WOHOOO we've made it!!!
We are now at 100% of costs covered between 1st September 2006 and 31st August 2007 - a full 8 weeks early.
I want to once again thank everybody who donated this year either for the first, second or even third time. It's great to know that we've built ourselves a real community which can take care of itself.
Of course the next step would be to "bring the site home" to Australia as sadly, we've all had to endure the slow down that's been created by our growing traffic and the aging of the server, and to get a new box in Oz would ensure that local browsing would be like viewing a copy of the site cached on your home PC - instant on!!
To do that however, we need to not only raise $8,500 for the first year to get it up and running, but before I could commit to such a move, I'd need to be comfortable that we could achieve it each year thereafter, and that's the tricky part.
I've had a number of discussions with an Australian company who have offered to sponsor us for 2 years, but as good as they are, the contract they produced demonstrated that I'd almost have to give up my first born to achieve reciprocity. I could have concluded it weeks ago, but to be honest, I've found myself backing away from the deal as in the end it was becoming too commercial and didn't feel quite right. In addition, I had a good hosting deal lined up with
SlimF from
www.myshophosting.com (Canberra) once I'd signed off with the other company, but as yet I havn't been able to progress it, so if you're reading this David, sorry for the delay mate, but maybe now you understand why.
I confess to being a little surprised that some of the major players haven't stepped up with their cheque books, Microsoft, Intel, Gigabyte, Asus etc., so I guess in the end it will need to be up to us, however I doubt that we'll be on a local server any time soon given the relatively high costs of local hosting.
So gentlemen, (and the occasional lady who may hide in the shadows), we start over again. Any financial support received from here will of course be accrued for next year when hopefully we'll be even bigger and better than ever!! And you never know, if I've been able to prick the conscience of any of the corporate lurkers, we might even make it home before Christmas
Mike
