Comments on: BlenderSkype – Free Personal Blender Support

By: Gustav Fröding

Gustav Fröding — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:27:44 +0000

Hi!

Need help with blender. Skype-name: GustavFroding

Regards

Gustav

By: Ro

Ro — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 14:22:05 +0000

Hi! I would love to have this service and help anybody is I can be of any use…well, after I get I little more experienced.

By: Bmud

Bmud — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 05:55:08 +0000

This was a bad idea. People are soliciting my name now. I would not recommend that you sign up unless you want sketchy people sending you messages.

By: Jacob Randal

Jacob Randal — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 03:36:50 +0000

I really like hillrunner's idea of having a chat system inside of Blender. What if you could see the other user's mouse cursor and where they clicked inside of your own Blender window? When Verse was integrated with Blender, users could connect and model the same mesh interactively. What if Verse were reintegrated with more features such as showing everyone's mouse cursor, button clicks, and text input? Users could guide each other to success right inside Blender! It would be amazing.

Using Skype to teach people Blender is like trying to give an angry mob a haircut over the phone. The same questions will continue to be asked over and over, making the support team wish they had never been born. Now it's reasonable to teach Blender via Skyping friend-to-friend, but trying to serve the whole newcomer base with Skype is unrealistic. The forum is superior because each answered question remains so all can see. Sure, there isn't instant voice or video chat, but the forum can often-times answer people's question faster. I think the forum itself could possibly be improved to better suit the needs of newcomers with common Blender questions.

There is also the IRC chat where I've had TONS of my own questions answered by kind Blender users.

I think the best way for people to learn is to check the forums for video tutorials, screen shots, Blender manuals etc, and to log into IRC chat and simply ask their questions. Until we have Verse (hopefully) reintegrated into Blender with more interactive features as speculated above, IRC and the forum is where the best knowledge is.

By: switch_point

switch_point — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:34:31 +0000

hey i would love to be part of this my skype name is switch_point besides this is great especially for ppl u have the basics but just need a little help

By: joeri

joeri — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:08:06 +0000

Well cool. shame the article didnt mention IRC, instant online written help, even anonymous for the real stupid questions :)

I'm not such a believer in forum answers for blender, blender just changes to much.
The online manual is still best. With answering people who need a quick answer its mostly impossible to guess at what level you can answer.

By: shul

shul — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:12:42 +0000

Will there be a developer support line as well?

By: kkrawal

kkrawal — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:01:19 +0000

Hi all
Where to ask for support?

By: musk

musk — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 08:00:07 +0000

I don't like the idea for two reasons. First off and this is the most important one there is no history. When you answer a question on skype there is no way someone else can go and search for that answer and learn from it afterwards. Once the call is closed the information transfered is lost except for the person receiving it. If the person receiving it forgets the information there is no way he can go back and look at it again. What I'm getting at is that the skype solution will force information loss in the community and I think the community is what makes blender exceptional besides the fact that it is OS.
The second reason is that this will tend to let people loose the ability to discover stuff by themselfs. I think one of the things about forums is that when you start posting and you see that people don't understand you or you don't understand people is that you start to think about the way you ask and start to gather more information. Basically you get taught to think for yourself and I'm not sure that a skype chat will actually provide this.
Basically I think that IRC covers the skype call with the added benefit of providing session transcript and as Scott said allready the benefits of others to learn from the provided answers.
I especially like the idea of integrating an IRC Client into blender for those that are online while using it. This way one could probably implement some mechanism to transfer the current scene to a person or to a list of person.
Now to find someone who is willing and capable to do something like this… ;)

By: Temaruk

Temaruk — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 07:53:11 +0000

Hi!

I would really like to help! I'm Hungarian, but I can speak English too! My skype name is: temaruk

Unfortunately my website is a little outdated… My recent Blender works are much better!

Temaruk