Miscellaneous Ramblings
by Sheena Beaverson
|
| Looks like Santa had a few too many cookies this year.
Joe Howard has given us a great new twist on a popular
character. |
BHQ Year in Review
Don't adjust your color balance!
Welcome to 2004! It's been a year since we rolled out the 'new'
BHQ look and feel. While the changes improved a lot of the
behind-the-scenes technical work, I have been having the most fun
making universal color switches each month. We didn't really anticipate
the initial responses that we got, though. These were anecdotal comments
from many of you who spent a day wondering if your color balance had
gone out of whack. While an accidental effect on our part, it harkens
back to the first days of "The Simpsons", where all the
characters were created orange for that very purpose. I guess you can't
take the comedy out of the web designers. :-)
Which event should I attend?
It's been amazing to us to see the recent discussions about which balloon
convention(s) people might choose to attend in 2004. After
all, it's only been a few years since the choices were few for balloon
decorators and practically non-existant for balloon entertainers. This
year will offer more opportunities to learn, compete, jam, teach, and
mingle than were ever available before. Whether you make your own travel
choices because of location, instructor roster, class content, the buddy
system, or competitions and awards, we're sure that a lot of new and
innovative sculpture ideas will develop from this synergistic environment.
2003, the year of Spam.
There's no doubt about it, Balloon HQ got hit by the tidal wave of spam
that swept across the Internet in the spring and summer of 2003. A lot of
the content revisions we had planned to address this year had to take a
back seat to the spam battle. It was a small comfort to know that we were
not alone, and even the big names were fighting in the same war.
Bill Gates even published an article in June in the Wall Street Journal
on "Why I Hate Spam". When reviewing 2003, recent industry and main stream
articles have referred to the "Explosion", "Deluge", and even the
"Festering Problem" of spam. Here at BHQ, posting to the email lists
remains significantly slowed by necessary filtering activities. Happily,
the faster email workaround for BHQ Members of posting through
www.balloonhq.com/mail/ has proven to be reliable and popular.
Database Supremacy!
As we worked our way through the technical difficulties, we were astounded
to discover that the Balloon HQ emailing forums are no longer the number one
BHQ priority. We found ourselves choosing to shut down the lists
entirely, rather than allow email traffic to jeapordize database driven
web services. Member portfolios, Upcoming Events, Classified Ads, and
the ever-expanding Photo Database (over 13,000 pictures) have come to be
fundamental resources for the balloon community.
2004 and BHQ.
The upcoming year is full of great plans and possibilities for BHQ. We've
got a lot of content updates and database expansions on our to-do list. A
top priority is 'leveraging' the power of the photo database, which is
techno-software-speak for spreading more of your great pictures
throughout the site as a whole. This was recently done for the
Balloons and Teaching section of the Guide. Another priority is
continuing to bring you the monthly columns. We're grateful to all of you
who've volunteered your time to contribute content, and to all the people
who've enthusiastically answered the call of the Dewey Challenge.
Hopefully, technical battles (and real life) won't get in the way (too
much) of our planned progress for the new year. We look forward to visiting
with all of you as we present BHQ Event Coverage, and also teach classes,
at multiple conventions. As always, we're thrilled to have so many good
friends in the worldwide balloon community. Happy new year, everyone.
|
| Classic Balloon decor for a local fund raiser.
|
Featured artist portfolio: Gary Hadden, Balloon Krazy
Gary Hadden of owner of Balloon Krazy in Durham, North Carolina USA knows
his classic decor! Gary also takes the time to caputure beautiful,
well-composed pictures of his artwork in their display setting. With
balloon sculpture skills and unique camera angles, Gary makes his arches
and columns really stand out.
See Gary Hadden's BHQ Portfolio.
