MyBB Community Forums

Hi.

It is my understanding that at website administration or promotion forums it is not uncommon for experts from the field to get interviewed, and for those interviews to be featured on said kind of forums. For example, The Admin Zone and Forum Promotion have featured interviews with vBulletin staffers, and I know the former to also feature an interview with at least one IP.B and MyBB staffer.

Has anyone here interviewed a web developer or administrator? If yes, what compelled you to create an interview, and with the person you chose? Was it challenging for you to prepare the interview? How did you go about creating your interview? Did you go it alone on the research when trying to come up with the best questions? Did you ask fellow staff members at your forum for help?

As you must have gathered, I am interested in reading all you have to say about the interview you put together.

I have an interviews section in my forum, and it has 7 interviews till now (I know its less).

Being a Script Discussions forum, interviews from web developers and people who run successful sites should be published in it.
The first thing i would do is, if i want to interview developer of a particular script, I will join his forum and PM him (if there is support forum) or use the contact form to contact him. I would introduce about my site, say i have a interview section where i interview people like him, and request him for an interview.
Most of the times, they would accept. But note that you should make your site look good and properly developed. When you show him a forum with about 10 posts with a default theme and improper categories, and ask him for an interview, he won't accept.
Then once he accepts, i would prepare about 10 questions. To prepare the questions, i would look around his site, and find stuffs that can be asked. Like if there is an announcement saying a new version of their software is coming, i would ask what are the new features planned in it, etc..
But starting the interview, with some sort of "few works about yourself" would be a good way, as your users will learn whose interview they are seeing.

When he answers the questions, i would publish it in my Forum, and send him a link so that he can view it. I would also bump my promotion topics in other promotion sites to let others know about the interview.

To get more idea about interviews, see this site (not mine).

http://www.interviewedyou.com/

They have nearly 100 interviews.

Hi, Kavin. I recognize you from a few promotion forums, and understand that your Script Installs forum is well liked. Nice to see a familiar face, even if this familiarity is from seeing you every now and then and not from actually meeting.

Thank you for the detailed reply to my topic; got rid of my fear that nobody would reply, and I would have to make a sad face.

You mentioned InterviewedYou. I am familiar with this website. Indeed, its owner asked me to be an interviewer there due to my interview with community builder Patrick O'Keefe.

If I gave the wrong impression, I did not ask my questions specifically to learn how to interview (though I am always interested in learning), but simply out of interest in how others went through the process (from setting up the interview, doing the research, editing, and finally publishing). I know that if you set a group of people to the task of interviewing, each member of the group will go about the process in her own way. My curiosity stems from getting an idea of the many approaches to the task, as it may inspire ideas not just about interviewing but about the mind. In this I am reminded of what web usability pioneer Jacob Nielsen said (emphasis mine): "Users have an infinite potential for making unexpected misinterpretations of interface elements and for performing their job in a different way than you imagine."