It is with both great sadness and great joy that I announce my pseudo-retirement. Effective May 1st, Tom Merrall will take over the day-to-day operations of GOM and the position of President of Gaming Open Market. After working with him on this project for the past year and a half, I feel completely confident in his abilities to keep things running smoothly and to continue growing the company.
I say "great sadness" because I have thoroughly enjoyed this thought-experiment-turned-successful-business. I have put a great deal of my life into this website and the business behind it, and I can honestly say that a very large part of me will miss it. We've broken a lot of interesting ground, met a lot of interesting people. The experience has been a blast!
I say "great joy" because within a month my wife will deliver our second child.
And as much fun as GOM has been, I am so looking forward to spending all my free time on this new project. I need the time and the headspace to give back to my family the time that I have spent on GOM over the past year and a half. I am certain that you understand.As far as operations go, you will notice very little difference.
Tom will take over the Zeppi Schlegel avatar as well as most support issues. If you have any troubles at all, please don't hesitate to contact him either directly via his email address (tom@gamingopenmarket.com), via his avatars (Ricky Zamboni and now Zeppi Schlegel) or better still, through the support page on the GOM site.
Through my day-job, I have picked up an appreciation of accounting. I will continue to work on GOM in the "back room" cooking the books and doing the taxes. For the near future, I will still be sending the money order withdrawals so please continue to send me those requests. I will still be writing a bit of code here and there, so you might catch me lurking on the forums for ideas.
This is *not* a permanent move. I look forward to returning to work on the project, but I can't say for certain when that will be. In the meantime, I *can* say for certain that Tom will keep the level of service as high as it has always been - if not higher.
Thank you for all the kind and supportive words you've sent. They have all been taken to heart.
Have fun! Trade smart!
Jamie Hale
Soon-to-be Ex-President - Gaming Open Market Corp.
[email]jamie@gamingopenmarket.com[/email]
