New Directions
Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2014 4:09 am
For those who do not know the history of our chat room, it was started by Carly Matthews back in 1997. Carly was the administrator and she set the agenda and she made the rules. My only role was managing the technical aspects. I did all the programming and other related geeky stuff. This is how I preferred things to be. For my entire professional career, I have always preferred to be the geek behind the curtain.
When Carly left the room, everything fell on me. I moved everything off of free public hosting sites and onto paid private networks with rock solid stability. We had 7 wholly owned independent service, chat and web servers spread across 4 countries. For the next 10 years, I paid the expenses out of my own pocket. Believe me, it was by no means cheap. This was geek heaven to me so it was worth it. I also re-branded the site to Disabilities-R-Us and wrote all of the software that makes everything work.
For the entire lifetime of Disabilities-R-Us, it has been a labor of love for everyone involved. Contrary to popular thought, neither I or any of the moderators have ever been paid for doing what we do. We are not paid staff, we are all volunteers. Nobody gets a salary. The only exception to this is 15 years ago a lady chatter donated $50 specifically to buy me a steak dinner and then a year later she and her husband came to Arizona and took me to KFC (my choice.)
As should be evident by now, I'm a nerd. I'm not really a people person. I can read anyone like a book and know what makes them tick but I'm terrible at interacting with all but a few fellow nerdy people. This isn't good for someone who runs a support chat room.
Effective immediately, Derek Barton (TiGgEr) is the new Chat Administrator for Disabilities-R-Us. Like a CEO, he is now in charge of the strategic, operation, and organizational process of the chat room. He is the boss. As far as the room goes, I will remain on as a regular moderator (half star) and will provide my expertise in the technical aspects. I will still maintain the website and deal with fundraising because technically I am still the "owner" when it comes to the long arm of the law and the IRS. I don't expect anyone else to take on that legal liability. I will defer to Derek when it comes to implementing his room policies.
Everything else is up to you guys. Make this work!
When Carly left the room, everything fell on me. I moved everything off of free public hosting sites and onto paid private networks with rock solid stability. We had 7 wholly owned independent service, chat and web servers spread across 4 countries. For the next 10 years, I paid the expenses out of my own pocket. Believe me, it was by no means cheap. This was geek heaven to me so it was worth it. I also re-branded the site to Disabilities-R-Us and wrote all of the software that makes everything work.
For the entire lifetime of Disabilities-R-Us, it has been a labor of love for everyone involved. Contrary to popular thought, neither I or any of the moderators have ever been paid for doing what we do. We are not paid staff, we are all volunteers. Nobody gets a salary. The only exception to this is 15 years ago a lady chatter donated $50 specifically to buy me a steak dinner and then a year later she and her husband came to Arizona and took me to KFC (my choice.)
As should be evident by now, I'm a nerd. I'm not really a people person. I can read anyone like a book and know what makes them tick but I'm terrible at interacting with all but a few fellow nerdy people. This isn't good for someone who runs a support chat room.
Effective immediately, Derek Barton (TiGgEr) is the new Chat Administrator for Disabilities-R-Us. Like a CEO, he is now in charge of the strategic, operation, and organizational process of the chat room. He is the boss. As far as the room goes, I will remain on as a regular moderator (half star) and will provide my expertise in the technical aspects. I will still maintain the website and deal with fundraising because technically I am still the "owner" when it comes to the long arm of the law and the IRS. I don't expect anyone else to take on that legal liability. I will defer to Derek when it comes to implementing his room policies.
Everything else is up to you guys. Make this work!
