Gibson Brands Acquires Harmony Central!

[Craig Vecchione]

Craig, thanks for letting us hear the other side of the story. Especially for we moderators it's been very frustrating to be told one thing and see another. The frustration among our members has been palatable, and I knew there had to be something we weren't being told. It helps a lot to hear how things really were, and I appreciate your candor.

[blue2blue]

 

I really appreciate your bringing this up so I can set the record straight. I've been wanting to tell this story for years. The rest of the team knows what went down and can verify all of the following. [...]

I'll back Craig up on everything I know about that part of the story. He really worked hard to try to straighten out that mess and his obvious frustration felt pretty palpable, even across the Interwebs. He took the public relations arrows for a lot of things apparently well beyond his control.

 

I was greatly heartened to know that Craig was 'back' in charge of what will be the new HC. To my way of thinking, having someone like Craig in place is the key to viability.

[Anderton]

Thanks for the additional info Dendy.

 

I think I need to clarify a bit more.

 

That being said, what really rubbed me the wrong way was the manner in which Craig defended the changes.

 

One of the sacrosanct rules of public relations is to never, ever blame your audience for not understanding changes you've made to an organization, its products or policies. That's on you. If they don't understand it, you have not done a good enough job communicating.

 

I felt Craig took an overly defensive posture when he began to encounter push-back from users who were unhappy with the changes.

 

His tone became increasingly condescending and petulant.

 

Well, tone would be in the eye of the beholder, but I'm sure every post had some degree of frustration embedded in it from any one of a number of sources. In addition to the site frustration, it was frustrating when people would complain that something didn't exist when it did exist, but the way of accessing it was different. I see this all the time in software forums and it's equally frustrating there, where people post a thread about "HORRIBLE BUG!!! USELESS DAW BROKEN!!! CAN'T RECORD!!!" and then someone hips them to the fact that you have to click on the button with the red R first...

 

But I also think you may be confusing things that some of the web people said for things I said. They WERE dismissive of the community. They DID think that the problem was the community not willing to adapt and DID think the community didn't appreciate their "genius." They posted some comments that made me furious, like the story about the cowboys at the bar. But their posts were jumbled in with mine in the admin/feedback threads. This is one of the reasons I insisted that they differentiate themselves from me and take responsibility. Furthermore, their attitude "poisoned the well." If I offered a workaround, in that kind of climate it was probably seen more as an apology that a "hopefully this will hold you over."

 

I hated the entire situation and that's why I left. I was being undermined by the web team for favoring the community's wishes over theirs, and I was blamed by the community for not implementing their wishes.

 

At Gibson, I got "Great job on that [fill in the blank] Craig, really appreciate it." That was such a nice change.

[Anderton]

Oh, and speaking of dismissive... before the Lithium site launched, I wrote an email about the light gray on white background (or maybe it was light blue, I've tried to repress that memory LOL) and said I hoped they had the money to hire a new moderator to assist me because I couldn't look at the site for more than 20 minutes without experiencing actual pain in my eyes. I said I didn't think it was a good idea to have a site that caused people physical pain. They did it anyway.

 

I gotta stop now, this is bringing back so many bad memories. I'd rather think about the fact that we have the team back together again under the aegis of a company that's wanted to do this for years and now can finally do it.

[bieke]

is HC going to stay on vB5 ?

frankly, after 1 year of vB5, forum usage has not improved much, imo it's less functional now than at the start 1 year ago

[onelife]

It's time to move forward...

 

 

... and get back to discussing things like the subtle use of 5/4 time signature.

[AlamoJoe]

Firebird bass and a committes Maracas player all in the same Tull vid....Cool.

[Dendy Jarrett]

I'd like to add to the history Craig, if I may ...

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. No one here is saying that anyone that was previously involved in the mechanics of the site was malicious or ill-intended. Most of them did have their own agendas (more on that later). Most of this was an "didn't have a clue" problem. The amount of money that was wasted on platforms that were not appropriate for these forums is staggering. Most were because someone who had never even visited HC was sold a bill of goods from a vendor. When I was hired 2 years ago (after being with HC since 2004 as an independent), it was because I was asked about how I felt about the new platform, and I declined to comment. When pushed, I unloaded. I got hired to "fix" the problem. It took a year to untangle the whats and hows, but a year ago when we partnered with Nucleus, ... Chris, Phil and I (along with a constant communication — think long tether Craig as Editor in Chief Emeritus) were able to move some pretty large mountains. People have asked: "why did you go with vBulletin?" Well, the truth is that HC was started on vB. All of the raw data was an extraction in the two failed platforms of the vB database. So much had been "lost" (or as we found out scrambled or hidden), that we determined that resorting back to vB might help restore some of the lost. And it did.

