Thanks to all.... Tuomas - Kersantti - Anette

Well I guess I should update and start with a big thanks for all the support towards the new Tuomas site.
It's taking a lot of work and still have the translations to add to the site but it's not too far from being 100% finished (as long as the translators are fast with what I throw at them hah).
Few people have asked why I decided to make a new site. Well I have reasons I won't go into and I have other reasons: I got comments from people that it did not look official, it looked like a fan site. Ok "technically" it is a fan site, as it's run by "fans" (some of us don't like that term).. however it ceased being a fan site once we were made official. Also since it used to be a fansite, it never lost that feel to me, looking at the same layout (ok it was changed a little) and basic look.
Another change was to distance Tuomas from Nightwish. Okay some people will scream at me here with "he IS Nightwish!"...yes I know this only too well. I did intend to mirror Nightwish.coms look (kind of did by adding the Imaginarium background on the 'blue site: mk 3') but the more I thought about it the more I thought "why have 'another' Nightwish.com?" So I thought a bit more about what I can do, what is the best action to take with it. Of course a thing that keeps coming to me is Tuomas does have his own projects, and one day Nightwish will be a past project of his. But Tuomas quitting music completley won't happen, and because of that I hope we will still be around. So I decided to go for a general look, something simple yet dynamic. So with design changes thrown at Mojo for criticism (trust me you cannot get a better person to be critical about your work) I worked on a basic structure and then added the design elements on top.
The banner was the hardest to think up. The "logo" started as an idea of a wolf silhouette with a TH or Tuomas over it... this idea lasted about 2-3 hours then binned. Then the banner had Tuomas' image in... this was binned after 10 mins of being on the site. Mojo was the one who mentioned Tuomas' autograph, so I went through some promo's I have and picked the easiest to see and scanned it in. For around 2 hours I sat and cut it out practically pixel by pixel..can anyone say hand cramp?! However I think the final look came out cool, so kudos to Mojo for thinking of that one.

The best part is only the TH Team knew this rebuild was happening, and I didn't inform them until about 60% through construction. I decided to keep it a secret from the members as I didn't know how long it would take me to put live.. or even if I would at all. It's a scary thing to have to replace a successful website, I especially did not want to damage the forum in anyway and for us to lose all those member and posts. I also was not going to launch the site till all languages were 100% complete. But typical thing would be that it would put me into August, which is when Imaginiarium gets mastered and the film shootings not far away. Meaning there is a chance for updates, so I would be constantly playing catch up with news and translations of. I also wanted to wait and get the thumbs up from the boss (Tuomas) since the site bares his name, however his vacation time is tearing him away from his macbook. So it was Mojo who suggested a earlier launch time and just add the translations etc as we go, and I think it worked well. The big worry of so many hours work and the database transfer failing would of annoyed me anyway.
So we went live and apart from a few little bugs, it was pretty smooth. A couple of people have mentioned 1 issue with colour on an area of the forum.. so far investigations have shown this to be a browser problem and not one with the site. Both myself, Mojo and others on the Team went through and checked everything on every browser. So people with issues, try emptying your cache and check if there is a browser update: last one especially for internet explorer users.
But here we are going strong and getting 90% positive messages, which is a larger percent than I ever expected. So big thanks to everyone for that. Of course we are plotting more things for the future with the site.

At the time I was updating TH, I was also working on my PR and promotion company: Kersantti presence management. So I have the site pretty much done for there and I've started on heavier promotion of the existence of it. Anette Olzon gave permission to promote her new fabulous solo demos, which has gave a big boost so thanks to her. The company has a long way to go, lets just hope it's journey is fruitful.

Talking about Anette's demos, both sound so different to a lot of what we have heard Anette sing before. You can hear the keys in Dark Passion Play were probably not the strongest keys for her to sing in. Although DPP was great, these solos really show the true emotion and ability of her voice.

Floating: A gentle song which actually makes you feel like you are floating if you close your eyes and listen to it.
Very beautiful, light and gave me goosebumps.

Invincible: My personal favourite of the two. I believe her voice in this has such a great timbre, very elegant sounding.

Both tracks show her true potential as a singer although only demos we can see this, the main music is the only thing that lets them down.. but that's demo's for you. The quality of the recording/mixing etc is not what you would use on a final mix. This defiantly wets the appetite for the amazing Imaginarium once more, but also has people excited for Anette's eventual solo album.
Good luck to her, TH.com and Kersantti will be giving her support.


I have a lot on and a lot of responsibility coming up, but as long as the attitude of myself and the team currently have continues, I think our future will be bright.

So lets all have a laugh together in this journey
...Carol

Work pays off...

