S2KI Update for Oct 04
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Administrator
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 20,274
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From: Toronto, Canada
S2KI Update for Oct 04
Dear Members,
I feel compelled to post an update of what's happening with S2KI to keep you up-to-date with the latest news. There is a lot going and I don't always do a great job communicating this to the membership. I have plans to change that as I'll get into a bit but a lot has happened over the past month and many things are in the works for the next couple. I will make my best effort to post an update each month to keep you abreast of the latest goings on.
I am crossposting this update to the home section as well so you can read it there as well. I'll post an announcement on the front page of the site.
October has been an extremely busy month at S2KI. We have made some pretty significant operational changes which are going to lead to some pretty terrific benefits down the road. The most significant of these changes is that we have moved! I've moved out of my 100 sq foot spare bedroom and into some new dedicated space. We now have 800 sq feet of office space including 3 main office areas and a lobby. In addition there is 750 sq. feet of warehouse space with a ground-level roll up door. I'm not sure what the ultimate plan for that space is yet but it sure comes in handy.
The new offices for S2KI are going to result in a number of positive changes.
First, it means regular office hours and dedicated working time. Working at home just wasn't cutting it for me. There isn't enough structure and it's too easy to just go tinker with my car or some such distraction. This benefit is already being felt and noticed. My productivity is way up and I'm getting a lot more done than I could have working at home. The added structure to work at S2KI directly translates to more structure in general and that's good for the membership and the sponsors both.
Second, the new offices allow me to bring on hired help and offer some place for them to work. Most specifically it allows me to seek out a Membership and Community Relations Assistant. This position is going to have a huge impact on the membership and the local and regional communities. It is going to allow us to develop much a much closer relationship with the communities and clubs, more event participation, better and more regular communication, a newsletter, funky merchandise, the membership kits will go out on time and be stuffed with some actual goodies. This person will also be responsible for negotiating discounts for members and continually adding value to your membership. In short the communities and the members are going to have someone dedicated to just them and fulfilling their needs; something I haven't been able to do on my own.
I plan to have an open house at the new S2KI HQ including a BBQ once I get the place sorted out a bit more. There isn't even any furniture yet except for my desk and chair. Look for this sometime in late November. I need a couple more weekends to tidy up and make the place presentable. If you are in the neighborhood feel free to drop by and say hello. Members are always welcome and an appreciated break in the daily grind.
The new S2KI address is:
S2K International
938 S. Andreasen Drive, Suite B
Escondido, CA 92029
USA
The phone numbers haven't changed but for reference here they are again:
+1-877-818-1835 Toll-free in the USA and Canada (sorry rest of the world, I can't get a worldwide toll-free number)
+1-760-738-1115
+1-760-738-8947 FAX
I can be reached at extension 101 if you want to chat.
Many of you have already noticed a new face on-board with the administration team. Yogi Patel has joined us part time while he finishes school to make some pretty significant improvements on the technology side. He will be answering your technical support questions, fixing bugs and handling a good deal of the software and system management tasks. You can reach Yogi at extension 200 or by email at yogi@s2ki.com or support@s2ki.com. Yogi is a fellow S2000 owner and a long-time member of the S2KI community and we are very pleased to have him on-board. His presence is being felt I assure you.
Also in October we completely changed our sponsorship programs. This was and is a MAJOR pain. I say IS because we are still working out kinks. Why you ask? The old system was just plain unfair and awkward for starters. Different sponsors were paying different amounts for the same services, some paying less and taking more, some weren't paying at all. The new system provides a level playing field for all vendors and sponsors and make the opportunity to sponsor S2KI available to more vendors who would have shied away from paying a fixed, preset fee each month. Sponsors now pay based on what they use. The more group buys they post, the more activity their banners receive the more they pay for the service. Overall the price hasn't changed much, for most the cost has actually gone down, in some cases a fair amount.
Another benefit of the new system is that Community Organizers can control the banner space in your local forums allowing opportunities for them to develop sponsorship relationships and publicize community events.
Things are still a bit sluggish on the sponsor side of things. The change in model has caught a lot of the sponsors off-guard and we are still working out kinks which will make it truly valuable to them and us both. I have an update which will improve the billing and cost control of the new system, making it easier to pay for and manage, due out in a day or two. A lot of banners have been appearing and disappearing due to a lot of confusion in the billing end of things. That will improve greatly with this update.
We are getting hammered by anti-SPAM software. It seems that our ISP hosts SPAMMERs and this has resulted in a lot of problems for us getting email out. Anti-SPAM blacklists include our IP block (and all IP blocks assigned to our ISP). We've tried to get our IP addresses removed but without luck. Hopefully a work-around is forthcoming that will allow our email traffic to flow again. Many registration, lost password and subscription update emails are not getting through. Please bear with us while we find a solution. This probelm is most accute for AOL users.
