UBB.Developers Forums Announcements Announcements U-Zine Interviews August 2002: Content Rulez: Team Nicole

Interview by: tackaberry
Interviewee: Paulus Magnus

Content Rulez!!! Don't you know that by now. UBBDev each month honors one of our outstanding member communities that has developed a strong and vibrant community. This month we are proud to introduce our winner, Team Nicole . An all-out Nicole Kidman-fest. We caught up with the Captain of Team Nicole, Paulus Magnus to find out what it takes to have an Academy Award winning fan site.

Team Nicole can be found at: http://www.teamnicole.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi .



UBBDev:
Tell me about the history of Team Nicole and when you got started.

Paulus Magnus:
I joined a Nicole Kidman site in Sept 2001 after looking for some information online about Nicole and if she was going to appear on stage again. I met a few people on the site that I got on really well with but was troubled by a number of members that were just making trouble for everybody. The webmaster was on an extended holiday at the time so nobody was able to moderate or update the site. Therefore, I came up with this design where the workload could be shared. Somebody came up with a name for a little support group called TEAM NICOLE and the two ideas merged into one so off I went to start up this little site. It took 3 months to get our first 100 registered members but now we clock up around 25 a day after I redesigned the site earlier this month.

UBBDev:
Which are the most popular forums on your board?

Paulus Magnus:
Films - Anything related to Nicole's films is fair game in here so it's always busy with past and future projects.

In General - This is for anything that doesn't quite fit into the other forums but is always busy.

Café Mocha - Named after a members favourite coffee order, this is the general chit-chat forum for anything that isn't related to Nicole at all but just for sharing ideas and opinions between the members.

UBBDev:
What are the typical types of threads on Team Nicole?

Paulus Magnus:
We get a lot of news related threads with people posting articles from around the Net or from magazines/newspapers in their country. We also get a lot of pictures of Nicole that the members find around the Net. These threads usually turn into content that we move to the site for our infrequent visitors to find and for the search engines to index more accurately. We also have a lot of fans sharing their ideas and opinions about things not directly related to Nicole but are more related to their age as we have a large core of members in the 14 to 18 age bracket.

UBBDev:
How many films has Nicole Kidman appeared in?

Paulus Magnus:
25 released films, 3 more that are in post production at the moment and one that is being filmed at the moment, Cold Mountain.

UBBDev:
What other types of professional work has she done (i.e. modeling, stage, etc.)?

Paulus Magnus:
Nicole has done the odd bit of advertising work but started on stage in Australia, moved into TV and Films in Australia before Hollywood saw her and put her in Dead Calm opposite Sam Neill and Billy Zane. She did some major stage work in 1998 with The Blue Room in London and Broadway that got rave reviews and started a trend of other Hollywood stars turning to the boards. She has also recently done a few musical projects following her success in Moulin Rouge, one with Robbie Williams last year and she's doing another song this Christmas with Kylie Minogue. Robbie and Kylie are worldwide stars but hardly known in the US.



UBBDev:
Which of Nicole's movies are your favorites, your member's favorites?

Paulus Magnus:
My favourite would have to be 'The Others' as Nicole carries that film by herself and does a great job of portraying such a deep character. It's also a very good psychological horror movie. The members favourite is definitely 'Moulin Rouge'. That one movie has triggered more online activity than any other with lots of tribute sites around, it's one of those superb, feel-good movies. All credit to Baz Luhrmann for a stunning piece of work.



UBBDev:
How many members does Team Nicole have, both total and regulars?

Paulus Magnus:
At the moment it's 1,200 in total but growing at 25 a day. Regulars would amount to around 150. We also get a lot of people signing up but never posting but as we don't use the email information for anything I haven't quite worked out why yet.

UBBDev:
Since there are surely lots of Nicole Kidman sites, what sort of things do you try to do versus other sites.

Paulus Magnus:
There was only one other large site and they recently merged with Team Nicole. We've always stuck to the professional side of Nicole's life as we want a site that Nicole would be pleased to have her name associated with. She doesn't like the invasive nature of today's press so we make sure we keep that off the site. I also try to keep everything easily updated so that we don't get bogged down with the quantity of information. Far too often, sites become large and can't cope as you get hundreds of static pages and it becomes a burden to maintain. Team Nicole has always been database driven which means we're still able to react and add new features and sections quickly and keep our content up-to-date and authoritative. It's largely down to the members though, it's all their bits of information that keep the site ahead of the rest. We try to say to the members, this is their site, we just provide the framework for their information and credit their submissions all the time so they feel they're part of the site.

UBBDev:
Do you have any relationships with webmasters of any other Nicole Kidman sites. How would you describe that relationship.

Paulus Magnus:
I used to have regular contact with the webmaster of the other site but he's now part of the team behind Team Nicole. I do have contact with a few other webmasters and on the whole it's very good. We're all doing similar things and having those bits of competition between sites helps the fans ultimately so I'm all in favour of mild competition as long as it doesn't turn into a war. I do have contact with the webmasters of a TV site for Five Mile Creek which was one of Nicole's early roles and that's very good. They post on the site and they've also been wonderful at supplying us with lots of information for this section on our site.