 }})
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2009
- Messages
- 49,326
- Reaction score
- 7,219
- Points
- 2,244
- Location
- Greensboro, NC
- Military Branch
- Alma Mater
Ever wonder how this cool little Skins fan watering hole on the interwebs came to be?
This Friday, 15 July will mark our 7th anniversary since throwing our doors open wide to the public. Seems like an appropriate time for a little introspection, how it started, where we’ve been, maybe even where we are going?
Once upon a time, a group of misfits with mysterious screennames like Om, Tarhog, Neophyte, Miles Monroe, iheartskins, and Henry (okay – some of us were more mysterious than others) lived happily at another little internet pitstop called Extremeskins. When big bad corporate America came a calling, and little 'ES’ became 'Extremeskins – the Official Messageboard of the Washington Redskins’, we were mostly thrilled. For several years, as owners, moderators, and staff of ES, we reaped the benefits. We covered Redskins mini and training camps, attended team functions, were flown to/from games, stayed at the team hotel, occupied seats in the press box, and stood on the sidelines of NFL games. A couple of us even got knocked on our asses by NFL safeties at full speed. Life was good.
After a while though, even Nirvana starts to feel a little stale and sterile. Don’t hate me for saying so, but travel and game coverage, it’s a lot of work, and when the novelty wore off, it was time for a change. Add in the tremendous changes to the site itself and exponential growth of the membership at ES post-Redskins merger, and the appeal of a site that had been a huge part of my life for 5+ years just plain wore off. Other key players and dear friends such as ES founders Blade and Die Hard had already largely moved on, and in late 2007 or so, I finally joined them.
One of the best friendships of my life began at ES when I met Mark Steven. Our friendship didn’t end with my departure. Mark too was ready for a change and soon followed me out the door. We stayed in touch. We talked on the phone frequently and one thing was clear. We both loved to write, we were both looking for a creative outlet, and we both wanted to find a place on the web to express ourselves. Those shared desires fueled our first internet project, the creation of a website called The Noosphere’. The idea behind the site was for it to be a thinking man’s version of the Tailgate. A place where we could discuss art, philosophy, science, culture, music – all of the things we loved with like-minded sophisticates. It was our first foray into website construction and we fumbled and bumbled and struggled our way through it, savoring every minute of putting it together. It was a beautiful and cleverly constructed little corner of the internet. Even the name was obscure and mysterious – but we knew what it meant and what it was all about even if others didn’t always 'get it’.
We opened the door to 'the Noosphere’ and soon some familiar and new friends began trickling in. Henry, servumtuum, Neophyte, Meteor, and others joined us. And it grew steadily those first 3 to 6 months. We were pretty proud of the concept, the look and feel of the site, and the quality and intellect of the folks we were attracting to it. Whether because of the general and broad nature of the site, or being in competition with countless other sites providing more specific content, participation and membership dwindled and we could not sustain our initial effort. One lesson learned – building a great website is the easy part – marketing and attracting a loyal membership is something else altogether. We were never able to do that with our first site. Maybe one day we’ll try to bring 'The Noosphere’ back to life. It’s still out there, just waiting…
Despite ultimately not succeeding in our first endeavor, we’d learned a ton and gained confidence in our web building skills. Our next project should’ve been obvious, but eluded us until one day on the phone one of us said 'We should build a Skins site’. Well…duh… Pulling faithful friends Neophyte, Henry, and Pete (reborn as 'Miles Monroe’) into the mix, we brainstormed ideas. Mark already had a successful, well known football blogging site, 'The Om Field’. Our initial thought was simply to grow it by adding forums and other content. But as the group of us got bigger, we decided to start over with a brand new concept. We knew what we wanted in a site - clean, stylish, and content and feature rich. We knew what we wanted in a membership – smart, civil, friendly, passionate, and generous in spirit. But it all had to start with a name.
What do you call a place where obsessed fans can worship their burgundy and gold anyway?
'A Burgundy and Gold Obsession’ was born.
