deviantART CEO ridiculed in comic

This Journal is a Hot Topic

by: 

Angelo Sotira (aka spyed) 

Co-Founder & CEO of deviantART

I'm closing in on 11 years of running deviantART and if there's one thing I know for sure it's that when you guys are right, you're right. And that at dA, ego and our own sense of self worth comes second to how much we care about deviantART and our collective love of what we represent together. Prepare for me to be humiliated. 

Before we get started, here's to fulfilling my promise to publishing the deviations made by akreon and vesner to the entire community for all to see, no matter what they were, after we invited them to get an inside look in to deviantART HQ and our operations. and maybe another cuz they're kinda scathing!

Some of you are wondering what the heck I'm talking about. So let's skip to the punch line and then talk about how we got here:

This is the latest of four Comics coming from akreon and vesner, who originally published this first scathing comic in December as a deviation, and captured my team's ($) attention:

After the community launched this first comic to deviantART's front page with 17,500 favourites, we took a moment to consider it internally and we decided to invite these two deviants to HQ to get an insider's look. All the while we were fully confident we could either show them the brilliant reasons for things, OR we could listen and make things better immediately or soon.

And that's what happened. We bought akreon AND vesner plane tickets, arranged a stay at a hotel near HQ, and last month they came to Hollywood, California from Poland to hang out with us and talk shop on behalf of the community.

Their second comic tells this story much better:  

 

But their third, intended for Mature Audiences, sparks the beginning of the humiliation...

Meanwhile, back at hq, we listened and posted the following blogs, each inspired by the deviations and journals written by akreon, vesner and the comment responses to their deviations and journals.

What's up with birthday notifications?! 

(April 5th, 2011)

Enhanced deviation view has arrived! 

(April 20th, 2011)

Minor enhancements born from community feedback! 

(May 6th, 2011)

And now we've arrived to the big comic above that was posted earlier today (or yesterday by the time you read this), where after all our time together, it would seem that these girls completely took advantage of the fact that I promised to post whatever comic they made in response to their trip, to the whole community! And they used that knowledge to completely humiliate me! When I saw the thing, my blood boiled, my heart rate went up and I started getting really upset!! Take a look: 

LLAMA EMPEROR???? 

LLAMA EMPEROR!!!!!

Listen man, I like llamas as much as the next guy, but to be called a LLAMA EMPEROR in front of MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, or else be accused of not keeping my promises is HUMILIATING! You hear me akreon!, vesner?! HUMILIATING! Below the belt! Outrageous! 

Especially after the fact that we are listening, we've already implemented many of the changes you've represented to us as important as per the links above. And we're working diligently on major releases, some of which we showed you and some we still have concealed.

Now, I don't buy that things are as bad as you make them sound in these comics. I think deviantART and our members represent the finest community on the Internet of any kind. I find a common bond and dedication among us that out-shines any negative thing anyone could possibly say. But I agree, we could be even better and we will be even better.

So I hereby accept your challenge. With all my heart I accept your challenge, on behalf of myself and mccann and the "amazing team" (your words) behind us.

I'll even take it a step further and accept your humiliation, and commemorate it with these emoticons added to the official emoticon library:

 

A sign you can use to zap my emoticon or those of our staff when we aren't doing the right thing, when we aren't serving you well, and when we need to listen closely. Use it wisely.

Meanwhile, I believe that the journal of vesner addresses these matters in greater depth. And while some of the feature representations aren't exactly accurate, I'm going to point the entire community to your Journal as a first hand account of what you witnessed, so long as everybody understands that these are not official announcements and everything will most certainly be addressed so that there isn't any confusion prior to, or during releases. However, our team is not yet ready to address these releases. So please wait for official announcements about these features before addressing the Help Desk or our other teams.  

 

I humbly hand over my dignity to this post with this situation, but even so, I want to thank vesner and akreon for the excellent example of HOW to communicate with our team ($) well. This series of comics isn't necessarily balanced or completely in tune with the whole community, but its delivery was powerful and hopefully inspiring to other members of dA.

We encourage you to use DEVIATIONS and garner support through our FAVOURITES system to get your issues heard if you can. It's not the only way, but it sure is effective.. 

tl;dr; 

Thanks for your support everyone, I'm going back to hq to kick some butt and build some awesome with the finest folks I've ever had the pleasure to work with. 

And apparently I can now herd llamas with my newly found super power, known as "blue zappies," which is how I described the lightning hands to starvingartist so he could make the new emotes… 

BTW, the code for them is : empllama : and : emplllama : lol