I've really missed Herbie, too. I'm glad your news, Walt, as I haven't heard from him in a while. I know he cares deeply about TMS, so I'm sure he'll be back eventually. He's such a caring and warm person that the forum isn't quite the same without him.
Sometimes I need to take some time off, too...
Regarding the call in group, I'm afraid to say that that project is unfortunately on an indefinite hiatus. All of the TMS work I'm doing is still taking more than full time work, and unfortunately I can't go on like this forever. Partially this means recruiting other people to help on the philosophy that many hands make light work.
@Ellen and
@Buckeye have already offered to help, and I'm tremendously grateful for that. It's taking a very long time to roll out a volunteering program that I'm calling being an "Easy Moderator," but it's coming together, slowly but surely. (Moderators are people who help run a forum and "Easy" means that the "Easy Moderators" will only have to do tasks that are relatively easy and relaxing.)
However, my schedule has tightened up pretty significantly recently, so it may be a while before we're able to go back to having a regular call in show. I really loved chatting with everyone and occasionally sharing a cocktail, but it took a long time to organize and there are so many other projects that I want to work on to push the nonprofit forward.
I brought up the time issue with the regular callers in the call-in group and while they really wanted to continue it, they understood:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/the-future-of-our-call-in-events.6154/
I asked for volunteers to help with the workload, but no one came forward. Further, whereas the forum servers hundreds of people every week, the call in group only served a handful.
We had some really tremendous talks near the end (and throughout!) and I started leaning toward a non-recorded format. I really wanted to continue, but recently my schedule has tightened up (as schedules sometimes do) and a decision had to be made.
It will be hard to let it go, as I really will miss the people, but we can always start it back up later when the community grows to the point where it can support something like that.
