2007 - a (social) year in review
The last few days have been so hectic, with meet-ups here and meet-ups there that I totally forgot to post this, but finally, here it is:
2007 would not have been 2007 if it were not for the three meetups I had during the last days; first Emma, then Claske and finally - the one meeting I have been looking forward to since we first met virtually: Jeroen Poortvliet.
Jeroen and me have been working on both building and maintaining a special interest community for no less than 30 months now and after much planning and shifting, we finally managed to get together for a pint of beer.
Jeroen, who is a real-life photographer has been spearheading the expansion of our community and it is safe to say that, without him, NL-Noob would not be what we have become. Thanks to his efforts, our turnover rate is incredibly low compared to other communities and what’s even better - whenever we seemed to hit a snag or stagnation in growth, he came up with ideas that allowed us to expand even further.
We are, by no means the biggest (Dutch) community, but we have a fair number of people that are very happy that we are there, when they need a gaming fix.
Marjon on the other hand, is totally uninvolved in gaming, but still made a tremendous impact on me, most of all because of the inner strength she possesses and if there is something I respect in people a lot, then it is the ability to conquer literally anything they are faced with. No micro-relationship here, just great talks and mutual trust.
And last but not least, the Wingman of the year award goes out to Kevin for accompanying me to a number of great and interesting events and helping me with most, if not all, visual branding things that came up over the past year.
I could probably go on for a fair bit, because the above mentioned people are by no means the only ones that made an impression on me, but I wont. The ones I care about know that I do and that’s that.
Cultural Commentary from both sides of the Atlantic
When I first met Nate, I knew that I had found one of those rare people you have an immediate link with; you share the same thoughts at the same time and it starts to become magical.
Nate and I are both passionate about what we do, what we have done and what we will be doing and we agreed that it was time to start doing something together and so we started to work on NachoTalk:
NachoTalk is a blog that focuses on social and cultural commentary, with viewpoints from two writers on opposite sides of the Atlantic (hence the tagline). We also may occasionally stray from that that formula and post something a little more lighthearted than the usual topics.
Nate and I both started writing articles a couple of weeks ago and decided that the best way to handle things was to go for a two-weekly schedule; one week Nate publishes an article, the next week I do and so on.
Our first contributions are online, so feel free to hop over and enjoy our new project.
That said, thanks go out to Kevin, Ben, Phillip, Emma, Gabriele, Joel, Katie, Darren and a couple of others for providing us with feedback during our soft-launch period, you rock guys (and gals, of course).