Don't forget, guys, that it was my actions (intended for good but resulting in bad) that caused the crash to begin with.
Also, Matt and Dave were just as active as I was in our ineffective attempts to restore service. I was under the hood while they were busy scrambling around for shop manuals and giving me suggestions on what to do next.
While I'm here, I'd like to applaud some people:
Admin Dave: I don't know about you guys, but though I thought I was pretty good at the Admin role, he's better. LOTS better! And the format of dealing with TOU issues, warnings, suspensions, and terminations much more publicly (which I learned from Matt) suits him perfectly. He's got the appropriate sense of humor but also manages to keep visible that undercurrent of "I'm smiling, but don't eff with me when it comes to the site's rules" that Matt and I would do well to emulate.
Not only do I think he's exactly the right Admin for the site, you'd be amazed at how valuable a resource he is behind the scenes. His depth of business knowledge and experience has filled in gaping holes I wasn't even aware we had. He's become our defacto CFO and, much to my surprise, all the Admin tools that exist on the Dev site were written by him. Yep, he's a geek, too!
Matt: Don't forget that SI is his baby, too. When the site was down, he didn't hesitate to roll up his sleeves and help me try to get it running. Also, a lot of the underlying principals of how iHub works (many of which will be applied to SI) are his creations. He did some of the initial programming for iHub then had another programmer help him finish it under his direction to get the look, feel, and functionality he wanted. My role at iHub has largely been to add some gadgetry to the house he built and make it a viable business.
Our current situation (my re-involvement and iHub owning SI) can be traced back to a then-18-year old kid who had a vision of how message boards are supposed to work both as message boards and as businesses, and put normal 18-year old stuff on hold so he could bring that vision to life. Oh, and if you ever talk to him on the phone, you'd swear he's in his mid-30's.
Meredith: Our recently-hired bookkeeper/assistant. Wow!
We (my wife and I -- wifey has far more experience in hiring/firing than I do and my track record for the bookkeeper position was horrible) hired Meredith based primarily on her demonstrated knowledge of QuickBooks and basic bookkeeping/accounting principals.
We got a lot more than we bargained for. She's been taking on more and more tasks, some of which I didn't even know she'd been taking on such as some of the tech support load. And she's still got enough time left in the day that she'll be taking on other roles soon, such as managing my and the other programmer's schedules and task lists (Mine's simple: "Finish SI Dev, dammit!") and, eventually, gathering suggestions and bug reports for both sites and forwarding them to me for review and assignment. She also handles all aspects of managing existing ad campaigns, which is a time-consuming burden lifted right off my shoulders.
Chris: Our recently-hired apprentice programmer. She's in her Senior year at DeVry (soon taking ASP classes and she'll have a major leg up on her fellow student's since ASP is what she does all day) is now completely responsible for ad-server programming, implementing campaigns, and is taking on some of the iHub programming work. She'll be doing a lot more of it as she becomes more experienced, so I can focus more of my time on the new version of SI. She doesn't do anything directly involving SI, but her presence frees up a lot more of my time to focus on it.
And last but far from least, the large and loyal member community that've stuck with us through thick and thin. Without all of you, anything and anyone else involved would be irrelevant.
SI isn't just my baby anymore. It's got a lot of adoptive parents. A top-notch crew of people working on making iHub and SI work both as message boards and as businesses, and a dedicated, hard-core community who make it the place where smart investors gather.
I applaud all of you! |
