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The Outdoor Idiots Annual General Meeting 2007
Submitted by An Outdoor Idiots Team Member.
Only at Outdoor Idiots.com could we forget our own birthday.
We were born on 10th February 2006, and now it is 18th February 2007. We realised this
only yesterday. So well done to us for making it through a whole year on the scary and
turbulent seas of "Internet".
One of our biggest fears at the outset was that we might get too much of that much-overrated thing called "traffic." That would mean we would need to hire special servers and things, and pay lots of money. As it turns out, we cleverly avoided that scenario by producing one of the most irrelevant, infrequently updated, pointless piles of Internet rubbish ever aimed at the outdoor enthusiast. It is a formula that works, and we intend to stick with it.
However, in an effort to make it look like we are taking this site seriously, we will now hold a slightly overdue Annual General Meeting. You are of course invited, dear reader, as you are our biggest investor. We are all partners in this thing. For your part, you give us your time. For our part, we engage in a campaign to relentlessly and systematically disappoint you at every turn. You wait for months for a new article to appear, and then, all of a sudden, nothing appears. Then, finally, something appears and it turns out to be a big pile of pants.
But it's not that bad really. We did do something with the last year. Let's use this Annual General Meeting to review exactly what happened, and to set some goals for the year to come...
One of our biggest fears at the outset was that we might get too much of that much-overrated thing called "traffic." That would mean we would need to hire special servers and things, and pay lots of money. As it turns out, we cleverly avoided that scenario by producing one of the most irrelevant, infrequently updated, pointless piles of Internet rubbish ever aimed at the outdoor enthusiast. It is a formula that works, and we intend to stick with it.
However, in an effort to make it look like we are taking this site seriously, we will now hold a slightly overdue Annual General Meeting. You are of course invited, dear reader, as you are our biggest investor. We are all partners in this thing. For your part, you give us your time. For our part, we engage in a campaign to relentlessly and systematically disappoint you at every turn. You wait for months for a new article to appear, and then, all of a sudden, nothing appears. Then, finally, something appears and it turns out to be a big pile of pants.
But it's not that bad really. We did do something with the last year. Let's use this Annual General Meeting to review exactly what happened, and to set some goals for the year to come...
Introduction
It moves us to tears - tears of pride, that is - to look back at the last 12 months, and assess what we have achieved. We are so emotional that we can't speak properly right now, so we'll just give you the statistics...Published Items
We published 40 items. Of those, we were responsible for 26. Our beloved readers were responsible for the remaining 14. Here is a graph:
The graph makes two things clear: (1) We win, and (2) We are still using Microsoft Office 97.
Reader Submissions
Of the 14 reader submissions, 5 had authors who wished to remain anonymous, 7 were photographs, and 1 was submitted by a Jedi. Here is another graph:
Yet again a graph proves to be very revealing. Here we see: (1) You are scared of revealing your identity, (2) You like photographs, and (3) There is still hope for the rebels.
Emails
We have received rather a lot of emails behind the scenes. As you can imagine, most of them were spam. There were some other emails as well, though: Fourteen of them were submissions from readers. One was to correct a hideous technical error. Two were to tell us about walking holidays in Portugal. One was from a Japanese abrasives manufacturer who thought we might be interested in their knife sharpeners (can't think what gave them that idea?). Twenty-three were to tell us that someone's email never got through to us - we must look into that problem at some point. Three were to tell us how terribly beastly we have been to the Bowline knot, and that the Bowline is, in fact, the best knot ever. One was a complaint from a vicar, no less, about our terrible attitude towards slugs (perhaps he meant this?) - we really need to publish that at some point. A further two we have yet to work out. This is what all that looks like on a graph:
Insults
We have received 2 insults. One is a comment at the bottom of this article. Another was in an email. It is with delight that we repeat them here:- "You're retarded. Hopefully this was a joke. Any good knife knut would ignore your page."
- "I don't want to be associated with a website that publishes misinformation and bias in place of accurate, fair, and empirical analysis ... I am coming to suspect that the name of your group is all too apt."
This graph clearly shows that in spite of the fact that Microsoft Office 97 has been around for ten years, we still don't know how to use Excel's chart facility properly. We are not quite sure what is going on with this one.
Audience Figures
Here is how our audience figures fluctuated in 2006, according to the Web Statistics software provided by our web host:
As you can see, something big must have happened in July, creating a flurry of excitement. But by October, most people had the sense to not bother coming back.
It seems we get roughly 1,500 visits a month. That's not too bad, considering we have been lying low.
