Hello #FMECommunity
Welcome to What's Up Wednesday. No FME news today because it's...
Community Appreciation Day
Did you think we'd forgotten? Last year we declared October 27th as our annual Community Appreciation Day, and we're back this year to celebrate and honour top community members for 2021.
What are we Celebrating?
Interaction! Interaction between users makes for a strong community. You might have seen our new purpose statement :
"We gather together persons with an interest in FME and how it can be applied, to allow them to work, learn, network and socialize together, in a friendly, fun, and collaborative space, so that all members can advance their personal goals, while sharing and building up the wisdom of the community."
In short, we want to get you folks together, to help you learn about FME collaboratively, and every user interaction helps towards that goal.
Who are we Celebrating?
Everyone! Seriously, if you're reading this, you rank higher even than the Tester transformer. Yes, that's a bold statement, but every time you interact with another FME user, you help us to together build a fantastic and healthy community.
However, as we did last year, I wanted to pick out a few community-minded FME users for special attention. My Top 10 is below. But first...
How are we Celebrating?
As I said last year, we'd love to shower you all with gold, silver, and other precious jewels, but the postage is just so expensive. So I've picked 10 members who I think best represent our community and will be in touch with a small prize shortly.
Here's the list. The top 5 are regular contributors who also appeared last year, but the other 5 are new names, to make sure we spread the love! Believe me, they are no less worthy.
Rating Rise: +1 (Last year: VIP. This year: Headliner)
Besides being a Community Champion, ebygomm is a star of the Q+A forums. Each question can have a "Best Answer" applied and she topped the charts with 83 Best Answers over the previous year! Her reputation level rose to Headliner, putting her in the top 4 of all users on our forums. She won the 2020 Twelve Days of FME quiz, is a regular on Twitter, and started 2021 by using FME to help crochet a hexagon-based weather "map". Thank you for being such a great all-round member of the FME Community.
Rating Rise: +1 (Last year: Celebrity. This year: VIP)
The battle for most Best Answers was very tight and nielsgerrit was comfortably in the lead for much of my countback, ending up with 76 best answers. He is great at giving feedback as a member of the FME User Research group and has Advisor badges for the FME and Community surveys. Thank you for helping both Safe and your fellow users in the community.
Rating Rise: +3 (Last year: Enthusiast. This year: Celebrity)
By my count, caracadrian got 42 Best Answers over the past year, no doubt contributing to his rise from Enthusiast to Celebrity in the reputation ranks (a rise of 3 levels) and pushing him very close to VIP level too. What I like is that caracadrian - like others on this list - not just answers questions, but asks them too. As I mentioned, the more interactions the better, and it's great to see users taking on all roles. Thank you for playing such an all-round part in our community.
Rating Rise: +1 (Last year: Celebrity. This year: VIP)
virtualcitymatt obviously enjoys helping FME users with their questions. He used to work at Safe and even after leaving has carried on helping in the community (38 Best Answers in the last year). His reputation level gives him VIP status and a top-10 position on our reputation leaderboard. He has a great collection of community "special day" badges, for posting on Dia de Meurtos (Nov 2), World Lizard Day (Aug 14), and Ada Lovelace Day (Oct 12). Thank you for all your sweet as work Matt!
Rating Rise: +3 (Last year: Enthusiast. This year: Celebrity)
hkingsbury is a Celebrity in our community and a celebrity in real life - or should be given his recent video on FME transformers! He has the rare triple-header of Desktop, Server, and Trainer certification, and the even rarer Solstice community badge for posting on December 21st. Over the past year he accumulated 29 Best Answers and a rise of three ranks from Enthusiast to Celebrity. Thanks for being part of the community and for proactively engaging users with your Fireside Chat videos.
Rating Rise: +4 (Last year: Contributor. This year: Evangelist)
geomancer achieved 13 Best Answers over the last year, with a rise of 4 reputation levels from Contributor to Evangelist, sneaking him into the reputation scoreboard top 20. geomancer has the rare Safe Award badge - that we only hand out to especially useful posts - and recently got two badges for watching webinars (yes, that's a thing now!) Welcome to your first appearance on the Community Appreciation list and thank you for taking part in so many aspects of our community.
Rating Rise: +4 (Last year: Contributor. This year: Evangelist)
11 best answers earned tomf the reputation to also move up 4 levels from Contributor to Evangelist. Two "retro" badges show that he was active on the previous community website and played a positive role there too. His LinkedIn profile tells me that he's recently moved to a new job. I hope you'll still use FME there! Either way, thank you so much for the contributions you've made to the FME Community over the years.
Rating Rise: +3 (Last year: Supporter. This year: Evangelist)
drc43 rose 3 ranks (Supporter to Evangelist), with 9 best answers, but a lot of other activity too. They have a "retro" badge to show that they took part on the old FME Community site, a badge to show that they participated in the "12 Days of FME" contest, and another to show that they posted on Burns Night (a Scottish holiday on January 21st). So many thanks for helping others with their questions and for taking part in the community in general.
Rating Rise: +1 (Last year: Enthusiast. This year: Influencer)
muzhnasto had 4 best answers last year, rising from Enthusiast to Influencer. They've given the best answer award as well as received it, earned decent reputation on the previous FME Community incarnation, and were an early adopter of the new website. This puts them into the Top 30 users by reputation. From their questions, they are interested in all sorts of topics from basic geometry (Dissolver transformer) to XML, JSON, 3D, web services, and more. Thanks for your participation in our great community.
Rating Rise: +1 (Last year: Enthusiast. This year: Influencer)
runneals scored just a couple of best answers last year, but he's certainly played a larger part in the community than that. Also a member of the FME User Research group, he's posted ideas, is very active on Twitter, had 8 entries in the "12 Days of FME" contest, and won the ultimate award that we could give: the XML Lover badge, for tuning into the Christmas holiday repeat of the XML-athon webinar. Now that's dedication! Thanks for being so busy and committed to the FME cause.
Note that these are not necessarily the highest reputation earners, but people I've also seen interacting and participating in other FME events too. If you aren't on the list, with a higher reputation, please don't be offended. Like I said, let's spread the love around!
I do need to also give a shout-out to our awesome Community Champions - users hand-picked to help out with the community. As well as @ebygomm, we have @Hans van der Maarel, @jdh, @david_r and @Takashi Iijima. All of them have high Best Answer scores as well as contributing in so many other ways too. So thank you very much to all of them.
Incidentally, the reputation levels are Observer, Participant, Contributor, Supporter, Enthusiast, Influencer, Evangelist, Celebrity, VIP, Headliner, Dignitary, and Superstar.
Where are you on the journey to FME Superstar? Check out your community profile to find out.
Notice Tester standing out 😀