I've had to make some tough decisions as we reach the end of another month, and Umbrella Online starts to approach it's first birthday since re-opening.. and they're probably not going to be particularly popular ones.
As I continue to distance myself (and us) away from a particular webmaster based community, I've also been thinking over the past few weeks about how I spend my time online, and the future prospects of what I'm trying to build and achieve with this project. Quite a few forums that I've been posting on largely consist of members from the webmaster community that I've mentioned, with one or two of those members consistently sitting on my ignore list. Essentially these forums all end up feeling like a clone of one another with no real identity to speak of. There's other problems too, though this isn't the place to go into them..
You'll notice that I've chosen to use two different terms, 'community' and 'forums'. For me there's a clear difference between the two, and my ambition for Umbrella Online is not necessarily about the numbers that may or may not be achieved but the community that we build. I have little to no interest in spending my time doing something that I don't enjoy, or being a part of something that starts to feel one-sided - I had enough of that with my personal life over the last few years!
I have decided to drop 2 of the 3 existing partnerships. I sincerely hope there's no hard feelings, but also understand if certain people feel that this decision goes against any friendship or alliance that may have been built. This isn't me saying that you won't see me on those sites anymore (unlike some of the other post exchanges that I was doing) and I still have confidence in those projects, but at the moment this feels like the right move on a personal level.. I have just 2 weeks left of working 50+ hours per week, and look forward to enjoying a bit of spare time again as well as using some of it to continue pushing our community forwards in a positive direction.
