When I came on board at Bentley Systems it was the mid-90’s. The internet had just started its glory days. I was asked to monitor a news group that was on then still new World Wide Web and answer questions posted by our users. That news group was a public forum in which MicroStation users and programmers alike posted questions and answers and exchanged ideas. At that time all of these news groups were text only and had no graphics. Test files could only be exchanged via FTP or email, with a pretty small size limit in today’s standard. Nevertheless the system served us fairly well in these days.
That forum has long gone, and was replaced with a Bentley Systems forum which has evolved into today’s Bentley Communities. My participation in the community remains the same but it’s no longer just an assignment. I see this community as a valuable platform to exchange ideas with other participants who use and know our products well. I personally have made good use of it. I do not just answer questions and help users in these forums. I enjoy reading first hand postings about our products and communicating with our users. It helps me understand how our software is actually used and in turn benefits my software design. It goes both ways.
Some years ago a user posted a question in one of the forums in the Communities and I had responded to his question. I do not recall the details of the issue but it was related to his piping design. Later on the user posted back with a picture showing his solution of having identified collisions in his pipe running. I personally felt his joy as I had once (though in my previous incarnation) designed an air compression station that also ran a lot of pipes. Finding a collision without using a tool like Clash Detection in MicroStation proves to be quite a challenge. I was glad that I could offer a little help to this user and was proud of him for his success in solving his problem. Happy moments like that occurred on Bentley Communities from time to time and they always made my day.