It helps to clarify that there is no larger online community using vB (there may be larger communities, but when you combine members, data base and the fact that we are 20 years old, it all adds up to us being one of the largest). ANY software package that we decided to with would require customization. ANY! Xenforo or any other. So, we push through trying to snip off the frays.

I am proud to say that the work that TEAM HC and Nucleus did last year paved the way for this acquisition. Had it been left on the previous platform, it would not have been of interest to Gibson.

To the notion of personal agendas: No one on Team HC has their own agendas. Craig has taught us well, and always had our team running as a horizontal org chart. We all work well together and we all have one mission: To see HC a better place. That is it. And we have no room for anyone on the team to have their own personal agendas. It only gets in the way.

 

In the end, this really isn't about economics. If I were in a position to share the economics with you, you'd know that HC has never been about making money. It is (and remains) a place to serve musicians. Helping people make better music is part of the members of TEAM HC's DNA.

 

Also, I might add that we all have somewhat thick skin (you can't run an online community and not), but we also really deeply care about this place and the members here. But, most importantly, we are transparent. Feel free to ask the tough questions, and we really do want to hear from people. Yes, we participate here as well, so we know the frustrations of "time-outs", jumping cursors, and other small but annoying challenges.

 

The big difference now: Our mandate is to make this place fun and informative. "Fun and informative" are pretty good marching orders!

[Wayne2]

That's excellent news. I am very glad to hear things are improving, and I agree with your reasoning for going back to VBulletin. Best wishes moving forward.

[bieke]

yeah fun and informative, and functional of course, is Nucleus still working on the site ?

 

Dendy Added: As you can imagine, these negotiations were going on in the background and the old owners decided they didn't want the burden of additional expense, so Nucleus was in limbo. They will be back on the case of fixes soon, and in the meantime are hard at work helping us with all the migrations of DNS info, getting e-mails established and the like. It's all good. Bieke: You keep sending us info cause your feedback is extremely watched and monitored. I keep tabs on the things you present that need tweaking! D

[puretube]

http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/Forums_General/acapella-37/31466037-not-late-april-fools-gibson-has-bought-saved-hc?p=31466087#post31466087

 

in other words:

 

 

 

 

 

04-11-2015, 05:28 PM

Maybe the new rulers will be able to move:

http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/Forums_General/acapella-37/31084474-the-new-site-questions-and-answers from the Songwriting Workshop to a more harmonic central place?

 

Dendy added: DONE!

[GilmourD]

OK, so if you're really in charge, Craig, then I have some hope that things will turn out well.

[MrKnobs]

 

They wanted to get rid of Open Jam and the Poli forum and I insisted they be brought over. I was assured they would be, but they weren't. I was livid but told there was some kind of error and the forums got lost. But then Mr. Knobs (thank you, Terry) started poking around the site and found the forums most definitely existed - in a folder called something like "the circular file." He alerted me, I caught them in a lie, and they restored those forums but even that took a fight..

 

You're welcome. Thank YOU for sticking up for us!

 

...all this crap was their fault and I was getting blamed for it. They said they would take responsibility for the mess. They never did. They were more than happy to have people assume I was the problem so they could keep their jobs

 

How well I understand that. About all you could do was resign to dissociate yourself from the decisions, protect your own integrity and reputation, which you did. It was easy for me (and everyone else) to criticize the madness, because this isn't my job or profession.

 

In fact, I felt my credibility had been damaged to the point where I could not continue with my career as I had.

 

Surely it's not THAT bad. You've created a large body of work; your reputation can easily withstand a few hundred pissed off people with short attention spans who are now on some other forum getting upset there.

 

​

 

So here we are. It's my last chance to save HC and I'm not going to let that opportunity go unanswered.

 

Here we are indeed. Let's see the real Craig, looking forward to getting to know you. Let me know if there's anythng I can do to help.

