Duckplanet is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. It's hard to believe that we have been celebrating rubber duckie love for that long. I figure this would be a good time to reflect about Duckplanet. It has been a good long ride with plenty of ups and downs. The highest ups included the first couple national Duckfests where many folks who had been penpals for over 5 years met face to face for the first time--embracing joyously and then just acting silly together. Getting mentions in the Los Angeles Times and achieving the Guinness World Record were other highs. The lows were definitely losing old Duckplanet regulars to illness. Sharon McDonald was one of the earliest members of Duckplanet and her gentle spirit is still missed. Doug Labidee is also missed. To this day, I know of no one who has the depth and breadth of knowledge about rubber ducks that he had. We had many lovely discussions about the minutiae of rubber ducks and I miss those discussions every week.
 
When Duckplanet started, I was a young graduate student some time on my hands. Now ten years later, I am a professor at a major university working long hours every week. I love my job, but there is precious little free time. When I started Duckplanet, the majority of members were a little older than I was and today, the majority of members are younger. This is not just a reflection of me getting older, but that we have more members in their 20s and teens than ever before. This influx continues to revitalize and replenish the Duckplanet community. At the same time, many of the old timers either only read the duck alerts or they stop coming to Duckplanet altogether. I'd love to hear any suggestions about how to retain more experienced collectors on the Duckplanet board.  
 
I think it is probably also time to look for contributors who can help me update the home page blog on a regular basis. While Duckplanet continues to get several thousand unique visitors every month, it has stopped growing. I am looking for a few volunteers who write well or have some artistic talent that will commit to submitting contributions of photos or articles related to rubber ducks once a week.
 
The greatest things about Duckplanet are that it has cultivated friendships that have lasted years and that it has cultivated a community of like minded people who not only love rubber ducks for their friendliness, silliness, approachability, simplicity, youthfulness, and fun--but who also embody and personify those qualities. Generally speaking, rubber duck people are good people and are a pleasure to be around.
 
I will soon be posting about a couple 10th anniversary activities so definitely check this space! Thank you for being part of the journey. Here's hoping for another 10 years that are just ducky! Finally, I would like to know if anybody else has been reading Duckplanet as long as postcardgirl (Shari) who first posted to Duckplanet on January 5, 2002. Shari, I have something to send you!
 
Charlotte

Ha! Hardly a newbie! I think Lucy may have started posting just a couple months before you in 2003. So you would have the third longest tenure in Duckplanet among the regulars. mrquackers, are you the same mrquackers that started posting in 2004? You would be fourth! Then in 2005 a handful of current regulars started posting. It's fun to look back at those old boards.

Quote from mrquackers on Nov 6^th, 2009, 6:40am:

 
The old board remains archived at http://duckplanet.com/wb2.  It's interesting reading  

Congratulations on Duckplanet's 10th anniversary!
 
Thanks Charlotte and Le Duck for starting this website up and keep it going on for so long beside your busy jobs  !!!
 
It's a great pleasure to read Duckplanet and participate the forum (however I'm just a "spring duckling" here, being a member since only one year ...)! 
Hope Duckplanet will exist at least another 10 years!

Hmm...I see from the archive that my first post was in 2004.
However, I would swear I found the site while at my old job, which I left in March 2000.
Maybe an old version of the site, before the message boards?
 
(I remember the very few duck sites I could find, and waiting til I got to work to look since the connection was much faster than my puny dial-up, using Netscape as my browser...ah, nostalgia!)  
 
Happy b-day Duckplanet!

second being someone who I cannot recall for the life of me right now
 
Syd somebody?

super, dziesiąte urodziny duckplanet, a kacza planeta nie ma jeszcze roku, ale i tak jest super