Now we are 2!

[peterkrogh]

Today (July 17, 2007) marks the second birthday of the DAM Forum.  We have moved from 25 visitors (mostly me) the first month (with 43 pages served!) to 51,000 visitors with 193,000 pages served last month (not mostly me).

We have just crossed the 3,000,000 pages served mark.

Thanks first of all to John Beardsworth for his diligent work administering the forum (and his great work answering questions).  As it has risen in popularity, the spammers have been hitting us hard. Thanks also to Dan and Rick for keeping a good eye on the forum, and alerting me to periodic problems.

And thanks to all the rest of you for keeping the discussion on topic with a high signal-to-noise ratio.

I've been away quite a bit over the last few months, and it's been hard to keep up. Especially, now that I am an Icon:)
http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/icons/default.aspx

John suggested that we see if we can enlist a few more people to do the approval - spread the workload around, so that John and I can spend a bit more time answering questions.  If you're interested, drop me an email.

Thanks again for participating.
Peter

[djaef]

Congtrats on the milestone Peter. I only recently discovered the place and I'm still working through your book and haven't really contributed around here yet, but I think I will be spending quite some time here in the next few years, and I think it's a fabulous resource. Great figures! Anyway, congrats again. Here's to many more years of The Dam Forum.

Geoff

[Robert Q Groom]

I've been away quite a bit over the last few months, and it's been hard to keep up. Especially, now that I am an Icon:)
http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/icons/default.aspx

Peter, congratulations on both achievements -- the DAM forum's second birthday and your Icon status.

best regards,
Robert

PS  The author of your Microsoft bio page apparently overlooked some contents of your computer bag. I'm sure I also saw a couple of MacBooks there while you were in Australia.  

[peterkrogh]

Robert,
Yeah, well...
I'm moving to full parity between platforms.  It's a little slow, given what else is on my plate.  I have to say that getting Vista up and running has so far not been painful. It works a lot like OSX.
Peter

[dexter]

Congrats Peter


Regards Dexter

[davepatt]

Congrats Peter!!!!

[Photo_op]

Peter-
Congratulations on both issues, the forum's birthday and your status (Microsoft!?!). My concern is that unless the issues with the forum's speed (or lack thereof) are not rectified, you won't need more than two moderators. Maybe its just me, but response times have deteriorated (again) in the last week. Maybe it is the quantity of hits, but my suspicion is that the problem has more to do with a Beta version of the forum software dated 2004. I visit another forum using a more recent version that blazes. Hope I'm the only one experiencing the slowdown or that the problem can be corrected.

David

[johnbeardy]

David

You could be right - bad SQL can slow things down enormously - but arguing against your theory is that the performance varies over time. Just now, it ran pretty quickly, but last week I noticed some slow periods.

We don't get a vast number of registrations and no one moderator will have much work. It should be as just an incidental thing, you visit the forum as you do now and just spend a minute or so approving or blocking the odd registration that's happened since the last moderator passed by. I recently felt that was all I did at the forum, and that I wasn't bothering writing or thinking about the issues. So in anticipation of my trip to the US, I prepared some notes on how to spot the spammers and kill them before they ever post. All forums are suffering from this - they used to favour blogs but Google etc changed their calculations.

John

[roberte]

Hi Peter,

Happy birthday mate and welcome to the terrible twos! The DAM forum is well and truly out of nappies and has become a valuable resource for DAM.

-- Robert.

[danaltick]

Peter,

Congrats to you as well.  Just finished reading your "For the Love of the Image" write-up.... inspiring!  To everyone reading this, I want to say that in the two years I've studied Peter's workflow and used it in practice, I think I can honestly say, his is the only one that truly closes the loop on Digital Asset Management.  You may think it's overwhelming at first, but once you get your hands around it, you will find a new found freedom as a photographer like never before.  I think Peter sums it up pretty well when he says, "If you can't find your images, they may as well not exist."  All I have to say Peter, is you've made a believer out of me, and that's not easy, trust me ;-).  Thanks for solving the puzzle for the rest of us, and I'm anxiously awaiting what lies ahead.  Definitley an exciting time to be a photographer!

Dan

[havezet]

Hi Peter,

Congrats from me as well. Also my congrats to the people who helped building up this forum by providing active contributions or just by visiting and reading up.

The last two years you have managed to put a clear stamp on what many of us are doing ( / trying to do) in photography every day: asset management. This term is now wide spread and that is mainly due to yourself, your book, your seminars, how it reflects on the market, this web site, and your other products. A major achievement and a big compliment.

I am looking forward to the next two years and am very curious to all the great things you have in petto for us .

Keep up the good work.

Hert

[billseymour]

Peter et al-
Congratulations on 2 years. The combination of the book and the consistently useful information on the site have made learning and executing a DAM strategy quite painless and successful.

This forum is also interesting to me because of its 'tone'. The contributors seem to be, across the board, both friendly and quite knowledgeable in the DAM area. This feels like an environment where someone new to this area (like myself) can comfortably pose even 'newbie' questions; and where disagreements are discussed rather than 'flamed'. Whether this is due to good fortune and good people, or to rigorous policing of the site, either way it makes for a valuable and pleasant environment. Thanks.

One piece of feedback on the operation of the site itself. Others may have mentioned it, but I have found the operational response time of the site to be noticably slower, I'd say over last 2-4 weeks. I am often finding a selected link to a topic 'loading' over minutes (a new development here). I am running with a new Dell desktop, Vista, etc, so it is not a 'tired computer' issue. Not a criticism of the site at all- just feedback from a user.

Again, happy 2d, looking forward to interacting through the 3rd year.
Bill

[peterkrogh]

Bill,
Thanks for the comments.  I, too, have been pleased by the tone and high signal-to-noise ratio of the forum.  One never knows what is going to happen when starting an endeavor such as this.

As to forum load speed, it comes and goes, and I think has more to do with godaddy than anything else.  I'll ping them again and see if they can improve performance.
Peter

[AlanDunne]

Perhaps a few days late, but congratulations from me as well. As one of the early members (possibly number 2) I have been putting these DAM practices into daily use for a while. The advice from this forum and the book have saved me countless hours of experimentation of recovery from mistakes. I hope in some small way I have been able to contribute back to the forum.

The description about the high signal to noise ratio is bang on. This is one of the finest forums in all of the Internet.

Well done to Peter and the rest of the gang.

Cheers ... Al

[peterkrogh]

Thanks Al.
Peter