Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations To Bill, Cecil, Dave, Bob....and other low numbered members

Boy, it sure seems like more than 4 years. Bruce, I don't think you will get many answers about the positive or negative difference in the Forum. More like what the Forum has become over the years. It is reflective of what ponding has become. I think the Forum and magazine have been huge contributors to that growth.

The first indicator that I think pointed to the growth was Lusks World Tours. For a couple of years, Bob would take off, during the off season, and stop by magazine subscribers ponds to see them and offer advice. Lusk Sightings were reported like he was some kind of rock star. He said, at that time,"Somethings Happening Here". However, like the Bard sang, "What it is ain't exactaly clear". In the early days, a big day might have been 10 posts. Sometimes there were none.

Like Bob says, the biggest change may be the Forum Community concept. Who would have ever thought that some of us would actually meet each other and get to know each other on a personal basis? I would never have expected to actually meet Duggan, Frank and John Tanner. Heck, I never expected to meet Lusk.

Another thing is the wealth of knowledge here and the growth of that knowledge by the members. That is a huge change. Bob recently told me that he sometimes logs on, sees a question, follows the responses, and realizes that he has nothing to add. It's interesting that the answers/advice are from non pro's. Until the Forum, the only source of knowledge was State web sites where Biologists posted articles. There were, and still are, other web sites but they are pretty insignificant compared to PB. If you want to know what Pond Boss has become, put the words "Pond Boss" into your search engine and look at the copycats using some variation of the name.

Who would ever thought that Mike Otto would be known world wide and worry about bandwidth?