Live chat has been a problem for several months. Chat works fine but the tools to tell you who is online have been broken. It always shows nobody chatting even if there are. Finding people in the chat rooms is hit or miss and so most people had stopped using it. Yogi is working on a fix for this issue and the chatters online function should be functioning again in a day or two. Hopefully the new information about the chat room status will encourage people to use it again.
Search is a continuing nightmare. It has been in various states of broken for over a year now. I'm not sure we have a definitive fix but on Oct 30th we are going to be working on the problem. The results are yet to be seen. I'm not sure that what we plan to do is going to be the ultimate fix but it's worth a shot. We are going to need to shutdown the database server to do this work which will result in the site being offline most of the day.
The web servers have been a little unstable of late. The system which rotates log files broke and the servers logs weren't being rotated nightly as they should. The web server logs are huge and there is a 2GB maximum file size limit. If the file grows to maximum size, the server dies. If the log rotation is broken the logs can reach maximum size in just over a day depending on the server. This has resulted a lot of server crashes and a lot of frustration as a result. I'm keeping a close eye on the logs now, checking them every morning to make sure things don't fall off track and if they do to fix them before the server crashes.
I'm planning an update to the membership system to support more forms of payment besides PayPal, specifically credit cards and checks/money orders. I'm also going to offer a renewal option so you can renew your membership before it expires. Included in the renewal will be notification emails to let you know your membership is expiring. Look for this in the next few weeks. I haven't started on it yet and won't until I get a few other things cleaned up.
Yogi has completed a new system for producing membership cards and kits. I've got them ready to go and we are just waiting until next week to give people time to make sure the mailing address in their profile is correct. Please check your profiles and make sure the mailing address is 100% correct and complete. It costs us a fair amount of money to have these kits go out only to be returned undeliverable. Please make sure the address in your profile is correct or it will be a big waste of scarce cash down the drain when they come back to me.
There is a lot of concern about having full mailing addresses in your profiles expressed by members. I want to assure you and offer you a guarantee that your address information, phone numbers, etc. are 100% private. They are not visible to anyone but the administrators and yourselves and are used for no purpose other than fulfilling your memberships. Never will this information be sold, given or made available to anyone for any other reason. I hate SPAM. There is no other way to say it. Nothing irks me more than a mailbox full of junk I don't want. That includes snail mail, telemarketing and email. I would never approve of or accept imposing it on you either. That's my personal guarantee that the information you provide will be used for honorable and legitimate purposes only and never marketing or SPAM. It would take a court order to get it out of me and then only if I had no choice in the matter.
I hope to have the new Membership and Community Relations person on-board next month to make sure these kits go out on time and reliably. They will also be producing a regular newsletter to go out to members which should contain the site updates (which you are reading) as well as community news. There is so much going on all over the place that we need a single place to make sure you get to see and know all of the important stuff which can be buried in community forums you never get to right now. They will also make sure this important and newsworthy information is brought forward to the site front page. The site front page should provide a pretty up-to-date snapshot of what's going on in the S2KI community. It falls way short of that mark right now. There just isn't enough time in the day to manage it right now. Having someone deal with just that will make the time needed.
Not having a summary of community events has also led to fragmentation. Pulling that together will pull together the whole community and is a really high priority. Look for a major improvement in this area by the new year. It will take a bit of time to get up to speed. I was hoping 2004 would be the year this happened but it just didn't work out that way. I think we now have the pieces in place to complete the picture.
In closing for this update I want to make notable mention of a couple of people who have made a major impact on S2KI and the community during this time of transition. I want to thank Ian Eygelsheim (AquilaEagle) for stepping up and really making a difference. He has been filling in when we fall short and going well above the call to improve the entire community while at the same time leading the UK club. Your efforts are very appreciated and haven't gone unnoticed. I would also like to offer special thanks to Yogi Patel (yogi) for putting in way more time than he is getting paid for and stepping up and taking responsibility for some rather un-glamorous tasks and seeing them through to the end. Taking the initiative to get things done and make sure they don't fall on the floor when they get tedious, well what can you say, it's godly. Thanks very much!
Thank you to the membership and sponsors for hanging tough through these past months of chaos and confusion. We are making a necessary transition that will result in significant improvements very soon, many of them are already in place while many are still to come.
Cheers,
Erik Petersen (cthree) and the entire S2KI team.
I feel compelled to post an update of what's happening with S2KI to keep you up-to-date with the latest news. There is a lot going and I don't always do a great job communicating this to the membership. I have plans to change that as I'll get into a bit but a lot has happened over the past month and many things are in the works for the next couple. I will make my best effort to post an update each month to keep you abreast of the latest goings on.
I am crossposting this update to the home section as well so you can read it there as well. I'll post an announcement on the front page of the site.