 

Terry

 

 

 

[Anderton]

Surely it's not THAT bad. You've created a large body of work; your reputation can easily withstand a few hundred pissed off people with short attention spans who are now on some other forum getting upset there.

 

It got driven home when I posted a song on my YouTube channel called "Unpleaseable" about a particular woman, and someone said it must be me complaining about the HC community not being able to be pleased. Then there followed more comments about how I was the person who destroyed Harmony Central. That was devastating. I was so sure we'd be able to get it right through sheer force of all if we just kept at it, and it just kept getting worse.

 

The only value I have is credibility. I was always in control of my output, so it was not a problem. If I wrote a review, they were my opinions and I could stand by them with confidence...and if I made a mistake, I could stand corrected. But with HC, although I was supposed to be driving the ship I could no longer control it. All people knew was that I was supposed to be steering the ship. You can see from one of the posts here that my credibility took a serious enough hit that someone doesn't want to come back to HC because of what happened three years ago.

 

Here we are indeed. Let's see the real Craig, looking forward to getting to know you.

 

...and how we got here makes me realize that things do work out in the end. If it hadn't been for HC falling apart, I wouldn't have ended up at Gibson and if I hadn't ended up at Gibson, Henry probably wouldn't have bought HC...and HC would have likely become a footnote in history. So it took a long time to get here, and it wasn't easy, but somehow this all seems very right.

 

However as I said in the press release, where I could say what I felt , "We have a lot of work ahead of us, and it will take time for Harmony Central to reach its full potential." There's no magic wand and there has been damage. We will keep moving forward and the site's evolution will follow suit.

 

Terry, you've been a great help and a real asset to this site. Keep doing what you're doing.

 

[sventvkg]

YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Geoff Grace]

I've been wanting to tell this story for years.

Thanks, Craig, for sharing your glimpse behind the scenes regarding the secrets and lies that took place under the last regime. It must have been both frustrating and demoralizing to have your trust betrayed. You have my sympathy and compassion for what you went through.

 

That said, why am I not surprised that a company named 'Jive' lied to you? Doesn't the name say it all?

 

I hope that this time you'll have the free reign that you expect and deserve, and I look forward to seeing what you'll do with it.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Dendy Jarrett]

Geoff: We used to call it "Jive Talkin'"

It was a running joke!

D

[UstadKhanAli]

Craig and others can devote more time to growing the community, and less about fixing things and having to do deal with lies and lack of support.

[Lee Knight]

Fantastic!

[WRGKMC]

Life is change. Without it, you run down and stand still.

 

Congratulations Craig, Phil and the other moderators. You guys have always been the driving force behind this site. Without your participation in keeping this site alive it would have dried up and blown away long ago. I been around long enough to know your experience is what's behind this site and have sustained it for many years now. While I don't have anything bad to say about MF, I do believe they missed a huge opportunity to use this site much more wisely and lack a vision in the musical community. They are after all, just retailers and salesmen. You don't have to know about the products nor the people who use them so long as you have customers.

 

I think Gibson has been around long enough to know all that stuff matters, "allot". Its what gave them a reputation and what has maintained that reputation throughout the years. By hiring guys like Craig and keeping the other moderators on, I can see they actually do have someone working there who with enough intelligence to make good decisions, something that's surely lacking in so many other companies today. Without a good team and good support by management, there is no change, and will run down and stand still.

[Grumpy_Polecat]

 

 

...and how we got here makes me realize that things do work out in the end. If it hadn't been for HC falling apart, I wouldn't have ended up at Gibson and if I hadn't ended up at Gibson, Henry probably wouldn't have bought HC...and HC would have likely become a footnote in history. So it took a long time to get here, and it wasn't easy, but somehow this all seems very right.

 

...

 

 

 

[Phil O'Keefe]

That said, why am I not surprised that a company named 'Jive' lied to you? Doesn't the name say it all?

 

The most aptly-named company in history?

[Anderton]

Well to be fair, companies underestimate just how demanding HC's technical requirements are. Once you get behind the curve, especially with a site that requires lots of customizations, it's hard to catch up.

 

And I should also add that I think the people at the top at both GC and MF had their hearts in the right place, and wanted the site to work. They certainly spent plenty of money on it. It was the people below them who caused the problems, and not just for HC.

