Saturday, 27 November 2010

Website gathering update:

Just a quick one, I will update a proper blog post later.

London has now been finalised. Thank you to the replies about it I have so far. Amazing interest in this. We are booked on Tuesday 15th February 7pm @ The Pipeline Bar

I checked and under 18's allowed up until 9pm - then any under 16 are not. But since we only have 16+ interested we should be good.

So if you are interested in joining in- I have our own private area booked. Just please email the following information to admin@tuomas-holopainen.com as soon as you can.

Name:
Forum name:
Age:
Country coming from:
Contact number:
Email:
How many people will be coming (including you)

Mark here with a X: Coming ( ) Should be ( )

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

London 2011

Time for another update.
Well after hearing from Tuomas about London, I've now had the very expensive pleasure of booking my flights and hotel. Makes it quite exciting however to have these booked.
I'm currently now searching for a location for the website gathering on Tuesday 15th Feb. If anyone has any suggestions, please get in touch.

I really need more people to help with something we are doing for Tuomas, please check out our announcement section of our website for details on this. We are running out of time.

I have a job interview tomorrow so hope that goes well. Not great pay, but it does involve working from home which will be handy. Spent a small fortune and this website and with London, Christmas and the host renew coming up, I need all the cash I can get at the moment.

Don't forget everyone we have an active chat room not on the website too, don't be a stranger. Some fun chats happen there :)

Thanks for reading
Carol

Tuesday, 23 November 2010

Competition ends..time to relax

Well the competition ended on Sunday and the judging was long and hard. We had a fantastic 602 entries (not counting emails that had multiple attachments), it was far more successful that I originally expected.
I am lucky to have had Allison and Ewo there to help with the judging process, there were just too many great ones to choose from. It would of took me weeks alone to decide.
The original plan was to go to Helsinki and sit with Ewo to go through them, but time got the better of us and we could not sort a date in time for me to book flights and personal commitments.
We had to use the website as a meeting ground instead, which worked really well. So go to http://www.tuomas-holopainen.com/main/en/comp-winners to view the winners. Thanks again to Anette Olzon for promoting.

Had my last *nearly* all night working session in a while I hope last night as the work load calms, seems ever since my first contact with Tuomas I have been working late every night trying to perfect things. Although my body seems to have adjusted the the 3-4 hours of sleep I have been having the last few weeks. Decided the website design alterations I was planning will be put on hold till the end of February. This is because I plan to get some shots of Tuomas while I'm down in London to use in the website design so I am not relying on other's work. Many thanks to Christian of Photo Press and Nightwish.com for allowing me to use his photo as main image for now.

Heard back from Tuomas regarding London dates, this means I can start planning the website get together..hmm what was I saying about calming my work load down? Oh well. Tuomas and I are working to 2 dates, so working out which is best and then will announce the date and hopefully not too long after the location of the meet up/good excuse for a drink..whatever you want to call it. This will not be the last member gathering, a lot of fans in other countries have expressed they would love to meet up with other Tuomas and Nightwish fans. We are already considering the second meet to be held in the Netherlands, this is still just a thought at this moment. This time will also provide something quite cool that Tuomas is doing for the website and something related to a future competition, but I will have to say "watch this space" for more information on that :)

All members thinking about going to London, please do not forget to fill in the form on our forum and email me it. I am needing rough numbers of people attending asap. Also something else very important on the forums I am desperate for help with. Please go look.

I want to finish with a thank you list of people who have helped me since day 1:

Sarah W. : For being positive about the website project before we started it.

John: For suggesting our name.

Alex: For being supportive, my unofficial proof reader.

Rebecca: For being a great mod and translator, and for being so supportive (thank you again for the wonderful gifts you sent)

Allison: Again fantastic mod and for helping me with the massive judging task.

Sarah: For constantly being so quick at our German translations.

Luis: For our Br/Pt translations and diplomatic relation co-ordinator between ourselves and Nightwish Brazil.

Robin: For constantly checking the website in 3 languages.

Lerren: For the complex task of our Russian translations and keeping the fantastic relation we have with Nightwish Russia alive.

Special thanks:

Anette Olzon: For being so supportive for us even before we received our official standing. We would not of had the amazing competition success we had without you. You have such a pure and beautiful soul.

Ewo Pohjola: For entertaining me with crazy email conversations, being supportive about the website and helping with the judging,

Tuomas Holopainen: For sending the gifts for the translators, giving your blessing and for the exciting future plans we have.

And to all the fans, for all the thank you messages I receive daily. Thank you for your ongoing support. I promise we will not abandon you, we will be here supporting all of you as well as Tuomas. We are not just his website..... we are yours! You keep us alive.

Take care everyone.

Carol

Thursday, 18 November 2010

Been a while- keep getting told to write soo

So it's been a while since I made any kind of blog update but I've been really busy recently.

Things are good for me at the moment, the little one isn't quite so little anymore, he's 14 month old and I cannot believe it.

Most of my spare time is spent working on Tuomas Holopainen's website, trying to get it finished. We are currently translating it which is what is taking the time at the moment.
Timeline of the the birth of the site to future plans:

Approx dates-
2002: Initial idea for a site came to mind: lack of funds and time put my plans off.
2004: Revisited the idea again and started to think of designs but real life made me put on hold again.
2007: Found the existence of a official Tuomas site already, so used that but did not use forums at first.
2008: Noticed the official site had stopped updating, idea for site came back to mind.
End 2008: Fans of Tuomas pushed me into starting the project as they were angry the site had been abandoned.
2009: Purchased The Escapist initial domain and host, not really happy with 1st design but stuck with it for the moment.
2009: Due to a not so great pregnancy I kept the site updated but I was unable to give time to a redesign at that moment.
2010: Decided to finally redesign the site and relaunch it. Bought a new host that was more reliable for higher amounts of visitors and relaunched and promoted the site.
2010: Website became really successful, was at this point I started talking with Ewo from King Foo. The idea of a competition came to light.
2010: Gained official status, announced competition. Thanks to Anette and Jarmo at NW.com for the support.
2010: Slight site redesign and adding 6 languages and direct conversations with Tuomas begun.

Future: Meeting with Tuomas in February 2011. Some exciting things coming to the site after this. *Keeping it shush but it will be really good*

Since 9th October when we moved to Tuomas-Holopainen.com from the original domain name, we have had 27,000 visitors.

So that's basically a very quick overview of the websites life. Of course I could go into more detail but we would be here all day.
Have some fantastic people work on the site with me, a big thank you to them for the ongoing support.
A huge personal thank you to Tuomas, Anette and Ewo.