1,000th post
Last Thursday afternoon at 4:26 PM in this thread I made my 1,000 post to the GotSpeech.Net forums. It's kind of hard to believe.
GotSpeech.Net first came on line early on the morning of March 11th 2006 though that fact wasn't made public. It wasn't until this post 5 days later that I consider the the site officially on line. I still look back on that "If you build it they will come" blog post as one of my favorites.
It is almost 2 years later and I'm continually surprised as how far things have come. As I write this we have 2,373 members that have contributed to 2,744 threads containing 3,099 separate posts (all of these numbers increased during the time it took me to write this). Things have far surpassed my wildest dreams of those early days.
We are the number 1 site on the Internet for Speech Server help. We have brought you news of major developments and have provided you with Jump Start training as well as the new eLearning training. Our forums are very active and we have built up a stable of bloggers that are committed to keeping you informed about what is happening with Speech Server. Every thing we do is to make things easier for you as a developer. I sincerely hope that in some small way we have succeeded. That we have truly helped you.
Things have come a long way in my career as GotSpeech has grown. I've made MVP two years in a row now and I have spoken at TechEd, user group meetings and code camps throughout Florida. I've conducted training classes and and mentored other developers. Some days GS really keeps me hopping and takes up lots of my time. Still things are just as exciting to me as they were when I first started. I don't have as much time to blog as I did in the beginning and my time for just playing or experimenting with the different features of Speech Server has shrunk considerably. I can only see things getting busier for me and GotSpeech.Net as the popularity of Speech Server grows. Still, I continue to have fun and enjoy what I do and I'm here for the long haul.
My future plans include a book deal for later this year (maybe the second time is a charm) and I would like to do more Speech Server training. I'll provide more details on the book once things are worked out and as for the training, if you or your team are interested in getting trained by "the gotspeech guy" then contact me.
When I started this blog entry I was just going to mention the 1,000th post but as I went along it sort of became a look back on who we are and what we have achieved. I was originally planning on an anniversary post but I guess I've done that a few days early. Oh well.
In closing I would like to thank everyone that has contributed during the last two years. Without your participation we wouldn't be where we are today.
I would also like to thank Brandon Tyler who has been my partner since the beginning. Work has often kept him silent but still he has been there in the background. Thanks man!