 

But that's in the past. For the present, I just heard that Gus Lozada wants to come back and moderate Nuestro Foro! We have a really great Spanish language editor at Gibson named Cesar Acevedo, and I'm hoping he can help spread the word about this. Having Gus back on board will be fabulous.

 

I've been getting tons of emails, and the positive reaction is both gratifying and overwhelming. Everybody loved HC back in the day and no one wanted to see it die. Cats with nine lives got nothin' on us!

[sventvkg]

 

I really appreciate your bringing this up so I can set the record straight. I've been wanting to tell this story for years. The rest of the team knows what went down and can verify all of the following.

 

My mistake was believing the bull**** I was being fed, and passing it along. With Jive, the first question I asked was about their mobile capabilities. "Sure, yes, we got mobile, it will be great!" Did the site ever work on mobile? No.

 

I had been promised the moderators would have an opportunity to test the site thoroughly for weeks prior to launch. We had a couple days at most, and I was horrified by the performance. The switchover to Jive was scheduled to happen while I was in Germany covering Messe (how convenient, that negative Anderton guy wouldn't be around). I was sending out email after email begging MF NOT to let Jive switch it over. But it was switched anyway, and the site crashed in under 5 minutes.

 

When I got back I was furious. I was assured it would all be fixed, and that we would run as well as the Apple site (which Jive also handled). But fixes were implemented slowly, if at all. We were told all the customizations the site required were a problem but had also been told one of the virtues of the software was its ability to be customized. Those technical issues are above my pay grade but for whatever reason, HC's needs were at odds with the company's modus operandi for other sites.

 

After a few months my patience wore out. Jon Chappell and I went to Medford and said we had to at least change the forums back to vBulletin because the forums were unuseable and it was killing the site. I made it very clear that I had put my neck on the line based on believing things were going to work, and they didn't. But I was being blamed as if all this was my idea and as if I had some control over what I had been promised.

 

Craig Johnson, who at the time was MF's CEO, is a standup guy and did the right thing. He directed that the forums be changed back to vBulletin, and wrote an open letter to the community that basically said this disaster was not my fault.

 

But after MF was bought by GC, priorities changed and maintenance of the site was minimal. The site performance just got worse and worse, and Team HC kept saying "this has to be fixed." Eventually there was a decision to switch to the Lithium platform. Again, lots of promises. I truly believe the heart of GC's management was in the right place in deciding to make that switch, but they were sabotaged by those who had the responsibility to do the implementation.

 

This time, Lithium did do what they said they were going to do. What I did not anticipate was that the GC team responsible for HC would flat out lie to me, and repeatedly (FYI those people were fired after I left; I'm not referring to the current regime which was very helpful with the acquisition). I was told user reviews would be migrated; they weren't. They wanted to get rid of Open Jam and the Poli forum and I insisted they be brought over. I was assured they would be, but they weren't. I was livid but told there was some kind of error and the forums got lost. But then Mr. Knobs (thank you, Terry) started poking around the site and found the forums most definitely existed - in a folder called something like "the circular file." He alerted me, I caught them in a lie, and they restored those forums but even that took a fight..

 

The people responsible for the look, feel, and performance of the site were arrogant and dismissive of the community, the moderators, and the editorial team. I was lied to (again) about the moderators having time to test the site. I was lied to about the forums - before the launch I said "Whatever you do, do NOT have light gray type against a white background. Jive had a white background, it made people snowblind, they hated it, and it had to be changed." They said yes, understood, they wouldn't do that and so when people asked I said at least the new site would not have a light gray type on a white background. So of course, the "artists" decided to do light gray type on a white background, everyone hated it, and again, I was left to twist in the wind because as far as the community knew, I had lied about there not being a white background. That was just one example, there were dozens more from scalability to readability to search to...you name it.

 

I was told it was impossible to do certain things from a technical standpoint, yet when Nucleus came onboard, they did those "impossible" fixes. Which is how HC got user reviews back.

 

I'm not used to being blatantly lied to. I do not use the term "lie" lightly; I give slack to people for misstatements or misunderstandings...but what they said was said with the deliberate intent to deceive. I had been spoiled by decades of business relationships with companies that were ethical. I went to the web team and insisted they take public responsibility for these horrible decisions via a feedback forum where people could vent to THEM, not ME, because all this crap was their fault and I was getting blamed for it. They said they would take responsibility for the mess. They never did. They were more than happy to have people assume I was the problem so they could keep their jobs ("not our fault the site's tanking")..

