Interview of Adrian with Brandon R
 

1. I would describe the current state of vBulletin as stabilizing with the recent release of vB 4.0.4, wouldn't you?
I think the product as a whole is improving.
It is fair to say that there has been a lot of comments about the stability since the release of vB4.0 – and while we have further improvements to make in that area I think it is fair to say that with 4.0.4, we have a strong product. We are still learning (and I hope we continue to do so), and our understanding of the product grows, I think we are in a position to increase the rate at which we improve the product. 4.0.4 has introduced the greatest number of bug fixes so far, as well as expanded functionality. I think we will be able to provide further improvements with 4.0.5 and 4.1 

2. Can you, in brief, describe your technical expertise and/or talents?
I can, it will be very brief, when it comes to technical expertise relevant to vBulletin, its limited.

3. 10 years ago, did you ever see yourself working for vBulletin, let along being one of the main person in the "scene"?
Certainly not. 10 years ago I was attempting to pursue a career in law. I am very glad (for multiple reasons) that this didn’t eventuate. I had participated in forums back then – none of them were on vBulletin at that point – and I had no idea how “big” forums would become, and how integral they would be to the Internet as a whole. It is difficult to do any form of search through a major search engine and not have a forum of some type appear in the results. To have an involvement on something that is quite integral to the Internet as you see it today is incredibly exciting.

4. How would you describe the success of "1 Admin" vBulletin forums? Do you think running vBulletin is , is not or should be a 1 man job?
It can be successful. I have seen some very large forums where there is only one administrator – and they seem to do a reasonable job. That said, I would never wish to be in their position, and I think that given a forum is a community it is always best served by incorporating the community in doing part of the administrating.

5. vBulletin went from being a standalone product to depending on external sites for some of it's features? Do you think this was a good move?
In a word, yes. I think we must always look to leverage what we can to give our customers the best product we can offer. This may mean including products that were not originally developed by us, obviously there are additional challenges that are faced in including products developed externally – and they need to be appropriately considered, but I feel that at least being “open” to incorporating external products will put us in a much better position to improve our products at a faster rate.

6. Finally, on a non vBulletin note, How's life?
Really good, it is summer here, and a great time to be out on my motorbike 

Adrian