October has been an extremely busy month at S2KI. We have made some pretty significant operational changes which are going to lead to some pretty terrific benefits down the road. The most significant of these changes is that we have moved! I've moved out of my 100 sq foot spare bedroom and into some new dedicated space. We now have 800 sq feet of office space including 3 main office areas and a lobby. In addition there is 750 sq. feet of warehouse space with a ground-level roll up door. I'm not sure what the ultimate plan for that space is yet but it sure comes in handy.
The new offices for S2KI are going to result in a number of positive changes.
First, it means regular office hours and dedicated working time. Working at home just wasn't cutting it for me. There isn't enough structure and it's too easy to just go tinker with my car or some such distraction. This benefit is already being felt and noticed. My productivity is way up and I'm getting a lot more done than I could have working at home. The added structure to work at S2KI directly translates to more structure in general and that's good for the membership and the sponsors both.
Second, the new offices allow me to bring on hired help and offer some place for them to work. Most specifically it allows me to seek out a Membership and Community Relations Assistant. This position is going to have a huge impact on the membership and the local and regional communities. It is going to allow us to develop much a much closer relationship with the communities and clubs, more event participation, better and more regular communication, a newsletter, funky merchandise, the membership kits will go out on time and be stuffed with some actual goodies. This person will also be responsible for negotiating discounts for members and continually adding value to your membership. In short the communities and the members are going to have someone dedicated to just them and fulfilling their needs; something I haven't been able to do on my own.
I plan to have an open house at the new S2KI HQ including a BBQ once I get the place sorted out a bit more. There isn't even any furniture yet except for my desk and chair. Look for this sometime in late November. I need a couple more weekends to tidy up and make the place presentable. If you are in the neighborhood feel free to drop by and say hello. Members are always welcome and an appreciated break in the daily grind.
The new S2KI address is:
S2K International
938 S. Andreasen Drive, Suite B
Escondido, CA 92029
USA
The phone numbers haven't changed but for reference here they are again:
+1-877-818-1835 Toll-free in the USA and Canada (sorry rest of the world, I can't get a worldwide toll-free number)
+1-760-738-1115
+1-760-738-8947 FAX
I can be reached at extension 101 if you want to chat.
Many of you have already noticed a new face on-board with the administration team. Yogi Patel has joined us part time while he finishes school to make some pretty significant improvements on the technology side. He will be answering your technical support questions, fixing bugs and handling a good deal of the software and system management tasks. You can reach Yogi at extension 200 or by email at yogi@s2ki.com or support@s2ki.com. Yogi is a fellow S2000 owner and a long-time member of the S2KI community and we are very pleased to have him on-board. His presence is being felt I assure you.
Also in October we completely changed our sponsorship programs. This was and is a MAJOR pain. I say IS because we are still working out kinks. Why you ask? The old system was just plain unfair and awkward for starters. Different sponsors were paying different amounts for the same services, some paying less and taking more, some weren't paying at all. The new system provides a level playing field for all vendors and sponsors and make the opportunity to sponsor S2KI available to more vendors who would have shied away from paying a fixed, preset fee each month. Sponsors now pay based on what they use. The more group buys they post, the more activity their banners receive the more they pay for the service. Overall the price hasn't changed much, for most the cost has actually gone down, in some cases a fair amount.
Another benefit of the new system is that Community Organizers can control the banner space in your local forums allowing opportunities for them to develop sponsorship relationships and publicize community events.
Things are still a bit sluggish on the sponsor side of things. The change in model has caught a lot of the sponsors off-guard and we are still working out kinks which will make it truly valuable to them and us both. I have an update which will improve the billing and cost control of the new system, making it easier to pay for and manage, due out in a day or two. A lot of banners have been appearing and disappearing due to a lot of confusion in the billing end of things. That will improve greatly with this update.
We are getting hammered by anti-SPAM software. It seems that our ISP hosts SPAMMERs and this has resulted in a lot of problems for us getting email out. Anti-SPAM blacklists include our IP block (and all IP blocks assigned to our ISP). We've tried to get our IP addresses removed but without luck. Hopefully a work-around is forthcoming that will allow our email traffic to flow again. Many registration, lost password and subscription update emails are not getting through. Please bear with us while we find a solution. This probelm is most accute for AOL users.
Live chat has been a problem for several months. Chat works fine but the tools to tell you who is online have been broken. It always shows nobody chatting even if there are. Finding people in the chat rooms is hit or miss and so most people had stopped using it. Yogi is working on a fix for this issue and the chatters online function should be functioning again in a day or two. Hopefully the new information about the chat room status will encourage people to use it again.
Search is a continuing nightmare. It has been in various states of broken for over a year now. I'm not sure we have a definitive fix but on Oct 30th we are going to be working on the problem. The results are yet to be seen. I'm not sure that what we plan to do is going to be the ultimate fix but it's worth a shot. We are going to need to shutdown the database server to do this work which will result in the site being offline most of the day.
