Well, it's been a bit of time since the last - or should that be first - of these was posted. As we are beginning the vibrant new year of 2007, it seems appropriate to add another and do our best to recap last year!.
As you know (or perhaps you don't) October 30th is Project Ferret's Anniversary.
Thus, Halloween 2006 completed our third year of existence!
Usually we hold a huge whizz-bang contest which ends up competing for time with many other sites since October 31st is so important in Potterdom. So this year we decided to hold our celebration a bit later - - and lo and behold, no one else had a huge fun contest this year either. (There
has to be some way for all the HP sites to coordinate, there just
has to!) Instead we held a more modest contest during the month of December to celebrate. congratulations and thanks to all who participated!
For some reason this year has been hectically busy for every member of Project Ferret. Like a Hungarian Horntail, that dreaded foe, Real Life, continually reared its ugly head and swallowed major portions of time that should have been spent here at the Site. Of our original members, only a few could even stop by, and our newer members seem to have been in the same boat. While Project Ferret has been a bit slow for a while now, most of the rest of Potter-dom seems to be taking a break and girding for another year with both a book
AND a movie to savor, too!
By the way, if you know of others who'd enjoy our site, by all means feel free to invite them to join! New year, new members - it just goes well together!
However, major events still occurred at Project Ferret! This magical third year has seen a lot of changes at Project Ferret!
As 2006 began, the Staff started planning some new features for the Project Ferret. In March we opened
The Pensieve area for members to post their own, single-authored, pieces and
art work,
and we created the status of “Stoat” for members who didn’t care to, or didn’t qualify to, become full Fantastic Ferrets. These are huge changes for the site! Our founding purpose and focus had been exclusively collaborative writing. While we continue to strive for quality in the unique niche of collaboration, we have made room for our members to showcase their own libraries of stories and artwork, and for those not up for writing fiction to be able to participate, too.
Also in March,
evlpez interviewed agrippa for a Snitch Seeker pod cast. In some ways that brought Project Ferret into the world of audio casts! It is an interesting interview, well worth the time to listen to.
Then in April the site was hacked by weird viral interlopers! It happened again in May. Avoiding damage from the attackers was taking constant vigilance (hmmm, where have we heard that before?) to not be contagious, so agrippa signed us up for a more dedicated type of membership in the Invision Boards’ sites. We changed over from the free Invision Board to a genuine paid membership! Layers of protection from unethical types was part of the package and the Staff collaboratively sighed their grateful relief.
The timing of this new software wasn’t the best. Our big summer contest,
The Game, was scheduled to begin within a few days of having the more advanced membership at IBS. While anyone casually looking at Project Ferret would think all that had changed was the bookkeeping in the invisible "somewhere" of cyberspace, this was far from the case. Agrippa had to essentially completely recreate the programming for the look of Project Ferret. There were tons of glitches that needed to be fixed and many more headaches. He did an admirable job, and probably few members were inconvenienced much at all! (Well, except for the silly
Trivia Quizzes didn’t want to allow half of us in for a while.)
In June both of the founders and main driving forces of Project Ferret, evlpez and agrippa, resigned, stating too many Real Life commitments. (There’s that trickster Real Life intruding again!). We wish them well in their endeavors and miss their technical brilliance.
To save the day, Zymurgy graciously accepted an Admin position! This was no small feat as she was taking N.E.W.T.s and arranging to go to school in another Country, on another continent, in the Fall. McGonagall's Cat and The Department of Mysteries were also over-burdened with their lives in the Muggle world, but managed to put in a bit more time than they actually had available. And, as
timeturner had become a Moderator in February, we have managed to muddle through. The only drawback to this is that both timeturner and Zymurgy are such excellent writers that it is a shame to have them dealing with the business, rather than the creative, aspects of the world of Ferrets and Stoats! Congrats and thanks to the amazing Zymurgy and the brilliant timeturner, and a pat on the back to the rest of our wonderful Staff.
The Game was a grand success! It added a new approach to contests here by having an assortment of brain-bending puzzles to solve before any member could get the Mission that explained what to write! Many delightful stories were offered in each Round. Voting for one over another was tantamount to impossible. The Mirror of Erised, a Harry Potter Lightwedge, potions bottles, thick wool socks, writing implements, Norbert, and an odd assortment of HP candy found their ways to the clever winners!
The one sour note was that some brand new members attempted to cheat and skew the voting. It seemed as though that was the mean-spirited reason for their joining in the first place. Their attempts were instantly recognized and blocked, but without agrippa to do deal with the programming, it was impossible to erase their bad votes, so the rest of the Contest had to be averaged by hand. It was an awful lot of work, but the Staff (mostly Zymurgy and The Department of Mysteries) managed to save the day! In spite of that bit of insanity, a grand time was had by all. Thank you, again, to everyone who participated.
Mention of that problem brings us to our plea for assistance. We are in need of some techy types! If you have experience building web sites, working in html and php, or creating proffesional-looking animations, or if you know someone who has these talents, please contact McGonagall's Cat or The Department of Mysteries, as soon as possible. In order to do some of the things we have planned, we need this assistance as soon as possible Thanks! That seems to have summed up last year. We are now embarking on 2007 and our FOURTH year of Ferrety, and second year of Stoaty, wonders!
Be sure to keep an eye out for changes and challenges, of the pleasurable kind, coming to this site in this new year!
Our wish is that 2007 brings us all joy and satisfaction, that we have stress-free (or at least manageable) Real Lives, and that we write brilliantly and chat enjoyably here at Project Ferret!
Happy New Year!
The Staff of Project Ferret
State-of-the-Project Addresses, beginning with 2004's first annual
Dec 7 2004, 09:12 AM
