nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Change Management Session

TheMix

Hello everyone,

We wanted to share an update about an upcoming change management session, where we’ll create space to talk through recent community updates and hear your thoughts directly. The session will be hosted by Owen from the Community Team and Anthony from the Youth Voice Team, and will take place on Thursday 29th January, 6:30pm–8:00pm, on Chatwee. After you sign up, we’ll send you the password ahead of the session. We’re aware that recent updates may have raised questions or mixed feelings for some members of the community. This session is intended as a supportive space to pause, reflect, and talk together about what’s coming next. We ran similar sessions last year, and feedback showed they were helpful opportunities to share thoughts and feel heard, so we’ve decided to run them again. During the session, we’d like to cover:

An overview of the upcoming changes
Your initial thoughts on the recommendations shared
Updates on what the Community Team is already working on
A chance to highlight anything you feel is important or hasn’t yet been considered
Space to share how you’re feeling about the community at the moment

We also want to be clear that while we’re committed to improving the community and working towards the recommendations, some changes will take time to put in place. We’ll continue to be open about the process and keep you updated as things progress.

If you’d like to attend, you can sign up using the link: Sign up here. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for continuing to engage with us during this period of change. We really value hearing from you.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Nathan

Bit of a question, but what changes were actually made to what you initially had planned last year, based on the feedback you received from the community last time, out of curiosity? Cause i'm very open to this, but not if it's being ran as a way to say the community has had their input and views taken into account with these changes made, without the community's points and views actually even being taken into account in reality.

I don't want this to be a smokescreen to say that there's been active engagement with the community with these changes, when for the last week, it's been mostly radio silence from the mix, besides the announcement, vague Q&A's the mix personally picked out to answer, with the rest of the community questions not being answered and the few that were, not in a clear or detailed way, with long wait times for basic explanations.

Nemuritai

Quick question, will there perhaps be some kind of summary or something of that sort afterwards for those who aren't able to attend the session?

Sian321

That's a great question, @Nemuritai , I can feed this back to the team, and we can see if we can provide a write-up from the session for anyone unable to attend.

Anthony

Hi @Nathan, thanks for your patience: I’ve been catching up after the weekend. That’s a really good question, and I appreciate you asking it directly.

In terms of what’s changed since last year based on community feedback, the biggest shifts haven’t been what the changes are, but how we’re handling them and communicating them.

Some of the key things we heard previously were that people wanted:

Earlier notice, rather than changes landing suddenly
More chances to ask questions and express how changes might feel
Clearer acknowledgement of the impact these updates have on the community

Because of that, this time we’ve:

Announced the updates further in advance
Opened up multiple ways to share thoughts and questions (on the boards, via forms, and through a dedicated Chatwee session)
Set up a change management session specifically so people can talk things through in real time, rather than just receiving announcements

Internally, there’s also been closer collaboration across teams, and a stronger shared understanding of how these changes affect the community experience: that’s something we didn’t have to the same extent before.

I do want to be transparent that while community feedback does shape how we approach and roll out these updates, the changes themselves do still need to go ahead. That’s why the focus this time is on being clearer, more human, and more available to talk things through, rather than presenting this as a consultation on whether the changes happen at all.

I hear what you’re saying about wanting clearer, more detailed answers, and that’s exactly why the change management sessions exist — they’re the best space for back-and-forth discussion, rather than long threads where things can easily get lost or delayed.

I really encourage you (and anyone else reading) to bring these points into the Chatwee session if you can. We genuinely want to hear them there and respond properly in the moment.

Thanks again for raising this so thoughtfully.

Nathan

https://community.themix.org.uk/discussion/comment/3819057#Comment_3819057

@Anthony I appreciate you answering this. I fully understand that there are legal requirements that require these changes to be made, a point i raised on the thread myself, and I am grateful for the transparency about this session. I look forward to being able to talk further in the session.

