First, let me say that I owe a debt of gratitude to John Gladding. I was honored when John invited me to be an moderator on MyFolsom many years ago, where I had the opportunity and responsibility to create and manage topics on the forum, to clean up offensive posts, try to keep things from getting to heated or personal (not easy!), and try to keep spammers at bay. Then, when he needed someone to cover him when he was on vacation or otherwise unavailable, he trusted me to be an administrator, handing me the virtual keys to the kingdom.
I guess I didn’t let him down or screw things up too much because when he decided to sell his baby, I was the first one he called (or so he claims ;-0).
The deal made sense for both of us. When John started MyFolsom, he was a young fairly newlywed with no children. Today, he has twin 10 year olds, and as a devoted father, he is very involved in activities with his kids. He also works full time, and I imagine the boss doesn’t want him playing on MyFolsom all day. As such, he has not been able to spend as much time as he’d like to in developing the site and keeping it current.
I on the other hand, became a member of MyFolsom about 10 years ago, and at the time, was in the middle of raising 2 daughters. My daughters are now 20 and 25 years old, and as a Realtor, I am in front of a computer much of the day, and only have my wife to tell me to ‘stop playing and get to work.’
Also, other than personal referrals, MyFolsom.com has become the number 1 source of customers for my real estate business. I’ve helped many members and visitors buy, sell and finance homes, and have given advice to to countless others. I owe a lot of my success to Myfolsom.com.
As the new owner, I see so much potential for making MyFolsom even better as a community resource. I want to make stronger connections with community organizations, City Hall, Chamber of Commerce, citizens and visitors to make MyFolsom THE place to go to find out nearly anything they want to about the city of Folsom on this website.
News, events, schools, weather, sports, recreation, arts and entertainment are some of the topics I hope to feature on the website.
So, please be patient with me as I try to figure things out. Change will be slow, and I don’t plan on getting rid of any features, just adding more and enhancing what we already have.
I hope you’ll stick around and give me your feedback and suggestions.
In fact, here’s a thread where you can do just that in the forum: http://www.tomatopages.com/folsomforum/index.php?showtopic=39693#entry466378