The web servers have been a little unstable of late. The system which rotates log files broke and the servers logs weren't being rotated nightly as they should. The web server logs are huge and there is a 2GB maximum file size limit. If the file grows to maximum size, the server dies. If the log rotation is broken the logs can reach maximum size in just over a day depending on the server. This has resulted a lot of server crashes and a lot of frustration as a result. I'm keeping a close eye on the logs now, checking them every morning to make sure things don't fall off track and if they do to fix them before the server crashes.
I'm planning an update to the membership system to support more forms of payment besides PayPal, specifically credit cards and checks/money orders. I'm also going to offer a renewal option so you can renew your membership before it expires. Included in the renewal will be notification emails to let you know your membership is expiring. Look for this in the next few weeks. I haven't started on it yet and won't until I get a few other things cleaned up.
Yogi has completed a new system for producing membership cards and kits. I've got them ready to go and we are just waiting until next week to give people time to make sure the mailing address in their profile is correct. Please check your profiles and make sure the mailing address is 100% correct and complete. It costs us a fair amount of money to have these kits go out only to be returned undeliverable. Please make sure the address in your profile is correct or it will be a big waste of scarce cash down the drain when they come back to me.
There is a lot of concern about having full mailing addresses in your profiles expressed by members. I want to assure you and offer you a guarantee that your address information, phone numbers, etc. are 100% private. They are not visible to anyone but the administrators and yourselves and are used for no purpose other than fulfilling your memberships. Never will this information be sold, given or made available to anyone for any other reason. I hate SPAM. There is no other way to say it. Nothing irks me more than a mailbox full of junk I don't want. That includes snail mail, telemarketing and email. I would never approve of or accept imposing it on you either. That's my personal guarantee that the information you provide will be used for honorable and legitimate purposes only and never marketing or SPAM. It would take a court order to get it out of me and then only if I had no choice in the matter.
I hope to have the new Membership and Community Relations person on-board next month to make sure these kits go out on time and reliably. They will also be producing a regular newsletter to go out to members which should contain the site updates (which you are reading) as well as community news. There is so much going on all over the place that we need a single place to make sure you get to see and know all of the important stuff which can be buried in community forums you never get to right now. They will also make sure this important and newsworthy information is brought forward to the site front page. The site front page should provide a pretty up-to-date snapshot of what's going on in the S2KI community. It falls way short of that mark right now. There just isn't enough time in the day to manage it right now. Having someone deal with just that will make the time needed.
Not having a summary of community events has also led to fragmentation. Pulling that together will pull together the whole community and is a really high priority. Look for a major improvement in this area by the new year. It will take a bit of time to get up to speed. I was hoping 2004 would be the year this happened but it just didn't work out that way. I think we now have the pieces in place to complete the picture.
In closing for this update I want to make notable mention of a couple of people who have made a major impact on S2KI and the community during this time of transition. I want to thank Ian Eygelsheim (AquilaEagle) for stepping up and really making a difference. He has been filling in when we fall short and going well above the call to improve the entire community while at the same time leading the UK club. Your efforts are very appreciated and haven't gone unnoticed. I would also like to offer special thanks to Yogi Patel (yogi) for putting in way more time than he is getting paid for and stepping up and taking responsibility for some rather un-glamorous tasks and seeing them through to the end. Taking the initiative to get things done and make sure they don't fall on the floor when they get tedious, well what can you say, it's godly. Thanks very much!
Thank you to the membership and sponsors for hanging tough through these past months of chaos and confusion. We are making a necessary transition that will result in significant improvements very soon, many of them are already in place while many are still to come.
Cheers,
Erik Petersen (cthree) and the entire S2KI team.
Registered User
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,085
Likes: 0
From: 3rd bedroom on the right
Excellent post Erik 
Both yogi and AE have been a great help to me in the past and its good to know that there are people like that around on the site and its also good to see that we are growing successfully while keeping it a "people's" forum.
to the all team for their committment.
Both yogi and AE have been a great help to me in the past and its good to know that there are people like that around on the site and its also good to see that we are growing successfully while keeping it a "people's" forum.
to the all team for their committment.
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Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 33,161
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From: Randolph, NJ
Erik
Thank you for the informative letter. This type of communication helps to keep the members in touch with what is going on. I think that you will find that informed members are much more patient and understanding.
Please keep the communications coming, and keep up the good work. If you weren't 3,000 miles away I'd be delighted (as I'm sure many would be) to come to the S2KI bar-be-que.
Thank you for the informative letter. This type of communication helps to keep the members in touch with what is going on. I think that you will find that informed members are much more patient and understanding.
Please keep the communications coming, and keep up the good work. If you weren't 3,000 miles away I'd be delighted (as I'm sure many would be) to come to the S2KI bar-be-que.
