How to build a CD like Comminuty?

[Rickertsen2]

Now that i have graduated, i have joined an Formula SAE team and i love it just as much a i did FIRST and it is stealing just as much of my soul and time. There is one thing that bothers me however and that is lack of an online community. It would be really cool if there were something like CD. There are two forums already but nothing on the scale of CD and nobody really pays them much attention.

http://www.formulasae.org/forums/formula/dispatch.cgi
http://fsae.com/6/ubb.x

I see a few problems with both of these that have prevented them from growing. Both lack good forum software (vBulletin). This is critical. I often find some forum packages annoying. Another issue is the way the categories are set up. The fsae.com forum has no categories at all about design and technical idea sharing. The formulasae.org forums... well those practically scare you away after the first page. I think what is needed is another forum running vBulletin or similar with proper categories. If i can find external hosting or convince the new IT security regime that allowing me to use server side scrips won't lead to the end of the world i would like to try to bring about the FSAE version of CD. It would be great to have a place to share ideas, ask questions and see whats going on in the community. Now by nature just about every thing about our racecars is a closely guarded secret and i hope this does not get in the way to much. How did CD come about? How did it rise above the other small forums of its time in the beginning? What was it that set it apart and does anybody have any suggestions?

[Mike Martus]

You have asked for alot of information. I will be very brief.
The Chief Delphi Forums were the brain child of Joe Johnson 1996/1997.
Started small with a few sharing teams.
The forums were taken over by Brandon Martus, and to this day.
The Community of FIRST on the forums is successful because the community of FIRST is an open sharing community seeing the vision of FIRST.
Without many, many moderators, mentors and students all joined together for the good of FIRST we would not exist.

The leaders of the CD Community put $$$, effort and expertise into keeping the forums focused on the vision. Innovation and service are key factors.

This has been a very simple and not complete answer.