. Confidence comes from experience. My first community was on the Everyone.net remotely hosted platform. There weren’t user accounts or guidelines, that I can recall. But, piece by piece, I learned.

And I learned from everything. I learned from members, I learned from what others did, I learned from administrators who I served as a moderator under. It’s really hard for me to name names as it was a lot of people and it was often bits and pieces of information. There were both good and bad examples around me. But, I learned from them all.

Kevin Malone: I recently wrote an article about what I called “misused community building methods.” In that article, I named copy-paste introductions, substance-less topics, substance-less email updates, and substance-less post exchanges. What do you think are the most common and notable community building methods that less experienced administrators misuse?

Patrick O'Keefe: I don’t know. I think that short posts and what not are a part of any community. I don’t view them as particularly damaging. There are some things that I view as unethical. For example, post exchanges or paid post arrangements where one person acts as more than one person. I think that’s a bad thing to do. Not only ethically, but because, eventually that person will go away. What happens if another member liked that imaginary person? How do you explain that? You have to have better foresight.

Another thing is, of course, spamming. Whether blatant or subtle, using someone else’s community to build yours is an underhanded tactic that no responsible community administrator should engage in. Treat people how you want to be treated. Unfortunately, I see this all too often.

Kevin Malone: Now for a change of pace. How does the future look for Patrick O'Keefe? What are your personal goals and plans?

Patrick O'Keefe: I am focused on managing the websites that I have now and continuing to make some tough decisions that will free me up for bigger opportunities. I am working on making the transition to paid speaking and I hope for that to become a bigger part of my life, as well. It’s hard for me to get too specific on a question like that. I work hard and try to put myself in the position to be successful and that’s pretty much it.

Kevin Malone: What in the tech world really gets on your nerves?

Patrick O'Keefe: It bothers me when people stifle experimentation because they don’t like change or because they like to be critical. Without experimentation, we never get better. If you don’t like what someone is doing, that’s fine, but if what they are doing is different, that’s often good for everyone in the space because we can watch and learn from what happens. Whether it is successful or not, we have to push the boundaries if we don’t want to always be stuck in the same place.

Kevin Malone: If you could invent one thing, what would it be?

Patrick O'Keefe: If I had a good idea, I would probably want to keep it to myself until I did invent it.

 

[Zulehan]

Pt. 3

Kevin Malone: What is the funniest joke you know?

Patrick O'Keefe: Wow, I have no idea. But, I love Jim Gaffigan.

Kevin Malone: If you did not have to worry about making money, what occupation would you choose, and why?

Patrick O'Keefe: Another tough one. I might still do what I do now, just in a different (probably more relaxed) context. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a baseball player.

Kevin Malone: Tell us something about yourself that we do not already know.

Patrick O'Keefe: Sticking to the baseball tip, when I was in little league, I was on the all-star team four consecutive years in three different leagues.