3... 2... 1... Blast off!
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There was no alarm, no crimson digits showing only zeroes, no rocket engines blasting, no window overlooking spewing out towers of smoke framing a beam of superheated gas. Neither was there a bustling operations room dominated by a wall of colourful screens. There was a small “connection lost” message in my screen, followed by a cheer from across of me.
I looked over my screens, across of me sat Daniël who was at that time busy linking the final digital cables of NodeBB into the framework of MyRoute-app. “We’re online”. He whooped.
I decided to smile, that the community blog I’d been writing on that afternoon had now disappeared beyond retrieval because of that small ‘connection lost’ hiccup shouldn’t spoil the mood even if at that time I just wanted to smash my head into the keyboard with great force. After all, this was a momentous achievement that should be celebrated. A broken keyboard would not be very festive.
Now as with all things we do we come across new issues the moment something is finally ‘done’. Usernames not synchronizing properly because apparently we at MRA are weird for using non-unique usernames (one would wonder why you even bother with UID’s in your database if you’re going to force unique usernames anyway) and the forum software absolutely didn’t approve of such chaotic conventions. Or usernames suddenly being too long. Or group tags not showing up. Or awards not being awarded. Or Community Blogs being deleted because of launches. It’s all part of the life.
Since that is all finished we can once more look forward. There’s tons of things to do now. First of all activity has to slowly start up. Then as activity grows beyond the scope of management and the forum proves its worth, features will be added. Finally the Community Leaders team will have to grow so that the Community Forum will become entirely self-regulated. We’ve been thinking about this feature since 2017 and now it’s finally here.
Now we must look to the future: Adding smart skipping to iOS Navigation. Implementing WEB 2.0. and the associated UI/UX update. Finally getting Apple and Google to stop ignoring us so we can start development for Android Auto and Apple Carplay. Growing the Community Teams with more RouteXperts, Instructors and Leaders. And much, much more.
Next week I’ll try to get you some more information on what and where the Community Blogs will be hosted in the foreseeable future. Even if we’re busy on “boring” things such as bugfixing, stability updates and refactoring, I’ll provide a nice window into the company so that you always know what’s going on and what we’re working on.For now, all that rests me is to wish you a lot of fun with the forum.
Wishing you great adventures,
Timo
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A warm welcome to our new home!
