I'm not sure this is exactly worthy of an official DC announcement, but most of you know that (due mostly to my need to pay off school loans) I still have to take side programming jobs sometimes that are unrelated to DC.
Well I've accepted one that is going to keep me very busy for the next 3 months or so, and I probably won't have much time to code on DC stuff other than maintenance issues and bugfixes.
I'll still be around every day on the forum, but just in general I have a feeling these next months are going to find me pretty focused on this other job, so i probably won't be as active.
I think it may actually be a good thing in terms of rejuvenating me for DC -- I have a lot of new ideas that have been percolating and it will be fun to be able to jump back into them after a little mercenary work, and I can't wait to come roaring back with renewed energy.
Now here is where you come in. I know DC will do fine with me somewhat benched on the sidelines, but I was hoping to ask all of you to go a step further, and chip in together to make it so these next 3 months stand out as a renaissance period for DC, rather than a lull.
We have quite a few coders around here, some that talk and participate regularly, and some that have just been reading but not yet jumped into the pool.
What do you think, are you guys and gals all (coders and non-coders alike) willing to pitch in and make the next three months an example of the best that DC can be?
How can you help?
- Help me/us think of some new ideas we can do in the next 3 months that you are willing to spearhead and supervise. No one participates on DC because of money, but one thing I can do for this period is funnel all the site donations into any projects we can come up with, which should give us a thousand dollars a month to spend on fun stuff if you guys can think of a way to spend it. But please keep in mind that we don't want to get into a situation where people who have been participating for the love of it suddenly feel like now it's all about money. So let's be careful how we use the money. We could always just give it to people who have already been helping out the site in the past. This is kind of delicate.
- I'd love to get more coders involved writing some new programs during the next few months. How can we encourage that? I know i want to do this firefox extension programming "contest" here, which i've been wanting to do for a while. What else? What about a programming "contest" related to our Getting Organized 2007 experiment? I put "competition" in quotes because i like to think of it more like everyone who participates gets a prize, etc., rather than a winner-take-all thing.
- If you're a programmer, whether it's application programming, web service coding, game making, whatever. Create something cool and share it on DC!
- Help keep the DC blog alive by writing original content and finding new software and software-related stories to post about
- Writing mini-reviews
- What else?
Anyway, I am asking for your help. I hope you can help me not feel bad about not coding so much for DC in the next few months, and filling in whatever gap may be left by that absence. Nothing would make me happier than for people to look back on this time and say wow DC really showed how great a community it is.
Thank you,
-mouser (Jesse)
ps.
I shouldn't even think about posting this without first expressing my indescribable appreciation for all of you who contribute to this site and forum every day and make it the place that it is. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
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