Welcome to the First Three

Just want to say a quick thank you and "Welcome!" to the first three that joined. Pioneers all!

I see Eric from Longbow just joined. I had the pleasure of meeting Eric just a few weeks ago. We had exchanged emails late last year (over a completely unrelated subject) and he seemed like, well... a swell guy. Yes, that's maybe an outdated term, so sue me.

Anyway, we met at SunShoppe and Eric told me a bit about what he does with his web design company LongBow, as well as partnership called Giant3 that he is involved in with the IT guys from Artemis IT... all right here in little ol' Melbourne.

In my opinion, it's a novel concept and I think, perhaps, a strong future for many of us in this line of work. I've been meaning to stop by their office on Aurora Road and say a quick hi to everyone. Yes, interrupting the hard work of the gainfully employed is a special skill us freelancers have.

Also, a warm welcome to Warren Dodd of All Brevard Websites. Warren was designing websites while some of us were still in pampers. He's somewhat of a personal hero of mine and focuses on primarily on small to medium-sized businesses. I could be wrong, but I think Warren has more Brevard County clients than any other single firm. The list is so long I fall asleep reading it. If you get to know Warren, I highly recommend friending him on Facebook as his status updates are hilarious. Today's was: "Warren Dodd doesn't care how comfortable Crocs are, you look like a dumbass". And Warren, thanks for the awesome LinkedIn recommendation. Very nice! I owe you.

Lastly, I was pleased to see Elliot Murphy join. I only sent out about ten invites to start and Elliot was not one of them, so he must have found out about it through someone else. Aahh... the awesome power of the internet! It's like magic! (ha ha). Anyway, Elliot is one of three brothers who runs Statiksoft in Cocoa. I can't say how totally cool I think it is that he and his bros run a business together - particularly in today's fractured society. And they seem to have a very unique product - writing custom software using all sorts of stuff: Python, Ruby, PHP, and a bunch of other things which I don't understand. In other words, him and his bros be smarty-pants! They even have one of those hip web addresses without the "www" in front. Yeah, I know! Just smashing the domain right up against the "http://" without a care in the world. That is the hip rage these days, right? Man, I'm so old school it hurts.

Anyway, welcome all! And keep spreading the word. There's more of us out there.

Lastly, in thinking about a first meeting, my thought has been to get about 20 folks joined here (even as lurkers if need be) before we try to get our first shindig setup so we have a decent chance of at least two of us actually showing up. So keep recruiting. I'm thinking if Elliot can get his two brothers to join and I can get my wife to join, we'd double our membership overnight!