Category5 gains enough money to replace the server and microphones!
Author: Andrew Jamison | Filed under: MiscellaniousIf you follow the show category5.tv at all you’ll most likely by now know that a recent lightning strike took out Robbie’s server, as well as frying several of his lapel microphones. However, what you might not know is that thanks to community contributions and donations. He was able to raise the funds necessary to replace both the server as well as the lapel microphones.
This says a lot about the people that follow the show and their desire to see the show continue. While there is still quite a bit of tweaking to do to get the set up perfect Robbie busted his butt to try to get it to a somewhat functional state for this week show. When you consider that all the time devoted to the show is purely voluntary and that aside from advertisers. No money is generated from the show. It helps to put into perspective the monumental task that Robbie has to keep the show running. It does need to include the sacrifices he estimate what this family to devote one hour for broadcasting and several hours after that for encoding and editing to make the show happen.
Some might ask why he continues to do the show if it’s such a masochistic endeavor. I would like to think it’s because Robbie enjoys helping people. More importantly the show has become much more than just a task to him as it has too many people watch it. In an ideal world we would find support for technology and devices freely, however most people do not have the resources or the patience to undergo any kind of troubleshooting without some kind of monetary support. Robbie found a way to offer free support and bring together large communities of people that span the globe to talk about technology and computers.
Being a somewhat technical enabled person myself, I can sympathize with the plight of the community tech support person; in fact, if you search the Internet you can find articles were Robbie has specifically outlined the original reason for starting category5. It very much had to do with offering free support to his clients without them interrupting his personal life or family time.
My point in all this rambling is that, by the community banding together and providing the resources necessary for Robbie to continue the show, shows the and taking his free time to provide free tech support is appreciated (not that he didn’t know that already). If you’re tech savvy person than you know what I’m talking about, Just think about all the times you’ve helped family members or friends with the technical problem and got very little recognition or appreciation for it, it was almost as if you were expected to do it. I can’t speak personally for how things panned out for Robbie early on, I can try to related to my own experiences which gives me that much more appreciation for the time he takes to run the show, and while my financial situation did not allow for me to contribute financially, I am ever grateful for those that are able to.
I know this blog post may sound like it’s devoted to building up Robbie’s ego, but the real reason is so that people who read it will get a real understanding or appreciation for what it is that he does every week. Far too many times have I seen geeks go out of their way to help people only for those people to underestimate just how difficult it is sometimes integrate that in with everything else that’s going on in their life? Another example of a person who devotes a majority of their free time helping the community would be Chris Pirillo, while his resources are little more plentiful. I would imagine it still doesn’t take away from the fact that he chooses to devote a majority of his free time to helping, educating and enabling the community.
Since anybody reading this is in a similar situation occurs under-appreciated for what it is they do. My hats off to you!
Tags: category5, Chris Pirillo, microphone, money, Robbie Ferguson, server, technology
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