New Cameraderie owner, Kevin!

Kevin

Code Monkey 🐒
Good morning! :) As some community members may have heard that there was a possible ownership change coming for Cameraderie and it is true. :eek:

But before I start mentioning who I am please let's all take a moment to give thanks to @Amin Sabet for the amazing job he has done here at Cameraderie and his other communities. It's a great site and thanks to Amin and the outstanding work of the Moderators team members it really is a community. :cool:

Online I've been around with communities of one time or another since the late 1980's when I was running one of the larger free multi-line BBS'es in our area code. In the 90's I switched to a web site using manually created HMTL pages before switching to a CGI script before, in the early 2000's, switching to vBulletin forum software. Fast forward many years and I'm still online involved with forums.

Offline I'm married, in my late 40's, no kids, and have two fuzzy dogs who I've been told on more than one occasion that I treat as our kids. :LOL: I'm a tech geek with a 'day job' as a web developer for a major telecommunications company and spend my off time playing around with shiny toys.

Photography wise it's been a hobby of mine for years with my first digital camera being a Canon G2. Before my G2 I was mostly having some fun with my Canon Photura. These days I have an EOS 77D in the bag. Stuff I shoot is either for my own enjoyment or experiments. Classification wise I'd be an amateur but am constantly trying to learn as time permits.

But I know what you're wondering, what does this all mean for the Cameraderie community? In a nutshell it means that the everything will stay the same as close as possible with the same software and same moderators but you gain your own personal tech geek who will be constantly trying to find ways of adding/fixing/cleaning stuff up. :D

In the short term the work will be to move the site to new web servers with as little interruption as possible. Longer term work will be done to upgrade the forum software to the newest version, see what new functionality we can add, and keep moving forward.

Enhance, not disrupt. With that mantra in mind I'll be lurking around all of the conversations for a while to see if there are any suggestions that we can work on that people have been asking for or to try & get a feel for if there are any issues that have been complained about. The feedback from you guys, the community, will be the roadmap for what gets worked on. Some stuff might be easier to get done after we update the forum software so even if something is not on the immediate To Do list it'll get added to the roadmap.

I thank you for taking the time to read this and would, as the saying goes, open up the floor to answer any questions or concerns anybody might have. Feel free to ask anything, I'm not averse to the tough questions or complaints. Fire away!
 
I concur with Christilou's statement: That was indeed very quick - especially since most, if not all discussion of such a change was done on Mu-43.com. That's not to say that I'm dismayed or negative - it's just a bit of a surprise. But since we're all interested in keeping a good thing going, I guess we can consider ourselves lucky. Now things are clear and we can keep the forum moving.

Any information on how we'll go about subscriptions and contributions? I guess the old ones will have to be cancelled (or expire automatically) ...

EDIT: Argh, should have gotten over the surprise before posting ... Welcome, @KevinW, and thank you for taking this whole thing on; also of course thanks to @Amin Sabet for keeping it alive and well so far!

M.
 
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Any information on how we'll go about subscriptions and contributions? I guess the old ones will have to be cancelled (or expire automatically) ...
I'm on my phone so please pardon me for just addressing this one item for now.

In the short term there is no impact on any subscribers or other settings. In the long term if there are any recurring subscriptions then they might have to get reset as the backend email address will likely be changing. I haven't dug into the settings to much but for now nothing is changing as the first priority is the server move, after that everything will be given a detailed look to create the short term To-do list.
 
Hi, everyone! Yikes, this was a hard decision for me. As most of you know, Cameraderie came from SC, which came from PL, which came from SC, which some of you know came from this, my first website about cameras and photography. I actually can't believe that was only 11 years ago. It feels like longer.

I've been really stretched lately. Members here know I haven't been around the sites much for a couple years now. Certainly I haven't been able to do much to improve this site or community. Earlier this year, I realized that I had to decrease the time I'm spending on the websites and therefore merged the three smallest ones into this more general one.

More recently I knew I had to cut back further still, so I started discussions at Nikon Cafe and Mu-43 about merging all the sites together. But the Nikon users felt strongly about having a Nikon site, and the Micro 4/3 users felt strongly about having a MFT site. So, I made the decision to find a new owner for Cameraderie.

I'm pretty sure that I've found the right person to do right by the members. In fact, the more I see him post, the more sure I am. I just learned that he started photography with a G2, which means he could have blogged with me about serious compacts in the mid-2000s :). The fact that he owns forums for a hobby rather than as a primary job, is experienced at forum ownership, and has a longstanding passion for photography, all points to a great future for the site.

I definitely don't want to get sappy, but we have an amazing group of members and moderators here. I want to thank everyone here for making the community here wonderful. Of course I want to give extra thanks to @Luke and @Lightmancer and all the other moderators who have given so much time and energy. Luke can attest that I've asked him to take over the site on more than one occasion :).

Thanks again to @KevinW for taking ownership of the site. I'll be sticking around as a member if that is okay. I promise not to make suggestions or interfere in any way.
 
Hello Kevin,
I became a member here just a few days ago, but I want to be as an active member as possible.
I also have one or two suggestions for the site, but will do that later....I'm still working at the day job...just sneaking the site at lunch break...
 
@Amin Sabet , I just want to thank you for creating and fostering what has been my online "home" for the past 8 and a bit years - the community here is really exceptional, especially in a field with as much fanboyism as photography. Also for the excellent reviews you used to do (the blog link you posted was a throwback!), which drew me in the first place. Hope you'll stick around for many years to come and have a good work/life/online balance

Kevin, I don't know if you ever watch RuPaul's Drag Race, but if you do, you'll be able to fill this in: Good luck, and don't ... it up! ;) Seriously though, thanks for giving this community a future, looking forward to it!
 
Any information on how we'll go about subscriptions and contributions? I guess the old ones will have to be cancelled (or expire automatically) ...

I will make a post about this and send an alert to all subscribing members, but basically the way to do it is:

1) Cancel any existing recurring payment to asabet@gmail or vsabet@gmail in your PayPal account:

Log in to your PayPal account

2) Wait for @KevinW to set up any new subscription options which would go to him and advise further.
 
I will make a post about this and send an alert to all subscribing members, but basically the way to do it is:

1) Cancel any existing recurring payment to asabet@gmail or vsabet@gmail in your PayPal account:

Log in to your PayPal account

2) Wait for @KevinW to set up any new subscription options which would go to him and advise further.
Thanks for the clear info. Just to make myself clear about this: I want to keep supporting this site as well as Mu-43.com in as straight a way as possible. That's why I asked. I don't mind whatever money is going to you, Amin!

M.
 
There's certainly no push on my part... I have Leica, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Minolta, Konica, Olympus, Ricoh, Kodak Retina, Contax, Fujica, Yashica, Nicca, Tanack, Leotax, and some brands that required use of a Time Machine and Alternate Universes to discover.
 
Hi Kevin

Good to have you on board - a bit of a surprise but you are very welcome. Where in the world are you?

Thanks Amin for all your hard work over the years. It has been appreciated. Great to hear you are sticking around as a member.

We all need our daily dose of Luke so pleased to read that both he and the other moderators are sticking around. They help make this place home.

All the best,

Karen
 
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