The 6th year anniversary continues and I’m still asking questions. These interviews have been enjoyed by the Cre8ative Community because they offer a little peek into their character and allows interviewees to share some things about themselves.

I’m still working on my pile of Industry Interviews. The following 3 members are the latest in the Member Interviews series.

Many in the SEO industry know “Wit”. Always helpful, fun and witty, he’s become a fixture at Cre8 and we love having him.

1. If you can remember, how did you first learn about Cre8asiteforums?

As far as I can recall, I once did a search for major SEO forums and linked out to those. Cre8 was one of them, but I didn’t become a member until much later. I was into SEOChat at the time and I didn’t really need to post on other forums. But hey the web wanted me to link, so I did.

2. Do you participate in other forums?

Nah.
Apart from being an admin at one of the snootiest SEO forums about today, and also at another SEO forum that is surely one of the darkest and most insulting. Oh and I’m also modding on various forums here and there, some but not all search related. Oh and then there’s some nice forums like the ones in my home language that I like to follow. Oh and I occasionally troll at the one that once had me as “the people’s mod” — the one that drove me here after messing with its mods in public.

3. Do you think forums are useful in your work or personal life? If so, how?

No comment (wink)

4. Please name an example of something Cre8asiteforums helped you with.

Cre8 helped me see how social networking works outside the regular social media websites. Impressive.

5. What are your favorite topics covered at Cre8asiteforums?

I like the blatant lies that need correcting and also the coding questions that need direct advice. Alas there are not a lot of the former on Cre8, but occasionally I come across one of the latter that is right up my alley. But mostly I like to bollock about.

6. Who is your favorite moderator?

Until recently it was (of course) Liz, but I really dig iamlost so I’m glad he’s been made a mod as well. So I’m torn. Maybe a bikini contest will sway my vote one way or the other.

7. Feel free to tell us about yourself, your work, and your passions. You can provide up to three links, including your own projects.

I’m not a web professional at all. Of course I have a number of websites (which I won’t spam here), but I’m lucky to have a proper day job (and a wife with an even better day job). Everything I do online - be it ‘code’, ‘design’, ’share’ or ’spam’ - is done because I wanna have fun. Also I’m easily bored so most of my projects are not even half-finished. Slacker, yeah, I know. Sue me.
I also like to attend SEO gigs in the UK now and again, so I can snog all the famous SEO chicks (hehe I’m keeping a sneaky photo diary). Oops did I really say that out loud….?

Fun

1. How many towns have you lived in?

Six. I was born in Germany (but no, I’m not a German), and lived there for 3 years until I could sing the Pippi Langstrumpf theme song in the local language. Loved the “Sandmännchen” and also the “Sendung mit der Maus” Lived in Holland for 6 years after that, then moved to Haacht, Belgium (great beer) to spend my teen years and learn to kiss and to drink. Moved back to Holland at the age of 18 and went to uni and finally ended up in Dordrecht (Holland, not South-Africa).

2. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

I’d be a 2B soft black one, but with a metallic blue finish on the outside to confuse people.

3. What did you want to be when you were little?

I always wanted to be a truck driver, a BP petrol truck driver to be precise. Needless to say I owned a Matchbox model of such a truck at the time. When I came to my senses (say: at the age of 4 maybe) I wanted to become an inventor like “Willie Wortel” altho I liked his Little Helper (”Lampje”) better. I guess my dream came true when I graduated as an Industrial Design Engineer.

4. Are you a morning person or a night person?
Deffo an early afternoon person. I used to be a night person before I got old and rickety.

5. Where would you retire to?

I think I’ll check out the next generation of cryo preservers and take a shot at living forever. Hope someone will find the fountain of eternal youth and defrost me to take a sip.

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Another longtime member, Lee Messenger, started SE Newslets, and it became so popular I combined it into what is now called Tech News and Lee’s SE Newslets. He also may be dropping by our blog as a guest blogger whenever he has time to report on industry news and happenings as well.

Lee is yet another example of what can happen here at Cre8asiteforums. Some members not only sit at our kitchen table, but they bring their ideas to the table and stay for desert!

Meet Lee.n3o:

1. If you can remember, how did you first learn about Cre8asiteforums?
Blimey… Urm… I think it was when I started learning about SEO, I started reading a lot of Ammons stuff and found out he was an administrator in here. So stalked followed him on here and just stayed around”. That and I realised I was the token immature Microsoft lover, and every forum needs one of those J

2. Do you participate in other forums?
No not really, I mainly go on the ASP.NET forum but rarely post… I own a largish forum that I administrate, but it’s to do with niche Japanese cars and recently I haven’t been posting much on that but just reading stuff and moving / deleting posts.

3. Do you think forums are useful in your work or personal life? If so, how?
Hmmmmm…. They are useful for work in the fact that I sometimes see things I have missed, and find some cool sites through other people – And if I am completely stumped I can ask for help and there are usually some clever buggers around that help, its quite rare nowadays that you can’t get an answer from someone on a problem.

4. Please name an example of something Cre8asiteforums helped you with.
SEO really… Reading Ammon, Rand, SoftPlus and a few others posts helped me a lot (Like the old reference to John … lol) and really launched me into the position I am in now. Its also helped me find some really cool sites, like the recent post of the photo site which was awesome (I forget who posted it now, maybe DCRX or whatever his tag is)

5. What are your favourite topics covered at Cre8asiteforums?
Well my favourite topics are all the dev (Not PHP … lol) and CSS stuff - But the tide has changed and the forum is mainly pushed towards SEO. That and my time becoming less and less, I don’t have so much time to contribute as I did – Although the Dev and CSS stuff has made more of a re-appearance over the last few months.

