Thanks for 10 amazing years Gaians - We <3 you!

[Lanzer]

Oh gosh it's been 10 years! A whole decade since Gaia opened! It's amazing to even think that our community had gathered countless around the world, having made tens of millions of avatars, and we've made billions of posts, with hundreds of thousands more being added each day. While more fantastic is the number of friendships that were formed within our community, and even more fantastic is to see the number of Gaia babies that were introduced to me from different couples that met each other on Gaia years ago.

Back in 2003 I would never have dream of writing this message today. Gaia was just a 4 month project from 4 people working in our living room. When I made the site public, Gaia was nothing special. It was nothing more than a forum with avatars. But very soon Gaia started to take shape. With every user who joined the site and claimed themselves Gaians, they started chatting with each other and forming a strong community. Soon the community knew what exactly Gaia needed and asked for all the features that would make Gaia complete. In no time our little forum expanded wide and deep, having everyday chatter to the deepest of intriguing discussions. The Gaia community became alive and vibrant, then with steady growth we became the largest forum around. It's not until you guys are here that I finally realized that we have something amazing here, something special that will last for a long, long time.

I have only you to thank for making Gaia the special place that it is today. Our team will continue to be creative, to bring you surprises yet keeping up with requests and feedback. It's a tall order to keep up with the need of millions of Gaians all with different needs, but we're still up for the task because making you guys happy is the best reward for us all.

Happy 10th year anniversary everyone!

[siskataya]

Hello everyone!

Wow, hard to believe it has been 10 years of Gaia - what an amazing feat! We're so glad to have such an amazing community who has been around for such a long time. At this point, I feel like we are family. Sometimes we argue or disagree, and at times we may even aggravate each other, but at the end of the day, there is a lot of love - just like a family!

I want to thank all of you for being such amazing people, and for sharing your thoughts, dreams, and talents with me, and the whole community, each and every day. It has been my distinct pleasure to get to know many of you, and to share your stories, hopes, and concerns. I cannot even begin to describe what a surreal and beautiful feeling it is to have been able to watch so many of you grow up and become amazing adults. Hard to think that just a few years ago, many of you were 15-17 years old, and wondering what your futures would bring you as you stepped out into the adult world. Now you are adults - many of you have finished college, gotten married and started families of your own. What an amazing process to have been a part of, and I thank you for sharing your life experiences with me. I hope that I have been able to be of some support to you, even if it was just listening.

And I also want to thank you all for supporting me - whether I was changing positions in the company, or setting out on a path to great health and fitness, your words of encouragement have helped me stay the course; to keep going even in difficult times. Your concern, compassion, kind words and goodness as people have been such a source of strength for me - truly, it has meant the world, and I am grateful.

I've said it before and I will continue to say it - I believe the Gaia community is the best community online and it because of you. Your humor, intelligence, creativity and compassion are second to none. I think you are all amazing and cannot wait to see where you all are in another 10 years!

Thank you, Gaians, for being awesome, and for making my world, and this little corner of the internet we call Gaia, a much richer and more beautiful place.

Sisky

[Uncle Kenny]

It's really been 10 years already? I truly don't know where all the time went. Ten years ago I was just a 15 year old high school student trying to procrastinate my homework and find somewhere that had others who enjoyed the anime I was just getting into. I found Gaia through a friend and fit right in with the Anime/Manga/Comics forum and before I knew it, I was hooked. Little did I know just how hooked I was though...

Fast forward 8 years and I'm finishing my Bachelors in Computer Science, working part-time at Target, and Omnimoderating for Gaia with my free time. I happen to see a post from Panagrammic talking about internships with the company and think to myself "that'd be awesome, I should apply for that!". So I do and a couple weeks later I find out the Dev intern positions have already been filled. Being bummed, I started looking for jobs in my area but a few days after that, I got a call from Gaia. It was the head of Gaia's Customer Service department and he wanted to know if I was interested in an opportunity that would let me develop and fix tools for the Admin and Mod team. Of course I said I was, so after a few games of phone tag and a couple interviews later, I was packing all that I could into my bags and flying from Indiana to sunny San Jose, CA with no apartment, no family, and nobody I knew waiting for me there except for the Admin team. Truth be told, I ended up spending a month crashing on the floor of Zero Omega/Sandokiri's apartment until I was able to find my own place. Without them, I probably wouldn't have been able to stay out here at all.

