So, it is almost 2 weeks into 2009, and I thought I'd take some time to talk about some interesting things on the horizon here at the Lithosphere.

First, we deployed our latest platform upgrade to the community on Tuesday night  - not that you will see any visible changes here. A lot of the work was behind the scenes, one of those releases that lays the ground work for great things to come. It's tough sometimes being a SaaS provider when so much of the work goes on in the background. But as the community manager here I appreciate that despite the activity underneath not a ripple touches the surface!

On another note, I'll be taking a vacation during the second half of this month starting on Monday 1/19. Not sure how I pulled that one off, but I'll be taking full advantage of it I promise! While I'm away, Tom Diederich will be stepping in to help out. Many of you already know Tom in his role here as Director of Lithium Moderations Services. Don't let his HAL icon fool you he's a great guy and has assured me he has the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission...  Seriously though, I don't think I know a more knowledgeable, outgoing and positive guy than Tom, and I know he'll be more than up to any challenges while I'm away. Thanks so much Tom!

And speaking of changes, we have quite a few planned for next month which I promise will be quite visible! Not the least of these changes will be a reorganization of some of the content here. As with any community, what we think people are going to talk about before we launch and what people actually discuss is somewhat different. So now that we've had a chance to see where discussions are going (and confirm that these constitute real trends), we're going to shift the structure into alignment with those topics, consolidating where necessary. The difficulty will be keeping the content areas broad enough to cover the topics we want to talk about, while staying within 1-2 boards to make sure we concentrate the activity.

So here's your opportunity to provide some feedback on what you see here: what's worked for content so far, what hasn't, and what 1 or 2 broad topics do you think could cover it all?

photo by jurvetson

The year is coming to a close, and with it we are also archiving our board for the Webinar: Jet Fuel for Your Community: Finding, Thanking, and Engaging Influencers. I would especially like to thank Sean O'Driscoll and Joe Cothrel for taking the time to answer follow-up questions here on the Lithosphere, and my thanks as well to everyone who participated in the discussion - there were some great exchanges! If you missed the action don't worry, you can read all about it in the Events category when you have a chance. And If you haven't seen it yet, the webinar is still available for viewing - I highly recommend it! 

Happy New Year everyone, best wishes to you and yours in 2009!

photo by 【 大江‧帝國 】