I’m curious about how McNeel organizes its staff participation in this forum. It’s great to see McNeel employees actively answering questions and engaging with the community. How does the company facilitate this? Specifically:
What roles within McNeel are responsible for monitoring and responding to forum posts?
Are there internal processes in place for escalating issues or sharing feedback from the forum with the development team?
How does McNeel encourage or incentivize staff members to participate here?
Any insights into how this interaction helps with product development or customer support would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance for shedding light on how this valuable interaction is managed!
I participate on this forum because I want to know about issues with Rhino Render and Raytraced as soon as possible, since those are my babies. I don’t like waiting for bugs to be logged to our YouTrack issue tracking system, rather I like to interact with users so I can get info while the press is still hot.
Many other devs participate here as well, some more frequent than others. But in the end Rhino development is customer driven, so following forum is one important (but not the only) avenue for gauging the customer base.
We have people more focused on technical support who are active on the forum as well. In all cases anybody from “us” can direct developer attention to issues on the forum. Oftentimes YouTrack issues will be created in the process.
And besides, I also just like being on the forum. A great place to learn about Rhino, even as a dev (: (edit: or maybe I should say, especially as a dev)
Hmm, is this for a research project or…? What is the need here?
Anyone/everyone who feels that the post concerns their area of expertise. There are a few people whose primary role is tech support - by telephone, e-mail and forum
Issues go to the bug tracking system, they are handled according to a complex system of feasibility, resource requirements, priority etc.
That is the company culture and has been since the beginning.
we want Rhino to be awesome just like you do, and as as said above,
this is a 100% true statement.
One of Bob’s many super powers is hiring people who really really care about this stuff. I asked about my job description when I got hired here, he said to me “your job is make Rhino better, if I have to tell you how to do that, this isn’t going to work”
I have never worked with a more dedicated group of people anywhere, (and I owned my own company for 30 years) …
Might this lead to things falling through the cracks if nobody feels they’re the best fit for addressing it? I’ve made a few posts recently pointing out bugs that didn’t get any engagement, and it’s hard to tell if these things are being addressed behind the scenes or if they just got passed over.
If you don’t get an answer here within a day or so (excluding weekends/holidays), bump your post and keep trying until you do. Every once in awhile things go by unnoticed because of the sheer volume of posts.
Having someone acknowledge your post it does not necessarily mean that it will get fixed/implemented immediately though, depends on what the request was and how severe the bug (if it was one) is.
if it’s something you need specific guidance on, send an email detailing the issue to tech@mcneel.com it will be answered directly by our techs or dev team.
