Editing The Pen Addict 410/transcript (section)

== RelayFM Membership Discussion ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay, Myke. I don't see. I don't know why. Anyway, I want to talk about something real quick before we begin today. You may have. Well, you've definitely heard us talking over the last few weeks about RelayFM membership. You're going to continue hearing us talk about this. It's going to become much more important as the year goes on. You would be wild to not understand why. Right. Me and Stephen have written a letter, an open letter called Moving Forward, which you can read. It's at relay.fm forward, but I'll put a link in the show notes. Basically, the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting every single business on the planet in some way. And it's disrupting us with advertising. Now, you may think, but Myke, you have ads on this show. And yes, I agree. I do. But the future is becoming a lot less sure. We have ads now, but it's, you know, I believe that things may continue to get more difficult for us in the future. So we're trying to take steps now to prevent issues for RelayFM, for us, for us being able to produce the content that we want to produce in the way that we want to produce it. You know, like me and Brad have proven over time that, like, there's nothing that's going to stop us making this show. But things may get significantly more difficult if all the advertising dries up, because this is how we continue. So we want to continue to make the RelayFM membership program more and more interesting, more and more valuable. And one of the ways that we're doing this now is with the RelayFM members Discord. Discord is a community tool. It's kind of like Slack, but a bit different. Obviously, Brad has the pen addict Slack. And we've looked at this stuff over time. And we've settled on Discord because it has really great moderation tools and lots of wonderful community-focused features that we want to be able to embrace so we can build the community. We currently have over 1,000 people in the RelayFM Discord. And it's growing and growing more and more by hundreds of people every single day. So if you want to join the Discord and support this show, you can sign up at relay.fm membership. But there's also a link in the show notes of your podcast app right at the very top. If you click that button, you will be helping support this very show. So if you enjoy the pen addict and you want to throw us some money, you can do that. You'll get lots and lots of benefits. There's some additional bonus content that we do every year. There's a RelayFM newsletter. And now also the RelayFM members Discord. Also, if you listen live, going forward, there is a live stream chat in the Discord, which I'm going to be paying my attention to going forward because I can't keep my eye on both places. And also, I've never liked the IRC channel that we use to talk because IRC is very old and very bad. So relay.fm forward to read the letter and you can sign up at relay.fm membership. Now would be a good time. We've got a lot of stuff planned throughout the rest of the year that we want to do to make this a really good value exchange. We want you to become members, but we want to be able to make it worth your while. And we're doing a lot of things for that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So please consider a couple of comments, if I may, before we get properly started here. I think Discord's the correct platform. If I had things to do over again, I think I would be on Discord instead of Slack. And still could be. I mean, the Pen Addict Slack is awesome. And I'm glad it exists. And it's been very valuable to many of us. I think Discord just allows for different tools. Like you said, you can assign moderators. I mean, that's a huge thing right out the gate. People can mute people. They can block people.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We can ban and kick people if they're not following the rules. We can actually set out rules. Yeah. And let's be clear.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Slack is not built for what we're using it for, right? No.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Slack is a business tool and Discord is a community's tool.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. So that's one. Number two, I am a firm believer, and you already know this, Myke, and I think the listeners already know this, in the direct support models of the internet that we have these days. You know, advertising is one thing. Affiliates are one thing. But there's no better way than to have, I fully believe in the most direct path possible of support. And that's what allowing a membership, that's what a membership allows you to do. It has a direct path from you as a creator to those who enjoy your work to have a two-way street of, you know, content and support. And it's just very direct. And it's the best, simplest way, and I think the best way, I guess, to have that. And I'm glad that you're doing this. You know, we've had Relay memberships for, what, two, three years now? Longer than that, like five? Has it been five? Yeah. So we've been doing the, you know, because we've already done four member shows, right? So we've had that platform on Relay, and now we're just going to lean into it a little bit more. And I think you'll like what you'll see in the future from that. Yeah, there's going to be a lot. Yep. So all of us as Relay hosts are fully behind Myke and Steven and what they create. We wouldn't be here if we didn't believe in what their vision is. So I'm glad to be here.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Thank you.