Fast forward to today and I'm now the main developer for all of Gaia's site events, I have my own place, and I'm currently planning a wedding with the lovely tiranaki who you can see right below my post. I've had to grow up in ways I never wanted to and have a whole new respect for things that I had taken for granted before.

Long story short, I've been a part of Gaia in one way or another for nearly 40% of my life now. I've gone from a geeky high school kid who liked anime, to an actual software engineer working at a company I love, living with the person I love, and doing something every day that makes me happy: planning even more awesome things to troll you with make for all of you. None of these things would've happened if it hadn't been for Gaia. More than that though, none of these things would've happened if all of you hadn't joined the site and continued coming back, day after day, to make Gaia the place it is today.

So this isn't only a celebration for Gaia, it's a celebration for all of you and I hope the event we're giving you shows at least a little bit of just how much your continued support means to us. Happy Anniversary Gaia, I hope I'll be back here again in another 10 years to celebrate another major milestone. And thank you, all of you, for your unwavering loyalty and support for us, we couldn't have done this without you.

- Kenny
The Events Guy

[tiranaki]

eek I can't believe it's been 10 years! emotion_bigheart

I'm so genuinely grateful for all of the wonderful (and even the not so wonderful) things I've experienced throughout my time on Gaia. In July I will have been on Gaia for 9 years! Back then, I never could have imagined I would ever find myself where I am right now. I was volunteering for a now long-dead art community when I came across a thread about Gaia, decided to check it out, and was instantly drawn to the avatars. They reminded me of the pixel art dolls I liked to dabble with at the time, and I was hooked! When Gaia Fishing was released, I immediately found my place within an amazing community full of interesting, passionate people. Throughout my years here I've gravitated between fishing and holding an art shop, but I am proud to say that some of the friends I made back then are still with me today, and became so much more than just "online" friends. They became real friends. I'm so happy that Gaia has grown into what it is today, and that at 10 years, it wasn't just a passing fad. Nope, Gaia is here to stay!

I love this community and love seeing it grow, and change, and am super thankful for having been given the chance to not only take care of Gaia and it's members as an Omni Moderator for 4 years, but also now as an Admin as part of Customer Service Team. We have a great team of staff members (including mods!) that work very hard every day to make sure Gaia is awesome, they truly are the best co-workers I've ever had! I'm so so so glad that I get to come to work in such a fun and creative environment. This is truly my dream job and I will forever be grateful to those that gave me opportunity! Being on Gaia has actually changed my life, and I don't mean that metaphorically! If it wasn't for Gaia I wouldn't have met my fiance, and I would not have had such amazing experiences and met so many awesome people both online and in real life.

However, none of this would be possible without you guys! Thank YOU so much for making Gaia what it is, and for sticking around with us for so long. You are truly the most dedicated, most unique community I've ever had the please of being a part of, and I wouldn't trade it for anything! Thank you for allowing Gaia to have 10 amazing years! Here's to many more!

gaia_angelleft emotion_bigheart gaia_angelright

[CP]

OOOOOOOOOO
lol eek smile biggrin 3nodding xd ninja pirate rofl 4laugh

[Narumi Misuhara]

Wow, ten years ...that's a long time. XD

I wasn't around when Gaia first started, in fact in 2003 I hadn't even heard about it. I hadn't heard of Gaia until 3 months before I started in 2008. I remember that day like it was yesterday, I was.... I was.... mmmm ...Well I remember a phone call ...stuff happening... then a couple weeks later getting a phone interview. I thought I did well but I had no idea. Right after it I remember going to the Gaia Online website and seeing the awesome art work on the logged out home page. It had a big image of a female anime character and my reaction was ...Sugoi! I created my character, logged in, went to a couple of pages, which loaded insanely slow, and was so fed up with how slow it was that I then left and didn't go back. ...Until about a week later when I was at home looking at anime and thinking, hey, maybe I'll give Gaia another shot, plus then I can create an anime looking character! So I went back, started looking at the awesome profiles and decided to make one of my own. From there I branched into the games, then the anime/manga/comics forum as a lurker and I was hooked. Three months later I was hired as a dev, and here I am today!

It's been an amazing ride so far and I would like to thank all of you for being here and being a part of it. Gaia is Gaia because of the Gaian's and I make sure to never lose sight of that. This community is unique and awesome and I hope it always stays that way. Here's to all of you, for making this place the awesomeness that it is.