But in terms of the points you raised about the changes made, the earlier notice was done so without anybody around to answer questions about it after the announcement was made. The mix took 4 days in total to hand pick certain questions raised on the thread, and answer them, some of which were one sentence answers with no further explanation provided for them. There is still an abundance of questions that were asked in the thread that was not picked up or responded to at all. I've raised this point privately with the Mix in the past, when the Mix have informed me of something, and then refused to give any clear answers for weeks on end. I specifically suggested that it would be better to wait until the mix had gathered all information needed, or had people involved in the decision making ready to answer any questions raised, rather than announce it, leave the community in confusion, with the majority of experienced mods not present, and not answer half the questions the community has until weeks later. All that the change announcement has done, by doing it in advance for the community in the way it has been, is cause more anxiety and confusion around the change, whilst not answering the majority of questions it raised.

As for chances to ask questions, i refer to my previous point that only select questions were raised after several days of no answers, with the vast majority of questions on that thread still going unanswered to this day. The announcement was made on the 16th, and after several pages of points and questions and even arguments on the thread, the first replies only started coming in on the 20th to those select questions, and the session mentioned, takes place a whole 13 days after the initial announcement. So some members of the community have had to wait for nearly two weeks to get their questions answered or get follow up questions answered. This session could easily have run concurrently with the announcement, or in the following day or two, but instead, the community was left confused on certain points, with a chatwee session to ask questions only being available almost two weeks later, after boards threads had failed to see most questions answered. I don't think it's fair to call it a case of more chances to ask questions, if so many questions aren't even getting answered. Having the thread space to ask questions, doesn't matter if half those questions aren't being responded too.

As for "earlier notice" of changes, in the Q&A post on the 20th, the timescale was described as no more than a few weeks. Then, out of nowhere on the 22nd, 2 days later, an announcement was made that boards would be changing theme to allow for changes to be made in future, the crazy part being they implemented some changes the very same day as the announcement. How can that be reasoned to be advanced notice, to announce the boards theme change on the same day they implement the boards theme change? Surely it makes more sense to find exact dates, and exact information, and reveal it all together, with people on standby over the following hours to answer any questions raised, rather than announce it, and then leave people waiting weeks for answers.

On the next point i'd raise, is that the Mix already described this session in the first post of this thread along the lines of "We ran similar sessions last year", so this isn't a new thing based on community feedback from last time, but rather a continuation of something that already existed whenever major changes were made to the community, so i can't envision it as being a "community feedback" change based on last time, if it already existed before.

In short,

earlier notice, without being ready to answer questions that follow said notice, is not a positive thing, but rather causes weeks of uncertainty.
Being able to ask questions, and having spaces to do so, is not the same thing as actually having those questions answered. There's more questions unanswered than answered on the announcement thread I believe.
2 weeks between the announcement and this session to answer questions live, means that for 2 weeks, people have been unsure, and worried, thinking changes could happen at any moment, in many cases, with people being unaware of what a lot of the changes are.
The fact that dates have not been given for anything is not good either. Surely giving a solid timeline from the start would help immensely.
Within 2 days of the Q&A reply, where any changes to boards were described as being in the "weeks", an announcement on the 22nd, 2 days later, was made about changes to boards, some of which went live same day as the announcement, like the text box changes. This is anything but advanced notice in some cases.
I don't think it's fair to call this session a result of community feedback from last time, when it already existed and was already being done last time and the time before. It's not exactly a change.

I would ask that these points be considered, because from my perspective, the only change I can see from feedback is the advanced notice, which was a poorly handled announcement with no answers for most in the community for several weeks following, and a failure to give any advanced notice about this thread, about the boards theme change - Boards theme update — The Mix Support Community

so_very_tired

~~How do I access the chat? I've been refreshing chatwee for the past ten minutes. Or is just on right now?~~

Checked my emails, chat is on later. I am so stupid.

Nathan

https://community.themix.org.uk/discussion/comment/3819141#Comment_3819141

@so_very_tired i think they delayed it by 15 minutes, so it should be on in a few minutes

Redemption

I forgot about this, what's the password please? @TheMix

Sian321

Hi folks, given that the Change Management Session has now taken place, we will bring this thread to a close. Please do feel welcome to keep posting thoughts and questions about the changes on the Updates thread, however: https://community.themix.org.uk/discussion/3608351/community-updates-2026#latest

We don't wish to shut-down conversation, and welcome your posts about it!