I can’t tell you the hours and thousands of emails shared designing the look and feel of BGO. Just getting the logo itself right, what font to use, the color combinations, was an excruciatingly painstaking process. How many forums to open, what to call them, how to organize them? There were countless decisions daily that most would’ve never even bothered questioning. But for us, the beauty was in the minutiae, every detail mattered. We could’ve populated the site with public web graphics in a cookie cutter format in a day, but instead we created every one of detail ourselves from scratch over the course of months. We worked on this beast of a growing site through late winter into the spring of 2009. Finally, it was ready. On Wednesday morning, July 15th, 2009, we flipped the switch on.
What a ride it’s been since then.
When BGO celebrates its birthday this Friday, we’ll have seen more than 30,000 threads started here. 855 current members have joined our ranks over the years, logging more than 200,000 individual posts. It’s funny. When we were discussing our long-term goals early on in the creative process, I remember Mark saying something I’ve never forgotten. 'Hey, if all we ever accomplish is a really cool place to hang out with 50 of our closest friends, that’s all I’ve ever wanted’. Our active membership (members posting at least monthly) is between 75-100 members. We’re small, but we’re wiry. We’re still Mayberry, not Metropolis, and that’s just the way we like it.
There’ve been lots of changes over the years, including one major site rebuild several years ago. We’ve added some great staff members in Counter Trey, Loyal Skins Fan, and Special K. We’ve added a ton of features to include an Image Gallery, a Video Library, an Arcade, a Media Guide Library, Chatrooms, Instant Messaging and a Mobile app, to name just a few. Our site contests, whether it’s our BGO Ballers Fantasy Football League, the NFL Pickem contest, or our Blognostications prediction blog, are all great fun. Our original content and member-written threads and blogs are some of the best Redskins content anywhere. For a small, intimate web community, we’ve got it going on, and we have from day one. But our absolute best attribute has always been one simple thing – our incredible members.
I don’t know what the future of BGO is – but I know that as long as we have intelligent Redskins fans who want a friendly, civil, energetic, and welcoming place to talk all things burgundy and gold – we’ll be here to provide it.
Thanks to each of you who are the only reason we exist, the only reason we continue to go forward, and are what truly makes this a special place!
This Friday, 15 July will mark our 7th anniversary since throwing our doors open wide to the public. Seems like an appropriate time for a little introspection, how it started, where we’ve been, maybe even where we are going?
Once upon a time, a group of misfits with mysterious screennames like Om, Tarhog, Neophyte, Miles Monroe, iheartskins, and Henry (okay – some of us were more mysterious than others) lived happily at another little internet pitstop called Extremeskins. When big bad corporate America came a calling, and little 'ES’ became 'Extremeskins – the Official Messageboard of the Washington Redskins’, we were mostly thrilled. For several years, as owners, moderators, and staff of ES, we reaped the benefits. We covered Redskins mini and training camps, attended team functions, were flown to/from games, stayed at the team hotel, occupied seats in the press box, and stood on the sidelines of NFL games. A couple of us even got knocked on our asses by NFL safeties at full speed. Life was good.
After a while though, even Nirvana starts to feel a little stale and sterile. Don’t hate me for saying so, but travel and game coverage, it’s a lot of work, and when the novelty wore off, it was time for a change. Add in the tremendous changes to the site itself and exponential growth of the membership at ES post-Redskins merger, and the appeal of a site that had been a huge part of my life for 5+ years just plain wore off. Other key players and dear friends such as ES founders Blade and Die Hard had already largely moved on, and in late 2007 or so, I finally joined them.
One of the best friendships of my life began at ES when I met Mark Steven. Our friendship didn’t end with my departure. Mark too was ready for a change and soon followed me out the door. We stayed in touch. We talked on the phone frequently and one thing was clear. We both loved to write, we were both looking for a creative outlet, and we both wanted to find a place on the web to express ourselves. Those shared desires fueled our first internet project, the creation of a website called The Noosphere’. The idea behind the site was for it to be a thinking man’s version of the Tailgate. A place where we could discuss art, philosophy, science, culture, music – all of the things we loved with like-minded sophisticates. It was our first foray into website construction and we fumbled and bumbled and struggled our way through it, savoring every minute of putting it together. It was a beautiful and cleverly constructed little corner of the internet. Even the name was obscure and mysterious – but we knew what it meant and what it was all about even if others didn’t always 'get it’.