We've come a long way, but don't worry, there's still a ways to go smile

Happy Anniversary!!!!!!

[Zero Omega]

It seems like it was just yesterday when I got a message on AIM from an old role-playing buddy telling me, "Hey, our old chat room is dead but there's this new site called Go-Gaia where we can RP. Join and put me as a referral so I can get 50 gold." That's how I started on Gaia nearly ten years ago. In August I will be a ten year old Gaian, I started the site when I was 15, still in high school. There have been a lot of great times of Gaia, a lot of very good memories and amazing changes. I remember when the site would crash if over a thousand users were online. Now we've shown we can handle tens of thousands!

All of this wouldn't have been possible without the love, support, and devotion of each and every one of you. Whether it be buying Gaia Cash, telling your friends about the site, or just logging on and hanging out, you all contribute to the success and growth of Gaia. Without all of you then we wouldn't have made it this far. Sure we have amazing staff here, everyone from mods to developers, but without the users we'd have no one to serve.

So thank you everyone! Thank you for an amazing ten years, no matter if you're a ten year old Gaian, five, or made an account just now, you have made this all possible. Let's celebrate and look forward to another ten years!

[milkbun]

OMGOSH... 10 years!! emotion_jawdrop That's an amazing feat to accomplish for an online site and it is all thanks to you dedicated users. I can't thank you enough for supporting us and allowing me to have such a wonderful job. I truly enjoy working everyday to make new items and make Gaia a better and more fun place to be.

I hope I can thank you with more fun times ahead! Let's all meet again in another 10 years. emotion_bigheart

[codemonkey37179]

10 Years! I'm so happy to be a part of this. I do think that some of the best years are yet to come. wink

[Fayren Pickpocket]

Happy 10th Anniversary to Gaia!! Here is to another 10 years. emotion_bigheart

[gem2niki]

Yay we've reached 10 years!!
Live Long and Prosper Gaia!! emotion_c8

[DJ Helsing]

Wow I can’t believe that it’s been 10 years now. It feels like yesterday, time really does fly’s when you’re having fun smile

I just wanted to take a second to thank each and every one of you for all of your love and dedication for the site. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you and were working hard in 2013 to make features and updates to the site that you have been asking for so please keep the feedback coming.

I always enjoy meeting and hanging out with each and every one of you during the Gaia Convention Tour. It’s always a blast chatting and hanging out and I’m really looking forward to this year’s Tour and spending a lot more time with all of you. One of the things I’m especially looking forward to is getting all of your feedback and opinions about the site so I can continue to bring it back to the team so that we can do our best to make the site something we all can love, enjoy and be proud of.

Thanks for all your continued support and I can’t wait to see you on the road!

[Panagrammic]

Ten years! Amazing. In web-years that's like 70.

In my many years at Gaia -- and I'm not sure how long it is exactly, because I would have to count back and go through calendars and measure dinosaur footprints and it would make me feel old -- there is much to reminisce about, half of which we've never revealed. Did I tell the story about how Darknrgy made us put up plastic sheets around our cubes for the Halloween decoration contest, and managed to bring the department low with a spate of illnesses? No!? How about the daily hazards of walking around the office while remote controlled planes are flying about?

But all of that is just funny stories, and I need to save them so I can slowly reveal them at random ATAs.

However, I would like to thank three groups of people:

- Developers. The developers of Gaia are a dedicated bunch. I know it seems like we're never working on the thing that you wanted fixed, but nonetheless this a good bunch of talented, real individuals that are working on interesting stuff. How can you describe a development team that will talk about scalability of code in one minute and then switch to an in-depth comparison of Downton Abbey and Star Wars!?

- Artists. A ridiculously amazing group of artists. I don't understand how they do what they do, but I am always amazed at their abilities to draw forth beauty from a blank piece of paper.

- You! Yes, sometimes the community is difficult, and sometimes the community is painful, and I've frequently seen the painful side of it, having tried to fix the gold curve. Nonetheless, being able to interact with the users is the fun part of Gaia, and the thing that I enjoy the most.

Although: I still can't fix your banned account, sorry.

Take care, everyone, and I hope that I am able to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Gaia with my iBrain implant.

[Buki]

Happy 10th Gaiaversary everyone - thanks for the amazing ride! Here's to 10 more years smile

[oxydizer]

Happy 10th Anniversary to Gaia!