at first I thought this forum would effectively replace the old AO, as most of the old AO users moved right over here shortly after the shutdown. I came of age in my career with the AO and I really valued the diverse conversations that userbase was having. I learned a LOT about the field and how to navigate my career from the AO.
but after 3 years or so, it looks like the userbase here is limited to a handful of old timers, with a few people dropping off every year. There doesn’t seem to be any new users. Exam sections are ghost towns at this point and I dont see any early career chatter. I feel like GoA has turned into an over 55 community (not literally, but the base seems happy living in this safe bubble).
From what i have seen, most of the younger gen has either turned to Reddit or Discord. Much of the chatter there feels like the old AO careers/exams sections. I have no idea where the mid-career folks are hanging out anymore.
No real point. I just don’t find myself excited to post here anymore. And based on what I’ve said, I don’t think anyone will care.
Definitely skews at least a bit older. I don’t know where everyone went, I’m on two of the Discord servers and there isn’t much traffic there, the exam sections are ghost towns. I’m on Reddit and subscribe to r/actuary isn’t super active.
I’m not sure where the students go nowadays for their exam advice, or where aspiring actuaries get their “How Not to Interview” advice or “How Not to Use a Recruiter” advice. Perhaps all that info is now generically known, like Band-Aid or Q-Tip.
I did not. There was no way of communicating with all the AO posters to point them here. And whatever “network” we had of colleges students passing this place on got cut off. Kids are probably going to Reddit.
It’s unfortunate, because I think forums are still the far superior platform for exam discussions. Reddit and Discord just don’t cut it. There’s no longevity over years, nevermind 2 days. So I think the actuarial community just suffered a real loss of functionality when the AO went offline and everyone dispersed.
We did try to get the exam sections going. I built out couple lists of resources, and Serena and I spent $'s on giveaways of exam material in addition to what we’ve spent getting this place going and maintaining it.
And without the exam sections, there’s no growth.
And with no growth, there’s no opportunity for any sort of revenue stream from the site. We threw some money at some stuff early on in an attempt to use the site as a source of revenue but covid killed that entirely and I don’t think it’s coming back.
I had considered approaching DWS to see if we could work something out - I had the thought that if they still had copies of the old site, that we could import at least the content into this site. That’d give us all the exam and industry discussions, and likely bring in people. But the last time I approached DWS about the AO in an attempt to maintain all that content they really didn’t care. Unlikely I’ll get up enough ooomph to approach them again because I figure I’ll just get another ‘I’ll ask around and let you know’ response. (which of course means, that’s the last I’d hear about it).
So for now, it sits on a server I have, and isn’t costing us anything until we need our developer to make changes or debug. Eh, it’s fine. It is what it is. A community of long-time friends and associates in the industry who get together to chat. Nothing wrong with that at all, it’s not necessarily worse, it’s just different than it used to be.
Same here, I only found out about this place because I went on Reddit to see what people were saying about AO going down. It could be that anyone who started in actuarial in the last few years does not know this site exists.
Maybe in July when people start studying for exams give this site a shoutout and see if you could maybe snag a few people.
One thing to note regarding the exam forums is that most companies now have their own forums for the exams. I know TIA, battleActs, CF/RF all have forums (I have not used CA in ages so I do not know about them). So someone taking an exam has an option to either solicit exam advice from the course instructor or random internet stranger and than can be a hard sell.
As someone in his 30s with a few posts here and used to be active on the AO, any forms of social media is just not interesting anymore. There’s too much drama. I’ll pick discord for now where we can come and go as long as we want. I’ll probably eventually delete discord too.