We opened the door to 'the Noosphere’ and soon some familiar and new friends began trickling in. Henry, servumtuum, Neophyte, Meteor, and others joined us. And it grew steadily those first 3 to 6 months. We were pretty proud of the concept, the look and feel of the site, and the quality and intellect of the folks we were attracting to it. Whether because of the general and broad nature of the site, or being in competition with countless other sites providing more specific content, participation and membership dwindled and we could not sustain our initial effort. One lesson learned – building a great website is the easy part – marketing and attracting a loyal membership is something else altogether. We were never able to do that with our first site. Maybe one day we’ll try to bring 'The Noosphere’ back to life. It’s still out there, just waiting…
Despite ultimately not succeeding in our first endeavor, we’d learned a ton and gained confidence in our web building skills. Our next project should’ve been obvious, but eluded us until one day on the phone one of us said 'We should build a Skins site’. Well…duh… Pulling faithful friends Neophyte, Henry, and Pete (reborn as 'Miles Monroe’) into the mix, we brainstormed ideas. Mark already had a successful, well known football blogging site, 'The Om Field’. Our initial thought was simply to grow it by adding forums and other content. But as the group of us got bigger, we decided to start over with a brand new concept. We knew what we wanted in a site - clean, stylish, and content and feature rich. We knew what we wanted in a membership – smart, civil, friendly, passionate, and generous in spirit. But it all had to start with a name.
What do you call a place where obsessed fans can worship their burgundy and gold anyway?
'A Burgundy and Gold Obsession’ was born.
I can’t tell you the hours and thousands of emails shared designing the look and feel of BGO. Just getting the logo itself right, what font to use, the color combinations, was an excruciatingly painstaking process. How many forums to open, what to call them, how to organize them? There were countless decisions daily that most would’ve never even bothered questioning. But for us, the beauty was in the minutiae, every detail mattered. We could’ve populated the site with public web graphics in a cookie cutter format in a day, but instead we created every one of detail ourselves from scratch over the course of months. We worked on this beast of a growing site through late winter into the spring of 2009. Finally, it was ready. On Wednesday morning, July 15th, 2009, we flipped the switch on.
What a ride it’s been since then.
When BGO celebrates its birthday this Friday, we’ll have seen more than 30,000 threads started here. 855 current members have joined our ranks over the years, logging more than 200,000 individual posts. It’s funny. When we were discussing our long-term goals early on in the creative process, I remember Mark saying something I’ve never forgotten. 'Hey, if all we ever accomplish is a really cool place to hang out with 50 of our closest friends, that’s all I’ve ever wanted’. Our active membership (members posting at least monthly) is between 75-100 members. We’re small, but we’re wiry. We’re still Mayberry, not Metropolis, and that’s just the way we like it.
There’ve been lots of changes over the years, including one major site rebuild several years ago. We’ve added some great staff members in Counter Trey, Loyal Skins Fan, and Special K. We’ve added a ton of features to include an Image Gallery, a Video Library, an Arcade, a Media Guide Library, Chatrooms, Instant Messaging and a Mobile app, to name just a few. Our site contests, whether it’s our BGO Ballers Fantasy Football League, the NFL Pickem contest, or our Blognostications prediction blog, are all great fun. Our original content and member-written threads and blogs are some of the best Redskins content anywhere. For a small, intimate web community, we’ve got it going on, and we have from day one. But our absolute best attribute has always been one simple thing – our incredible members.
I don’t know what the future of BGO is – but I know that as long as we have intelligent Redskins fans who want a friendly, civil, energetic, and welcoming place to talk all things burgundy and gold – we’ll be here to provide it.
Thanks to each of you who are the only reason we exist, the only reason we continue to go forward, and are what truly makes this a special place!
