From: John Dunkle [johnd@rennlist.com] Sent: Monday, July 24, 2000 9:59 PM To: 928 Subject: [928] Re: [ADMIN] Please Read... (Good Lord...) On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 21:33:00 -0400, John Hammer wrote: > Hello John D - > > I would hope all readers/members ..., though, > that I'm a bit worried about the effect a better/more improved Rennlist will > have on the GNP.... Hi John and all! Your note had me chuckling quietly - as honestly - I've had the same thoughts given the number of Senior Exec's, business owners, lawyers, doctors, marketing managers, etc. have in these lists. I'm thinking someday Forbes/Fortune will have a picture of Rennlist and tag it with the site most responsible for the downfall of the US/ROW economy..:-) > In less than a year since becoming list-addicted, I've become IMMENSELY > more educated in the fine art of 928 ownership and worship. But how much > has my contribution to the GNP fallen off as a result?... OK - time warp to April 1997.... The then list server - PorscheFans had suffered a three day outage, no explantation. It had also unsubscribed everyone. No explantation once again..??? Hmmm... So, someone posts to that list that "there must be someone who could do a better job.." So I e-mail the guy (Ross Parker on the 911 list) and say I'd be pleased to help out anyway I could - maybe write a little code, or do a little testing - whatever I could do to help out... After about one week - there were about 12 of us trying to get a new site going - but I was the only one with a full time Internet connection (a WHOPPING 128KB leased line:-) - so I go "nominated" to write some list code in my spare time... See - I used to have a real job (Computer Market Research Analyst) and ran my own companies - quite successfully, as I had the time to do that sort of work..... Well - all that changed pretty quickly...:-) In late May of '97 - I had the first list done (the 944 list) and was working on the programming for the other 7 original lists. All this was being done on my desktop system with several folks doing the testing... All that was just dandy until May 27th, at 10:30 AM... Then, all heck broke loose.... Seems one of the original 14 posted to PorscheFans that there was a new, more reliable Porsche List server up and running... So, three hours later - before the code was ready to roll out - I had 1200 944 Rennlist (nee "Porschelist") subscribers... My desktop system and a 128KB connection... Wow - what a day:-)..... Anyway - the rest is sort self explanatory... We have over 38 lists now, 7 Web Discussion Boards, over 30000 list subscribers (almost 4200 on this list alone), 6+ million messages in a day sent out, several hundred posts to the various web boards..... Oh yea - I also used to be a Market Research Analyst... But would I trade all those events for being, once again, a business owner conducting Market Research? Not on your life... Rennlist, to all your credit - not mine - has evolved into something special. It is a place on the Internet that offers friendship and community which remains unparalleled. We have mourned the loss of list members; we have had Rennlist subscribers married; we have had one-day-old children apply for a Membership Card as their first organization by their parents; we have met throughout the world at Rennlist functions large and small... And this is simply the beginning... So tomorrow - sure - I'll do that code update involving over 10,000 new lines of C++ I wrote. And tomorrow afternoon - if I do my job right, then all of you will do "your job right" - just continue to be part of this site that has evolved from a simple idea to a community in its own right. And that community all of you developed and maintain - I simply supply the "bricks and mortar" to hold it together... Thanks John... I look forward to meeting you soon....!! Best Always, John D. From: John Dunkle [mailto:johnd@rennlist.com] Sent: Friday, May 24, 2002 11:10 AM To: 928 Subject: [928] Happy Birthday Rennlist.... It was four years ago this weekend that a little e-mail list server hit the "airwaves" and "Porschelist" was born - initiated from a small group of Founders who were "disgruntled" with a sporadic "Porschefans" list server - PorscheList had 5,000 folks after only a few weeks. Utilizing a whopping 56KB partitioned internet connection, PorscheList was only an e-mail list server, without any web site, with the exception of a "front page" at http://www.porschelist.org - as the http://www.porschelist.com site wasn't even introduced until some months later with four founding sponsors including Wayne at PelicanParts, Rob's dcAutomotive, Dave and Jeannie of 928 Specialists, and Dave B. with "Road and Race". While we have seen some Sponsors come and go since then - these businesses have been here since "Day 1" - and are still an integral part of this site. My thanks to all the Sponsors and Rennlist Members who keep this site going… And now into our fifth year, there is no more "PorscheList" - it is "Rennlist". And while it is still just Jen and I part time - the hardware has changed a bit from those first years.. Two high-speed dedicated circuits, 12 dedicated servers, routers, gateways, lots of custom programming - and about 150,000 visits per day with approximately 12,000,000 e-mails sent in 24 hours.. Overall, the site takes about 125,000 - 150,000 unique visitors per day (less on a weekend tho' - as most people are out driving ) And "how big" is Rennlist today? On the web discussion forums alone, we have slightly over 7,500 "registered users" - but if you look at the logs, there are about 5-6 "lurkers" for each registered user who posts to the web Forums - so lets call that roughly 35,000 - 40,000 who surf in those Rennlist discussion forums... On the e-mail lists, we have 82,000 registered e-mail accounts, but some of them are "double" subscribed with a home account along with their company account - so a conservative guess is about 61,000 - 62,000 unique individuals. In the Classifieds, we have posted just over 50,000 ads in the past two years from 32,000+/- unique e-mail addresses and the Classifieds section takes about 15,000 site hits per day... That's roughly 130,000 folks in *just* the major sections of the site.. As many know, we announced Rennlist Memberships three years ago this month as well - and for paying Rennlist Members (not including "Lifers")- in the last couple of weeks, we have just hit the 2,000 mark (which equates to about $36,000 a year (for those of you who are breaking out your calculator:-)- *if* everyone were to renew or pay the invoice when they initially join and asked to be billed, but historically, fall-out is about 15% - so the actual number is probably closer to 1,750 folks or $30,000 per year... (Now you know why I still have my "day job":-) Yep - this weekend - Rennlist (born: "Porschelist") now begins its fifth year of operation - and Jen and I want to wish each of you a "Happy Birthday" and our thanks for your support, enthusiasm and shaping Rennlist into, what many believe, is the predominant automotive "community" within the Internet today. Simply amazing..... My Best to all for a terrific, safe weekend - and if you are in the US, a special Memorial Day… John D.