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Title:	Another Faceless Site in a Crowd
By:	Maggi Norris
Dated:	03 December 2000

Foreword

When I first met Bob Taylor, he was just another faceless guy giving and seeking awards. Back then, that's what most award programs were to me… faceless sites in a crowd. I had always known people ran websites. I had always made a point of telling others it was true. But until you get to see them or know them, they are like quicksilver, quietly slipping away in the crowd. It was too easy not to think about the people behind the sites that had something I wanted or that wanted something from me… awards.

My award program was still pretty new at the time I met Bob. I was still struggling to get it out there and make it known. In that big struggle I forgot one of the things I had been taught and that I had told anyone who cared to listen. I forgot to keep it fun.

The Program

I worked constantly on my program. I worked constantly on the rest of my site too. The reasons I had started the site and the program were forgotten in the mad rush to create unique criteria and then make my site live up to it.

One of my friends asked why I had stopped being funny in my pages. Another asked, "Where is all that Maggi Humor that made your site so much fun?" Well, humph! I didn't have time. I had to get it right and keep it right. I had codes to check and errors to fix. I had… too much of my sight on the site per se.

The site after all was built with much of me in mind and vision. Now I was forgetting to keep adding those little bits of myself that brought pleasure to readers, myself included.

I have met a lot of people in my days and nights of struggling to create a professional website and a reputable award program. I met a lot of them because they applied for my award or I applied for theirs. Being the jabber box I am I wound up getting to know a lot of award people for the fun of it all.

The People

There are my judges. Each of them is very special to me. They not only brought something better to my program, they helped to enrich my life as well. I met most of them because of award applications.

Then there are the other people I met in the award community. Sometimes what made us close was that I needed help or they needed help, but we usually met because of award applications. I have found the award community to be among the most generous groups of people on the planet. They help other web designers, not from expectations of returns, but because they care about the web and the individuals in it.

The Heights

During the time I was meeting all these wonderful people, I was working and working and thinking, "I am NEVER going to get this right!" Then the first major goal of my award career hit with a bang. I was so nervous the day I made Level 5 I couldn't sleep. I stayed up waiting for the time when AS! always posts the upgrades. I played Freecell until I thought my eyes would bug out. Every minute or two, I would refresh the AS! page and sigh when the upgrade wasn't there.

Finally, there it was. Nem5 Upgrades to Level 5. I just stared for at least 5 minutes. Then I started to laugh. Then I was crying. Then I was laughing again. Then I was prancing about like a child with a new toy. I suppose, I made grand entertainment for my audience who had watched and waited with me. Within less than 2 minutes there were emails coming in with "Congratulations" as the subject. I thought, "No way! Does everyone do this?"

As soon as it was light I was right back at my inbox. There, was the most beautiful sight I could imagine at that moment. Mails had poured in from all over and one of them was an upgrade notification from AS!. It wasn't long before I got a letter from Don Chisholm saying, "Guess what! You also receive a World's Top Award rating!" I thought, WOW, now I really am the goddess I teased about being on that elusive day when I would hopefully make those ratings. I expected that day to be sometime in the far away future.

The Depths

I walked on Mt. Olympus for about a week. By the end of that week I was getting pretty darn tired pacing about such quarters. I don't mean a little tired like when you want to just sleep for a week. I was exhausted. My mouse was dragging in the dirt.

I had never seen or even imagined so much mail. I was spending 6-8 hours every single day doing nothing but answering mail. It is important to remember that I am a jabber box and a lot of that was my own fault. Still, it is my nature and I was determined at the time to answer each and every single message.

By the end of a month, I was starting to get pretty stressed. I doubted the wisdom of ever applying for that upgrade. I finally remembered all that coding I had to do and all those errors I had to fix. With fresh determination, I set out to keep up with all that mail AND everything else I had to do.

The Problem

I had slaved myself to my website in my endeavor to reach my goals. When I got there, I was burning so bright; I was burning my candle from both ends. No, I nearly exploded the stupid thing. It took a letter from one of my judges to make me see what I was doing. All the letter said was, "Is anybody there?" Those 3 words made me sit up straight and stare hard at the screen and look deep inside. I realized that if I did not slow down, nobody would be there.

I took a few days off. The whole time I was itching to get back to work. I made myself breathe, just take some time and breathe the fresh air for a while and think about the road ahead.

The Solution

I wanted to enjoy it all again. When I came back to work, I wrote to all my judges. I told them that I was going to keep right on working with them to make the best award program we could all imagine. But I realized that I needed help to figure out how to lighten the workload.

My judges had been a big part of my program since the day they came to work with me. I still held on tightly to the reigns of authority. So tightly, I was wearing out. I have never been prouder of any group of people than I was of my judges for what they did then. They dug in with me and started offering help and suggestions that helped lighten the burden for all of us.

I called on others at that time, too. I asked them how they do it all and keep up. They were as generous and warm toward me as if my program was as important to them as their own. The suggestions and advice from all those people helped me figure out how to do it all and stay sane… AND keep my friends.

The help from my judges and the other members of the award community showed me something else. It showed it to me in a way I had never truly seen it before. Award programs are NOT faceless sites in a crowd. No matter their rating or what the awards are for, people run the programs. They are people with lives and families and jobs and hobbies and hearts as warm and bright as the sun can ever hope to shine.

The Reality

I am not perfect and I was working myself to death trying to create perfection. What I found out is that the perfect site is not about perfect codes. The perfect site may not have Flash or Java or anything that moves or makes a noise. The perfect site may not have graphics or even words.

What the perfect site has is a webmaster who is happy with his or her own work. Perfection is that glow you get when you do something you never thought you could. Perfection is when someone wonderful who used to be a faceless site in a crowd gives you and your work their award. Perfection is keeping the work fun.

So how do I keep it fun? I remember that my own faceless site in a crowd was built by a person…ME! I remember that I know people whose faces can make me smile, people I call friends… like Bob Taylor! Thank you.