Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away, on a magical world with pixies, genies, fairies and sub-S$1K 20Mpix DSLRs .... oops, sorry, that one from my dreams :D This brief history and update are for those members who have been wondering about how ClubSNAP came to be and who are the people behind ClubSNAP. Hope you find it interesting reading. The Early Days in HardwareZone (HWZ) The origin of ClubSNAP can be traced way, way back to the Digicam & Photography SIG sub-forum in HWZ. During the time in HWZ, once the sub-forum became popular, the number of postings in DC&P grew substantially. Out of this online forum and also thru discussions on the IRC channel, one of the members had a desire and guts to suggest a face-to-face meeting, and sometime in mid-2001, the first ever in-person meeting was held between AdamGoi, Bluestrike, Condor and Ichungwe. Subsequently another, bigger, Gathering was held at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf restaurant in Funan Centre and if my memory serves me well, the people at that meeting were AdamGoi, me, Edmund, rueyloon, Bluestrike, ninelives and kianern (not a complete list as I distinctly remember more people than this, if you were there and I missed you out, my apologies, let me know and I will update). A few weeks later, another Gathering was held at the Funan Centre again (this time at McDonalds), and from there the regular meetings became known as SEEDs (a term coined and copyrighted by AdamGoi. SEED stands for Shopping for Equipment and Expendables Day). Apart from SEEDs, there were also pretty regular photoshoot outings to the Zoo, Sentosa and Bird Park as well as around the City. Roadbumps While HWZ was a convenient gathering and online meeting place for the photography enthusiasts, its popularity and the number of postings in the other forums sometimes made it difficult to keep track of postings (new and old). The phenomenal growth of HWZ Forums meant that there were literally hundreds of new posts every day and because of the way the HWZ Forums was designed, all post of all genres (nature, street, scenic, gossip, etc.) was all lumped together into a single sub-forum like rojak. It was not an ideal situation. Things came to a head in late-2001 when HWZ experienced issues with performance in the Forums, primarily due to its enormous member base and postings, its popularity and its growth. Members found it difficult to post at certain times of the day, and overall, the Forums crawled. Birth of ClubSNAP This fact was lamented loudly and frequently during Gatherings around that time, and we were often sitting around tossing out ideas of what to do. From there, a core group of members then came up with the idea of setting up our own forums. Once that was decided, things moved pretty quickly, the name ClubSNAP was coined in one of the meetings, and on January 17th, 2002, ClubSNAP opened its doors. The Founding Members initially provided the financial support as well as the resources, ideas and skills that have brought us to where we are today and they will forever be known as the key people behind the formation of the Forum that you see now. The Founding Members In alphabetical order, here are the Founding Members of ClubSNAP AdamGoi Bluestrike Ckiang Darren Edmund JasonHo Kongg Ninelives Red Dawn Richard Shadus Simon YSLee Zapp ClubSNAP has now passed its one year birthday, and we sincerely hope that all members have enjoyed (and will continue to enjoy) ClubSNAP in its primary purpose of providing an online meeting place for all photography enthusiasts and take advantage of the frequent Gatherings/SEEDs/Photoshoots as avenues to meet face-to-face with like-minded people. Thanks to the efforts of Founding Members, moderators and most of all, the Members, ClubSNAP is now a thriving community of photography enthusiasts who come in here to share their knowledge, discuss ideas and foster new friendships and relations with others with a similiar passion and interest in photography. ClubSNAP has grown to be more than just an online community and the popularity of SEED and the photoshoots are testament to that philosophy (a philosophy that we ingrained into the running of ClubSNAP from Day 1). After all, there are a lot of online forums out there, but how many members of the other Forums can you say you have met face to face? From the Founding Members of ClubSNAP - the Photography Community, THANK YOU