The Lithium Customer Conference is over, and I have to say I had a ball!

Despite feeling a little under the weather (I stayed pretty close to the hand sanitizer all day to avoid infecting our wonderful guests  ), I was overjoyed to see quite a few members of the Lithosphere in person. The Lithosphere itself played a pretty prominent role in many sessions, and we were able to show off the new design, talk about upcoming plans, and hear a lot of really good feedback!

But the absolute highlight of the conference for me was standing in front of all the attendees and recognizing our top contributors in the Lithosphere! Here they are again for those who couldn't attend:

• jloyless
• Laura
• LauraB
• Mark_Hopkins
• Mike_Hardy
• Potential
• Roxy

These names should be pretty familiar to most of us here (after all, they are all over the community and the leaderboards), and no doubt one or more of them has helped you out with your question, or gave you a great idea for making your community a better place. Their efforts have touched so many, we wanted to make sure they knew how much they were appreciated in front of their peers.

In addition to getting their name in lights (so to speak), each member above received a personalized Lithosphere baseball jersey and Lithium cap to show off their all-star status! Those above who weren't able to attend should be receiving them in the mail soon. But I'm glad I had the opportunity to stand up and thank them all in a big event like this - their contributions have been a large part of the success we've had, and I simply cannot express my gratitude enough for everything they've done here. My heartfelt appreciation goes out to you all!

I'm still trying to get some pictures from the various photo-takers who were there; as I do I will post them on the blog. But again, my deepest thanks to our all-stars above, and also to everyone who was able to attend the conference - I hope to see you all again next year!

Update: Here's some pictures from the presentation at the conference (and one of everyone at the game) - I'm still looking for a picture of the shirt that's not blurry, as well as any other cool pics, so if you have some you'd like to share let me know!.

A packed crowd

One of my favorite parts of this job

At the game

The photo at the top was taken by our own AubreyL at the SF Giants game Thursday night of the conference, and the others were taken by the ubiquitous KirkY! Thanks to you both!

I can't quite put my finger on it, but something seems different around here today. If you're new to the site, take a look at the picture to the right to see what I mean.

The new Lithosphere design is up! I can't say enough about all the great work that went on behind the scenes to make this possible - some of it starting over a year ago before we even launched the community! From those who built the foundation in the Winter Release of 2009, to the team that designed the vision, to the folks that made that vision a reality - it was truly a company-wide effort at Lithium to bring you this amazing new look!

For a look at some of the bigger changes and what they mean, be sure to look through the Design Changes Part 1 and Design Changes Part 2. But for me, the changes with most impact have been in all the little things, from the addition of RSS links everywhere to make subscribing easy, to improvements in the WYSIWYG editor and posting workflows. I hope you enjoy the improved experience as much as I do!

But we never want to stop improving or rest on our laurels here - and I'm sure that amongst all the goodness, there are still a few rough edges or ideas that just didn't turn out like we hoped. So check out the community and let me know what what you think works well - and what needs more work!