What a crazy few weeks. Work at MindTouch is gearing up - ths release we're working on right now is the biggest (2nd only to Hayes, our first commercial launch), and the drumbeat about the problems its solves has been teased on our blog.

The release, as we continue to iterate over it, is looking remarkably good, but it's behind schedule (no surprise). Fortunately the end is in sight, and the team is working hard at it - a lot of long hours ahead! With all my personal stuff taken care of, I can start focusing my extra energy on completing and shipping this product.

It's been awesome working on product again. The team has been very well-focused for the past two months now, and it really shows in the level of work that's gone into the product. I'll write more about it after the release - it's been a great experience so far, and I'm looking forward to shipping it and sharing it with the world.

. . . 

But back to Tabulas. I haven't written about the site since the announcement of its sale, because I honestly haven't known what the relationship between Francis (the purchaser) and myself would be, and what my ongoing role would be.

When I was filtering out buyers for the site, I wanted to find somebody who was willing to invest more into the site. It wouldn't just be a vanity purchase where it'd wither (Lightbox7 suffered this fate).

The sale was not meant to be a death kiss for the site, it was rather an effort to revitalize the site and to give the community a chance to influence and improve Tabulas. And I'm convinced this is the case. The correspondence I've had with Francis has convinced me that I made absolutely the right decision (in retrospect, I wish I had held a minority stake in the site) and that he's the right person to own Tabulas.

Before I left last week for Han's wedding, I completed the migration of the site and its data over to the servers. Since then, Francis and I have been chatting about the future of Tabulas. While I have tons of great ideas, what's lacking for me is the motivation to execute on those. When you spend 4 years (active development time) working for free on Tabulas, you eventually want to get paid (the reality of life!).

Francis believes in the vision of the site and the future of it, and he has the resources to back the development of it. This is great news for you and for Tabulas.

While he doesn't have a dev team in place, I do have some cycles available, and I will actually be taking an active development role (in my spare time) to improving the site's functionality and features. I have some rather risky ideas (I'll write them up here once I get them solidified in my noggin') that might really help move Tabulas forward and revitalize the community here.

I know that a big part of why many of you stayed is because I was here - and you knew that with me, your data would be safe, and I wouldn't do things that would compromise the integrity of the site. While I can't speak for the new owner of the site, as I am still remaining an active member of the Tabulas team (funny to say that), I can say that the spirit of Tabulas will continue.

So what's going on? There is still some housework that needs to be done (Amazon won't let me simply reassign a whole S3 bucket to somebody else - fail!), but you're going to start seeing small changes here and there. This week, Francis has assigned resources to have me work on a refreshed home page.

It's a small start, but I think once Francis and I figure out how we'll work together, great things will come from Tabulas once again.

I know these are just words, but I hope I can back them up with actions soon, too.

So don't give up on Tabulas - if anything, think of the sale as a rebirth. An infusion of badly needed resources as well as another perspective on where the site will go.