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Notable News Articles:
Happy First
Birthday BT!!!
My
Optimistic Outlook for 2004
Triathlon World Champs 2004
Why I am Choosing America Over New Zealand
See
the Entire
News Archives
This weeks article:
 Happy
Birthday BT! We're One Year Old!!!!
It has been one whole year...and look at
what we have done! by
Ron
It was around this time last year that
Beginnertriathlete.com was first used as the new name. I am not sure
if any of you remember but a few year prior, this web started out as a few
pages about my first tri experience along with some tips. It was known
then as 'Mind, Body and Soul' and was hosted on a free Tripod site with
pop-ups galore. There was also a very crude discussion board that a
few used...but much to cumbersome to have any real worth.
Anybody remember those days? Everybody
was very supportive back then too - even when only a few like my mother, Freddy
and myself were writing for the site and it looked...well...very amateurish. Mind, Body and Soul slowly grew
until I was forced to get a paid account and a domain name. Mind, Body
and Soul was unavailable along with several derivatives of it. RATS!
I kind of liked that name. What to pick? I wrote down a list and
low-and-behold, Beginnertriathlete.com kept resurfacing. Is it too
long? Is this what I want to focus on? Will the name be
limiting? It IS descriptive though. Hmmmmm....OK! I will take
it! I redesigned the web page and published with the new name last year this time.
Soon thereafter, I received an email from
Michael Pate of When Big Boys Tri requesting to write. SWEET! A
person with a book. I can't thank him enough. His articles have
given BT tremendous momentum. Since then we have gotten great
contributors like Enrico, Priscilla, Gareth, Daniel Clout (our full-time
triathlete), Francois, Scott, The Steves, Steve, Geoff, Malvey, Kaitlyn, the Average Joe, Owie,
Dillion and J. Kelly and more. THANX!!!!!!
We installed the new discussion forum last
year too and got away from Tripod to a new hosting provider with more
capability. With Michael's and another girls great follow-up on the
boards and positive vibes, we
started building a great community here. The rest is history.
Training logs, new training programs in January 2004 plus a new web. People
started to ask about logo'd gear. Michael and Malvey have been
instrumental in the design of the logo's to get this rolling. Michael came up with a great
design for one of the shirts and Malvey came up with the beginnings of the
new 'BT' logo that is now at the top. Thanks Malvey and Michael!
All was going well and the stats were
skyrocketing after this new year. All until that lunchtime where I
tried to get on the site and I was locked out. "Too many users" it
said. BWHAAATTT!!!! I frantically got on the phone requesting more bandwidth.
They responded but I had about reached the limit. Allrighty, another
new host. We moved again into a much bigger house with much room to kick
our feet up.
Very soon I realized that with all the people
on the board, I needed more content on a more frequent basis, better
training logs, a new links database, AND HELP!!!!! I put up a post and
went to school. When I checked back I received about 30 replies to my
plea. WOW! This is exciting. We recently opened up some
private forums to organize ourselves on some new initiatives. When you
read this, many of those initiatives are from the help of others.
So now what do we have cooking here in the BT labs?
Well, Ovetta (infosteward) has become the 'managing content editor.'
She is organizing other editors to collect content to publish on the site
weekly. Her enthusiasm is awesome and her willingness to get this site
top-notch is unbelievable.
Lara (Lara_SD) is the 'Races, Clubs and Links' manager. She has been
very important from very early on and has helped test several versions and
new features of the training logs. She has put a lot of hours on the
site and the log testing site. We thank her a lot. Lara stomped
a lot of software bugs in the test area. She will be managing several
people to add links to our new 'directory' that will reside in the forums.
Also, what will be worked on next is to redesign the forum. Soupaman
is doing a great job so far on this task. I have seen a few of his
ideas and they look so freakin cool. He will also be giving the
training blogs a new look since we have so much data being dumped into them.
Nancy (Carpadiem) is taking the initiative to make the site more functional
and to make sure the navigation is easy. She is also working on a user
questioner to let us know exactly what you like and dislike. THANX SO
MUCH TO ALL OF YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE HELPING OUT!
In another month (May 2004) we will be coming
out with a logo'd product line initially featuring t-shirts and some DeSoto
racing shirts. Out of this we will re-invest for a more extensive
product line by the end of the year. Aside from this, we have some
other initiatives to also get the site out of debt by the years end and
start offering compensated positions. Everyone's willingness to pitch
in so far is helping us get to that point. Only then we will be a very
healthy site and will be poised and re-invigorated for 2005.
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