 

I was so upset I blew up and said that while I believed in Harmony Central, the editors, and the community, actions done on behalf of GC had destroyed the credibility that had taken me decades to build. Your post is proof of that. I decided that to save HC, the only thing I could do was fall on my sword (I wasn't going to cause a public stink about GC's people lying to me repeatedly, it was my fault for believing them), and that if I left, then the world would think that Bad Craig was gone so the team could rebuild the site and everyone would give them the slack to do it because now someone else would be in charge. They would have a clean slate.

 

It was a horrible time in my life but I felt that if HC was to survive, the reality was that I was the public face of these disasters and the people at GC were not going to man up and take the responsibility like Craig Johnson did. I was disgusted beyond words. It was a slight consolation when all those people were fired, but by that time, it was too late. I was already gone and the damage had been done.

 

In fact, I felt my credibility had been damaged to the point where I could not continue with my career as I had. People in the industry knew what was going on and were more than happy to offer me a job because they know who I am and what I do. Gibson was not my only option, but it was the best one by far. As I alluded to previously but with less detail, Henry wanted to hire me because he saw what was happening at the site, realized there was something very fishy and inconsistent with my history, and said he would give me the chance to do "Harmony Central right." I was thrilled that I would have the opportunity to crush Harmony Central (okay, I admit I wasn't above wanting vengeance), and then I could hire the editorial team

 

I ended up doing other things at Gibson, which was fine, but neither Henry nor I forgot that a web site needed to be done like Harmony Central, but done right. And now we have that opportunity.

 

 

 

Well, time has already told because there's a precedent. Look at Gibson's forums - they're loaded with Gibson haters. None of those posts are removed, nor are the people banned. People talk about their Strats and even post disinformation, yet they're still there. The only time posts are removed are caused by violations of the TOS that would get them removed in any forum.

 

As to the economics, the reality is that HC is on the same level as a rounding error on Gibson's balance sheet. Sure, I'd like HC to be profitable so we can re-invest in the site and make it better. But Henry said he'll be fine if HC is able to cover its expenses, which is pretty easy to do given the small size and efficiency of the team.

 

 

 

Although I gave up on a lot of things, I never gave up on HC. Even after leaving I helped the team behind the scenes on evenings and weekends. I updated my articles so they'd remain current, and contributed new content when they were overloaded. I helped with Music Gear Weekly (which was sabotaged, again by people who are not longer at GC, but that's a different story...). I didn't spend much time of the forums because I knew I was perceived as the problem by some people, and didn't feel welcome even though many community members connected the dots and realized I had been deceived and betrayed. But ultimately, I felt I had to take responsibility for believing the lies I was told, and the price was my former career and a significant amount of my credibility to those who didn't know the backstory.

 

Now to the present. I've been working with Gibson for 8 years and full-time for 2. I've seen Henry argue with people who think Gibson should have a heavier hand on the forums, and say to leave them alone and let people say what they want to say. He will not budge on that so I'm sure he will not change that attitude for Harmony Central. And yes, there is a business rationale: If HC can help more people get into and enjoy music, then the industry will benefit. Gibson is part of the industry, so Gibson will benefit. We'll all benefit.

 

I believe GC was going to shed Harmony Central. I was determined to make sure that the editorial team would have jobs after HC died, and had researched various options. However with those options, it was not a given HC would exist in its current form, but would likely be absorbed into something else and the editors would be hired for their expertise more than for being part of a renewed HC. That would have been better than nothing, but I couldn't bear to see HC die unceremoniously and unloved. Neither could Henry. So here we are. It's my last chance to save HC and I'm not going to let that opportunity go unanswered.

 

The team can verify everything I've said above.

 

Oh man...I wish I had the level head you have Craig. Would have saved me A LOT OF FIGHTS IN MY LIFE....I go Red and start destroying VERY SOON AFTER I'm wronged!!! You are THE MAN!!!

[Phil O'Keefe]

I just heard that Gus Lozada wants to come back and moderate Nuestro Foro! We have a really great Spanish language editor at Gibson named Cesar Acevedo, and I'm hoping he can help spread the word about this. Having Gus back on board will be fabulous.

 

 

 

Muy bien! :philthumb: