Thank you.

Pink for October was rather successful and it is entirely thanks to you. I have a lot of ideas that being, “You know what’d be cool?” Thankfully this one came through, but I couldn’t have done it alone. Everyone who Went Pink and everyone who shared their stories made this event what it is.

I’d like to thank again Brian Gilham for providing the Men section, Tammie Lister for providing the design of this site, Nick Oder for making everything work, and many 9rules members for their support and ideas.

And while this started as a “cool” idea, I think it transcended cool. It mattered. I don’t say that in an ego-inflating way. I believe Pink for October made a difference. Big changes start small. Even if only one person was impacted by this it was a good thing. That one person might find a cure, or fund it, or now know how to convince their family member to do a self-exam every month. And I know we impacted more than one person.

I’ve been asked a number of times this week if I will be taking the site down. No. This site will be used next year and I don’t want to hide content that might help or influence someone over the coming months. There might not be many posts between now and next August, but you never know. I suggest pulling the feed (Bloglines, Google Reader, Feedburner) to stay up to date. Or stop by in the dark of winter (for you Northern Hemisphereians) to get a dose of Pink.

Speaking of Next Year

I’ve jokingly said to a few people that next year’s theme will be “automation.” But it isn’t a joke completely. Next year I will have a mechanism set up for you to enter info about you and your site so that list to the left stays current. I just couldn’t keep up with the requests when I was entering each site by hand, which is why the list stopped at 500.

I also want to provide some themes for people to download. That was a big request from most people who contacted me. Thankfully some designs were made available. But next year I’d like to get 5 to 10 designs for people to choose from.

More video. I had some ideas for short movies, but I have no video camera. Hopefully by next year I will be able to afford one. Actually, I could get one now but I want a good one. Which leads to the next Next Year thing…

Interviews. I’d like to do more interviews with people. Medical people, family members… And I’d like a way for you to participate in that too. It could be something where we allow uploading to this site, or we make use of sites like YouTube.

More posting. More from me, more from you. And please feel free to add your story even if it isn’t October.

Stats

~1500 sites Went Pink.
32 posts.
174 comments.
422 spam comments. None of them annoyed us thanks to Akismet.
700 extra spam emails in my account! :)
~54000 unique visits.
~100000 page views.

C’est Fin

And on that note, can I get a “woo hoo!” Until next time, my thanks to you for making this possible.