Welcome

Hello one and all.

To all of you who have joined the patreon, thank you for being here and supporting my work, to those who have just stopped by to look, thank you for thinking that much of the work I do that you're even interested enough to take the time. 

Things here, like pretty much everywhere else I'm working on, will develop over time and will  be very community driven. Whilst this is something I will use to make my life easier, in the end it's being built for you.  

It's kinda interesting because, in many ways, I was sort of nagged into setting this patreon up. In my conversations, over the last couple of months or so, with many different folks either looking for stuff or expressing their support, people kept asking me whether they could financially support what I was doing. 

I kept saying no. 

I didn't have anything set up. I told them that and also that I might have something sorted out in the future.  

That was actually a white lie. I originally never intended to set anything like that up because, to be honest, I never really thought I had anything tangible to offer folks for their financial support. 

However, over time, more and more folks mentioned something along those lines and I guess the idea lodged itself in the back of my head. 

It wasn't until I was doing some research on a new feature on The Site i was looking to implement that I saw a page (for a piece of open source software I was looking to use) that had a patreon link on it. 

Because of the recent discussions with people I followed the link out of curiosity and I have to admit I was surprised by what I saw.

I wasn't surprised that people developing open source software need supporting or funding (I fund/support a number of them myself through my business) but surprised mainly regarding the number of supporters the developer had considering his patreon was offering nothing "extra" in return. No bonuses or perks or anything like that.  Just supporting his work.  

Then I thought about my own situation that I mentioned, with regard to the people I support,   and I came to realise that whilst most of those I support have some benefits or perks to the various tiers etc, I don't think in my time supporting them I've ever actually utilised any of them. In fact the only one I can think that I've used at all as a member perk was series of screencasts by the author of some of the more in-depth aspects of his software.  And providing practical examples on how to use it. 

It was then that I realised you don't always need a reward to help someone out and I could understand a little more where the people I'd been talking to were coming from. I guess, as they say, perspective really is everything. 

So, I decided that I could put something together and see what happens.

I seriously considered trolling all of you very hard and setting up an OnlyFans :D 

Then, sanity prevailed and I decided this was the more "appropriate" course of action and thus here we are. 

As I mentioned before, I honestly didn't think I had a lot to offer folks, at least anything tangible, but the thing is the more and more I was finalising bits and pieces of this place (and it's far from done) I kept coming up with ideas that people may be interested in. 

So we'll see how things go and, as always, let the people speak and then based on what they say see how we might be best placed to help as many of them as possible. 

-SK