Hi All,
In recent times, there's been a few of the Syd regulars throwing some ideas around when talking about our little community here on the DMF. It's a really good thing to be a part of the best Ducati Monster community in the world, and as we all have no doubt experienced, there is so much to get out of being a member here, whether it be the friendships formed, the tech problems solved, the inspiration to modify or many many more.
What's hard about the DMF for Aussies is trying to find our local community, and being enthusiastic about our community we wanted to share with every monster we see on the road. So we had the thought to get some cards made up, just like the old days on the DML, to leave on people's bikes and to hand out. But telling people to go to
http://ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?board=52.0 or just sending them to the home page to navigate through was not going to be effective.
So a while ago, we purchased some domain names, and about 2 weeks ago, we started on making a "launch page" for Oz Monster resources - the forum (of course), our photo gallery, and the like...
Our launch date of the site is to coincide with the world record attempt tomorrow in Sydney (the beach party) which is a good vehicle to tell people about our community.
Well it kinda snowballed from a simple launch page, and today I'd like to share what we've been working on...
www.ozmonster.orgSo, its design as a community resource driven by the community. The intention is to provide a portal that provides a one stop information for aussie ducatisti. We're cautious to use the word "club" but decided to none the less as it's what most people will relate to. We fully intend to keep it as a community resource in the same spirit that the DMF was formed, and it's meant to compliment our DMF home, not compete with it, hence there is no forum, shoutbox, IM or PM system - just simply information collected in one spot.
No single person owns it, there's not going to be a club house (other than the forum), committee meetings, or a charter, and it's not for profit. Yes, it's taken a small amount of money to start up - three of us have made donations to pay for the domain registrations, the site hosting and some start up cards for the beach party. We have no elected positions, but out of neccessitiy we do have a "domain keeper" and a "site keeper" - Dock is the domain registrant, I sorted out the hosting the site, and am the web admin, and Matty has helped with the initial batch of cards.
We're going to be completely transparent on the operating costs. I've got some new ideas coming for an updated logo whcih I'll present to the community as soon as I have them.
We're getting some swag made, which will include a small donation to aid the running costs of the site, which again, we will disclose fully. If we need more money that what we can get out of selling the swag, we'll ask for donations, just like the DMF.
Anyway, I'll encourage you all to have a poke around and see what you think. It's in its infancy at the moment - whether it will be a good resource or not only time will tell.
Of course, it will only be what we make of it, so I would encourage anyone with ideas or things to contribute to put them forward here. I'll apologise right now for the large about of sydney centric stuff on the site presently. Hopefully this will be balanced out after this announcement!
Cheers people.
goldFiSh [moto]
PS. Oh, and whilst we've tried to sort out the teething issues, I'm sure there's still a few around. If you find any, drop me a PM and I'll try to get it sorted.
