The Future of the BWD Website Depends on You

[bwd]

Thank you to Ross McNeely and Jeamer for your donations!
http://www.bigwavedave.ca/donate.htm

[bwd]

Thank you KayakDoc, Ned and Tom B for your donations!
http://www.bigwavedave.ca/donate.htm

[bwd]

Thank you Fluffy (Deb & Rob) for your donation!
http://www.bigwavedave.ca/donate.htm

[bwd]

Thank you to Winddoctor (Chris) for your donation!

[bwd]

Thank you Downwind Dave for your donation!

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FYI, there won't be a holiday fundraiser this year. It's just too much work. We are busy doing some upgrades to the website. I upgraded the gallery and I'm working on the wiki. Russian Dood is updated the sailing log to work with a new version of the forum, coming soon. I also hope to do a major facelift to the whole website this winter, maybe.

[jellyfish]

Thank you Dave and RD for all your dedicated work. I had a look this morning at the donation page and see the BWD site is still running in the red (not good to see red on this page).
It would be great to find a couple of regular sponsors to help keep the site afloat.
Did we ever get that letter drafted to elicit interest in supporting the site?
If so, would it be beneficial to post a link to it?
I was recently at a function at RVYC and was told how much the BWD site is used and that the club does do some sponsoring. Unfortunately I wasn't able to follow this up at that time.
Perhaps someone reading this knows who to talk to in order to get some support from this large regular user group.

[more force 4]

I looked at the figures a while ago and was somewhat relieved, because I thought our personal donations were a little more than enough to offset the difference between sponsor income and expenses? Although I suppose that may not be enough to offset depreciation on the cams and other equipment. I hope there can be enough sponsors to cover the std. expenses and then all our contributions could go to new toys! The yacht clubs would seem to be an obvious donor group. And thanks to the Sidney Anglers Assoc for ponying up!

Is there any thought to upgrading the refresh rate on the cams Dave? I know a couple of years ago a few complained because their dial-ups couldn't get an image quicker than every 15 seconds or so. But I suspect almost everybody has a quicker provider by now (though would phones have a problem?). It would be very cool to be able to watch CB in video, the same as the Kanaha cams (although perhaps not very productive for the employers of cam lurkers!)

And endless thanks to Dave, Andrey, and everyone who works on the system!!!!

[KUS]

Annual individual password renewal for anything but the homepage, minimum $10 donation for all the freeloader lurkers, if you have internet, you got a spare ten bux or lurk somewhere else. Suggested minimum voluntary $50 for a "group/organization password" (one they can feel honest about to share) such as RVYC and such

-done

Yes, the Anglers Assoc. putting this forward is awesome and I hope it catches on and is annual.

Many thanks to the Site Wizards

[Geoffy]

My fault on the letter for sponsors, got comments back from Dave and Cindy and was supposed to send it around to a few others but got waylaid with work and life, will get on it tonight.
Geoff

[bwd]

Is there any thought to upgrading the refresh rate on the cams Dave? I know a couple of years ago a few complained because their dial-ups couldn't get an image quicker than every 15 seconds or so. But I suspect almost everybody has a quicker provider by now (though would phones have a problem?). It would be very cool to be able to watch CB in video, the same as the Kanaha cams (although perhaps not very productive for the employers of cam lurkers!)

The webcams upload an image to a central webserver (by FTP) so 20-30 seconds is the fastest this can happen. They are not capable of streaming video. Back when I started buying the webcams there was a choice between this type that updates slower but has better image quality and the streaming webcams that had poor quality. Now the streaming cams also have good quality. The other advantage to the ones we use that upload images is that we can have an image archive.

So if we want streaming video and maybe pan/tilt/zoom we would have to upgrade the webcams. This is possible I'm sure if we do it one at a time. I'd also have to look at the requirements for the streaming webcams since in this case people connect directly to the webcam and this uses lots of bandwidth (and Shaw might complain).

[downwind dave]

Annual individual password renewal for anything but the homepage, minimum $10 donation for all the freeloader lurkers,

i think this is not a bad way to go. i recently put up 10$ to join a canadian guitar forum, they provide free full access to a forum but you need to become a member in order to post in the the buy n sell. they have bronze, silver and gold members, with various privileges ie. avatars, PM storage etc. costing 10, 25 or 50 bux annually. I think most people accessing BWD have gear to flog, thats where you can hook em.

[bwd]

Thank you Ray (rvanderbyl) for your donation.

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We have talked about user fees. The general idea was that user fees for everyone could drive the traffic down and then decrease the interest from sponsors. We are hoping to have enough sponsors to at least pay for the monthly costs of running the website. The donations/fundraisers would then be used for maintenance and upgrades of equipment. But ideally we would have enough sponsors to pay for it all. Part of my plan is to upgrade the website this winter and make it wider on the screen and more professional looking to help bring in some sponsors, or at least make more room for some.

I wouldn't be against having those that donate get extra perks like use of the photo gallery, able to post in buy/sell, access to pan/tilt streaming cams (if we get some), or some other extras...? But I don't really want to restrict access to the main content of the website, but yeah the freeloaders suck

[Snarfer]

Stating the obvious, there is a great number of non-wind folk that use the site (evidence in the 'might lose MM5 topic) - perhaps if we added a few pages to better meet their needs that would drive up traffic and encourage more donations - not that I suggest this as more work for BWD who is already doing more than his share. It's also non-surfer, but hey this is the Island.

[bwd]

Thank you Anthony (Keen) for your donation!

[bwd]

Thank you to Gene (Gwind), Chris (kayakerchris) and Tricia for your donations! There was $3669 donated in 2010

Thanks everyone,
Dave