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Remember what you were doing a year ago? I sure
do. It was Easter Sunday, my wife’s grandparents had just left after
having dinner, and I was hunched over my laptop, trying to put the
finishing touches on a website scheduled to go live in about 8 hours.
That website, of course, was CadetStuff.
How did we get CadetStuff together?
As the editor,
I get that question every so often in an e-mail, so I stop, wade
thru my e-mail archives and put together a coherent answer based on when
our e-mails started flying around. I’m certainly no historian…
Concept
The initial concept of a ‘site encompassing all
things cadet’ was borne out of a September 2000 e-mail between myself,
Shawn Stanford and
Derrell Lipman regarding commonly done wrong drill
commands (that eventually became the basis for the original "Drill for Dummies"). Shawn
mentioned setting up a site as a central repository for all the good
cadet materials & "best practices" out on the net, a website that would be
the place to go for all things "cadet."
As the idea evolved, we began to understand
that as long as we were collecting the "best" cadet programs
materials and locating them all in one place, we should also provide a
little more value & content to the equation. We wanted
to create something that would hopefully fill the gap left by the
departure of the much-lamented “CAP Officer” online journal published by Majs Curt Lafond and Jan Largent, but be
perhaps slightly more cadet-oriented.
And a little more tongue-in-cheek.
OK, a LOT more tongue-in-cheek.
While the CAP Officer was a professional journal along the
lines of
“Armed Forces Journal” or “Proceedings,’
Shawn's original concept was an online magazine that was closer to “Leatherneck"
meets "Mad Magazine."
We copied a few more people onto the initial
e-mail, and soon, our circle of confidants expanded to include a number
of folks, not all of whom actually wound up working on the site, but
certainly had some input into the shaping of the eventual product. At
the same time, we started looking around for some cadets who could come
on board and be a part of the team.
What's in a name?
In and amongst all this, Shawn's initial e-mail had a couple domain name ideas, including a
really lame one, "CadetStuff.com." Some how, like a bad penny, this name
kept coming back at us. In some weird cult-like way, everybody seemed
attracted to the name "CadetStuff." Frankly, I started looking around for
the vats of spiked Kool-Aid and a Powers Booth-looking guy in a guyaberra shirt and
sunglasses.
Derrell Lipman
registered the CadetStuff domain name in the ".org" top-level domain in November of 2000, and setup
an internal e-mail reflector while we continued to discuss the specifics of
what our mission and scope would be. Along about the same time, Dan Routier, commonly known
as “Dano” or “Hey you!,” set up some webserver space for us on his
college network, and an actual, physical website began to take shape.
The blob takes form, then turns into a blob
again...
We spent the next four months lining up
authors, snarfing cool content from other places, goofing with graphics
& layouts and generally
causing ourselves a great deal of aggravation and pain. We still
didn't have a launch date. The site was constantly in a state of
"not quite ready." We tossed around some dates that were far
enough in the future to be feasible, but not so close as to cause me to wake
up in a cold sweat each night. April 1st was out, as everybody
would think that our site was one gigantic April Fools joke. (hahah,
little did they know!) April 15th sounded like a nice, even
number, someplace in the middle of the month. Of course, after we
realized that was Easter Sunday, we moved the date a tad to the 16th of
April. Tax Day. (cue the ominous music right here)
Somewhere along the line, I think someone said
"Who wants to be in charge of this mob, take one step forward!" and I
wasn't listening carefully enough and didn't take a step backwards with my compatriots. Drat!
Suddenly I was the "managing editor." Heck, I didn't
even know what my job description was!
A plethora of technical glitches, bugs, errors,
problems ensued, leading right up to our 16 April launch date.
One day, just week or so out from the launch, in publishing part of the
site to the production web server, I managed to wipe out the whole
forums directory. Ouch. Score one for the managing editor. The tech
guys were not happy.
A couple weeks from launch, we sent out a
URL to a number of "distinguished" cadet programs folks who we wanted
to preview the site and give us feedback. Unfortunately, it
seemed, our success was our undoing, as the majority of our feedback
was along the lines of "Wow! Cool site!" Not a lot of useful information to
be gleaned from that.
About 10 days out, I cobbled
together a flash animation for the splash page that was sufficiently vague about the site,
yet hopefully would make people visiting our URL come back in a couple
weeks to see what this was all about.. We dug up the e-mail
addresses of every wing & region director of cadet programs, CAC chair
and CAP-related e-mail list we could find and spammed them
with a somewhat cryptic message that would hopefully pique their
interest to visit.