6. Who is your favourite moderator(s)?
Favourite… Man I can’t stand any of them… All high and mighty PHP lovers … hehehehe… Only joking! Don’t really have a favourite to be honest, I like everyone J

7. Feel free to tell us about yourself, your work, and your passions.

Not much to tell really, I like to keep a low profile these days… I run a small web design company in the UK called n3o but also run a few other online businesses/stores. Fingers in way too many pies). I recently decided to release my own open source link / listing directory, which has proved pretty popular (http://www.n3o.co.uk/software/aspld.aspx ) and hope to keep improving it…. Oh and LONG LIVE MICROSOFT & ASP.NET…

Fun

1. How many towns have you lived in?

Approximately 3… I think!

2. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

I’d be white! Hey I am white… How cool is that.

3. What did you want to be when you were little?

I wanted to be (And still want to be) a stuntman, I even looked into taking out a loan just after I left school and coming the US to a stunt school over there – Just never quite had the balls, then met my other half and found breasts spending time with her much more interesting.

4. Are you a morning person or a night person?

Both… I get up at 6am and I’m straight on my laptop… come home, dinner and put my boys to bed and I’m 90% of the time back on my computer until I can’t keep me eyes open.

5. Where would you retire to?

Well I (And my other half) have thought about a lot of places (A little while back was thinking about USA, as Kim and Miriam had to answer my dumb questions) – But most recently we have more or less set our sights on Cyprus. Although I wouldn’t say I’m retiring at 30!! I wish!! We are just going to make a better more relaxed life for ourselves, then I won’t ever retire… I’ll still be on here winding Lyle up about why ASP.NET rocks J and tinkering with web stuff.

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This gentleman needs no introduction really. We love John Mueller here! When he went off to work for Google, it was quite like sending a kid off to college, only JohnMu isn’t a kid!

These forums are fortunate he manages to get away to stop by here. I was happy he had time to ask him some questions!

Meet JohnMu!

1. If you can remember, how did you first learn about Cre8asiteforums?

I first learned about Cre8asiteforums because a thread there sent me some visitors regarding a Google Sitemap generator I made :-). The third post was someone asking if it had spyware – hey, don’t you all know that I’m an honest guy? - then Pierre (eKstreme) came in to recommend it, at which point I must have noticed it in my logs and so I came in to say “hi.” I had to try some of the other forums out before settling down, but it didn’t take long to realize that Cre8asiteforums is one of the most civilized placed on the web. Cre8asiteforums is a place which was (and is!) different than many of the other internet forums – users here are genuinely welcome no matter what their questions are. It’s not another anonymous chat with people trying to trump and beat each other up, it’s a friendly get-together with like-minded people who enjoy what they do & like to share some of their experiences with others.

2. Do you participate in other forums?

Yes, I spend a lot of time in the Google Webmaster Help groups. There’s something new and exciting waiting for me over there every day!

3. Do you think forums are useful in your work or personal life? If so, how?

Absolutely! I wouldn’t be working where I am now if it weren’t for forums :-). I think Cre8asiteforums played a large role in that because of the “Googley” spirit here – it’s fun, very friendly and really smart.

4. Please name an example of something Cre8asiteforums helped you with.

To me, the things I remember most actually don’t have that much to do with creating websites directly. It’s the community that makes it special. When I was first contacted by Google, I was pretty excited – I couldn’t really tell many people since I was running my own company and didn’t want to drive everyone else crazy too – so I sent Bill (bragadocchio) a message through the forums, it wasn’t much, but it really helped me to calm down. When I later went to Mountain View for the interviews, I had a chance to meet Donna and relax after an exciting day at Google. I love this community — the personalities behind the posts.

5. What are your favorite topics covered at Cre8asiteforums?
I like all topics that have to do with websites and I love it when small companies make great websites. It’s fascinating to see the creativity some of the webmasters put into their sites.

6. Who is your favorite moderator(s)?

(leaving this one out because I don’t have any “favorites” )

7. Feel free to tell us about yourself, your work, and your passions. You can provide up to three links, including your own projects.

I’m currently one of three Webmaster Trends Analysts at Google and we have the greatest job at the best company I’ve ever seen. We work hard at connecting everyday webmasters with our engineers, making sure that each side hears about and understands the worries & questions that the other side has, so that we can work better together, making more of the world’s information useful and accessible.

Fun

1. How many towns have you lived in?

I’ve lived in two in Germany, two in the US & just one in Switzerland. I enjoy living here in Switzerland, so I’m not planning on adding too many more.

2. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

I don’t want to be a crayon, but if I had to pick, I’d be green – slightly different but not loud like red :-) .

3. What did you want to be when you were little?

I don’t remember – but while deciding what to study, I considered being a priest or studying physics (or both). That would have been a slightly different life :-).

4. Are you a morning person or a night person?

I’m definitely a night person. I worked at being a morning person for a while, I got up and went to work at 5AM, but the night time just seems to work better. Either way, I enjoy the quiet of the night.

5. Where would you retire to?

If retiring is when you stop doing things you have to do and only do things you enjoy then I think I’ve retired already. One thing I have been considering doing is helping non-profits with their websites, helping them to create great websites.