On a particularly warming note, our Web Statistics software also estimates that over 2,000 people have added us to their favourites. The software is probably faulty and telling us lies, but we choose to believe it anyway. Statistics like that give us a warm feeling inside, exactly like eating Ready brek.
"Ready brek" is two words. That's okay - we haven't got a problem with that. However, the "brek" in Ready brek does not begin with a capital letter. We were as shocked as you to learn this. We phoned up Weetabix to get to the bottom of the matter. With no sense of shame, they confirmed it.
We then pressed them hard, because our editor feels strongly about things like that. "What about your other cereal, 'Crunchy Bran'?" we asked. "There you have two words, both capitalised, just as one would expect with a name. Where is your consistency?".
There was silence, but we were not going to give up easily. We pushed harder.
"It's people like you that are turning the children of this once-great nation into illiterate ASBO-fodder. Do you realise that?" we asked.
They hung up. We'll be writing them a stiff letter and we'll let you know how we get on.
Our Forums
We currently have a whopping 43 members in our forums. Strangely, though, only 22 of those members have made their presence known by actually typing something. We would like to thank the brave, pioneering posters who keep our forums humming along at a tranquil pace - you know who you are. Interestingly, though, people seem to be talking about our stuff in other forums far more than they do in our own. How rude! Anyway, that leads us to this...Other Forums
Our Web Statistics tell us that the following 23 forums have been talking about us behind our backs. They have probably been calling us names and laughing at us, but we are too scared to look to find out - it would probably make us cry:Bushcraft UK; British Blades; BOBgear; Weapons.be; SGT Rock's Hiking HQ; Utrustning.se; David Manise; Bushcraft Living; International Guild of Knot Tyers; Knifeforums; wspinanie.pl; Modern Minuteman; vakantiespelen.org; survival.hu; Outdoors Magic; twoeleven.info; Wild Survive; leanto.invisionzone.com; Kifaru; AR15.com; Spyderco.com; Slinging.org; ramblers.org.uk.
Fascinatingly, we are unable to mention a further 3 forums that have linked to us, because they appear to have rather ... err... "mature" content. Quite why people have linked to us from such forums is beyond us. Although one of those forums did seem to have a section for people that liked to tie each other up, so perhaps they linked to one of our knot articles?
Pac-Man
You would stop us if you've heard this one before, wouldn't you?
Sorry. Moving on...
Internet Presence
Thanks in part to our die-hard approach to not publicising ourselves, we currently have a Google Pagerank of 3. In layman's terms, that means we are rubbish.Internet Presents
As of yet, nobody has sent us any gifts through the Internet. However, we have actually made some money. Hold on tight for this next bit...Accounts
Our income source is from (1) Banner advertisements, and (2) Google advertisements. The banner advertisements have yet to yield any money, so we might have a rethink about those at some point. Anyway, here are our accounts, again showing our prowess with 10-year-old spreadsheet software:
Yes! We are officially a profit-making organisation! Don't worry, we won't let it go to our heads. We promise you that we have been putting this money to good use. We regard it as your money as much as ours, and we would never squander it on frivolous nonsense. We have a strict rule of only ever buying Asda own-brand teabags, and Asda own-brand plain digestives. And we only allow ourselves to consume these while we are working on the site. In fact, there's still probably a bit of change out of our £3.80 profit. That's why we hardly ever work on the site - it costs us all money that we can ill afford. So stop complaining!
Moving Forward in 2007
That was what happened over the last 12 months. What on earth is going to happen over the next 12 months? We don't know. One thing is certain, though. This is an Annual General Meeting, and no Annual General Meeting can finish until we come up with some Mission Statements. We've never really understood Mission Statements, but we've been reading up on the subject, and we've decided to go with the following...Outdoor Idiots.com Mission Statement(s) for 2007
- We will interactively foster emerging technology and efficiently initiate high-payoff leadership skills to stay competitive in tomorrow's world.
- It is our business to competently initiate emerging opportunities while continuing to assertively enhance long-term high-impact meta-services while promoting personal user growth.
- We exist to globally leverage other's economically sound meta-services while continuing to professionally leverage existing high-quality methods of empowerment.
As a theoretical shareholder in OutdoorIdiots.com, you have the right to contribute your thoughts to our AGM here.
If you can't be bothered to enter the forums, then shame on you! But you can still leave a comment below. Please try to avoid the profane ramblings of a madman. That's our job.
If you can't be bothered to enter the forums, then shame on you! But you can still leave a comment below. Please try to avoid the profane ramblings of a madman. That's our job.
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