3...2...1....
After months of work, we were finally "ready"
to launch. Only, we weren't even sure we would get anybody to
visit. One thing kept running through my mind: What if we open the
doors and nobody shows?
Fingers were crossed, and just after midnight on the 16th of
April, the covers were yanked back on the site. And like a theater
offering midnight showings of "Star Wars," people started visiting.
By the end of the first day we had over 430 visitors! Wow. CadetStuff
was off to a running start, for sure, but we certainly had no idea
where we were running to.
The Evolution of the Site
The first bit of the site was pretty
basic. A few leadership articles, this thing called “Drill for
Dummies,” some recruiting stuff that I had been working on and had a site for already,
and a fist-full of features such as an interview with
some guy in
California who makes videos (George Lucas?), and the
serialization of a
juvenile fiction novel about Civil Air Patrol from the 1950s. After a
couple weeks, we had some more stuff available. The first (but
certainly not the last) incarnation of the CadetStuff forums appeared,
courtesy our resident Perl guru
Matt Johnson,
Dr. Drill debuted,
and the first of our online leadership quizzes
popped up.
Then we rolled in a section called “CadetLife” for
your wacky photos and our even wackier captions, and started posting
polls on the site to let our readers sound off with their opinions.
Later we offered up CadetStuff t-shirts
(which took us a little while to actually sell..) Meanwhile, we adopted Scott
Matthews, CA Wing’s answer to Kevin Smith, as a bit of an income tax
dodge and asked him to send us
reports during his 5-week tour of all the National Cadet Special
Activities. At the end of the summer, the NCSA tree began dropping
fruit as our “in the field” correspondents sent in their reports about
each of the special activities they attended.
 Mike Crockett from our staff journeyed to the
National Boards in September, taking one of
the first CadetStuff t-shirts along for
General Anderson, our former National Commander and CadetStuff reader.
Meanwhile, the NCSA articles kept rolling in the door, and our
ethics
section was graced by the words of Professor Davida Kellog, a University
of Maine professor and on of our nation’s foremost military ethics
minds. Later, USAF Reserve Capt Bob Morgan from LA Wing graced us with his
cunning
photography from Advanced PJOC, and we resurrected the cadet newsletter
“CadetReach” as one of our new sections. We
jumped across the pond, so to speak, with some leadership
lessons from Lt Col Michael Marra, an active-duty USAF squadron
commander in Europe, and an
article on shoe-shining by a Royal Naval Reserve Midshipman.
The beginning of the new year caught us wrapping up
“Squadron Alert,” the novel serialization from the 1950s. 19 chapters of
real, live “gee-whiz” fiction. The CadetStuff store finally opened
after months of anticipation, complete with a
fictional
product that hooked a number of readers. Quick, get the net!
We gotta land this one!
 Some staffers, contributors and readers
rallied up at Hawk Mountain in early February for the Hawk Mountain
Winter Search & Rescue course. Partly to provide a good excuse to get a
number of folks together face-to-face, but also to get good winter
training from the experts at Hawk. And we even got a
two-part article out of
it!
As we wound up the year, apart from our
normal features and columns, the only exciting thing about our March
issue was a new serialization to replace Squadron Alert, called “Drummond Island Declassified.”
So now we're here, in April of 2002. Over
10,000
visitors in the last year... Amazing
Where do we go from here?
I ask myself that all the time.
We're presently investigating different software packages
to help streamline each month's publication and to make the site more
user friendly and easy to navigate, along with promoting more timely
updates. Perhaps in a year, we'll have branched off somewhat, and
begun to encompass JROTC cadets, Naval Sea Cadets, ACA cadets, and
maybe even international cadet corps from around the world. I'd
sure like to see us bring on board twice the number of cadets we
presntly have on staff.
But
more importantly, CadetStuff will still continue to bring you the best
cadet-related items from around the globe.
Who
knows what the future brings. The first year was a riot. Stick
around and see what happens next!
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Maj
Darin Ninness joined CAP as a cadet in Michigan Wing's Van Dyke Cadet
Squadron in 1981. Over the next five years he completed all 15
achievements of the cadet program, commanded an encampment and became one
of the first cadet officers to serve on the Michigan Wing HQ staff.
Returning to Michigan Wing after a three year stint in the U.S. Army, he
served in various capacities at the squadron, group and wing levels. He is
presently the commander of the Concord Composite Squadron
and the acting Director of Cadet Programs for New Hampshire
Wing.