Well after months of plotting the idea, then weeks of organising... the chat is finally over. Now don't get me wrong 'finally' is not meant in a way to express I've been waiting for it to finish, far from it. It just took up a lot of time and checking and re-checking. To organise a relatively small number of members (when look at our overall member count) was quite a challenge. Getting 40 people from different timezones all online at the correct time and in the correct place definitely took more work than expected. I'm just glad Steff was on hand helping out with the IRC members.
The idea for using the chat room for fan interaction was brought up in London back in February, Tuomas expressed an interest then but was a little skeptical of it. Few month later I managed to persuade him to come to the chat room, pretty much everyone who was online the night he came were people who were part of the team. This helped his first visit as but him more at ease I think, but he still really enjoyed it and vowed to return again.
In a discussion with Steff about what things can be done in the future, the idea to pursue the online fan interaction came back up. We planned out how it could be done and discussed it between the two of us until we decided it could work and be successful. I then took the idea to Tuomas, who without any persuasion agreed. We discussed with him the best way to go about it, and that rewarding our community was a way to reduce the 1000's of people who would want to participate. Tuomas agreed that this special first should be shared with his community.
This decision did however come with criticism, however only from 1 nation. We had pretty much no complaints or problems from anyone else. These people believed we should have had the chat open for everybody or do something so any Nightwish fan had the chance to be involved. Of course we totally understood  why his nation was upset but some refused to also see it from our point of view.
If we had an 'open chat room' (or the tinychat/cam whatever it was they suggested) arrangement there is no physically way the chat server would of supported the amount of people, also there is no way Tuomas could of accommodated questions from that many. There is also no way it would of been possible to police that many members at once, it would not of worked smoothly.
If we did the lottery that someone there suggested to pick fans, again this was too hard to do for many factors. The dates Tuomas gave me for the chat meant we did not have a lot of time to get the participants organised to attend. If we released a NW community wide invitation, I would have 1000's of emails in my inbox to sort through, get rid of people sending more than 1 entry etc. There is just noway we would have the time to do such a thing.
In the end we stood our ground and kept it for TH.com, of course people were welcome to join the chat room and be active there for a chance to be involved too. A few people did and a couple made it into the event. End of the day Tuomas agreed with the arrangement we had set-up and he understood the reasoning behind it, therefore he supported us so there was no need to change.
Something people needed to understand too is this was going to be Tuomas 3rd ever time in a chat room, the first being what I mentioned earlier, the second was a quick meeting with myself and Steff to discuss the event details. He had never done anything like this, it was a Nightwish first also. We had to make sure it ran as smooth as possible so Tuomas would agree to return and do more events in the future. If we risked failure, he may not of been so keen to return.
However in the end it went swimmingly, all but 2 members showed up; no one needed to be removed from the chat for rule breaking. Tuomas was very impressed with the organisation and the behaviour of the fans there, once again the community at TH.com makes us proud. It's no wonder Tuomas is so gracious to work with me and do things for the fans there.
We tried to discuss some more future ideas after the chat ended, but due to time he had to leave. So he got a nice email last night outlining plans and plots for the future. So fans have no need to worry, these events are not a one off. We will continue to work closely with Tuomas to bring the best we can to all at TH.com.

So just a huge thank you to everyone for the continued support towards this website and Tuomas' work

-Carol & Tuomas

To read the transcript of the 4 hour chat, visit the website.

Brazilian invasion and Holopainen styled teasing.

Well it's been quite a busy week. Last Friday Cyntia came to visit, which was a good laugh. She arrived around 5:30am after an overnight bus trip from London, which is crazy if you ask me but then again I can't travel on buses without being sick. Her first day in the grand North East was the obvious tour around my small home (took all of about about 5 mins) and then we decided to go shopping. I took her to what is suppose to be the largest indoor mall in Europe.
We were there a few hours, bought some new shoes and some much needed coffee and food. Returning home to the "office" and nosing through my Nightwish things. Of course she constantly reminded me of how the hat is hers and not to put it in the competition :)
Next day we ventured to the local city, Durham. We walked around and up to the Castle and the Cathedral, she took loads of pictures. We than walked around the river where she took this picture of me and Ethan:

Went for food at Nandos.. well I say food, Cyntia just had chocolate cake :)
Sunday we didn't do much although we did go and see Troy at the cinema. I swear I must of drooled bucket loads over the guy in that movie, very nice. Heh. All in all it was a good weekend, sure will do something again soon :)

Rest of my week has been preparing the competition for the website. Everything is pretty much done now and it's all getting exciting. Although it does mean my Nightwish collection will soon be shrinking again when I sent the prizes to the winners. It gets announced on Sunday but if you want more info you have to go look on the forum :P
Forum hit 700 members this week which is awesome, but if all goes to plan that number will be jumping up very soon. We also have had over 160,000 visitors, which in our short life on this domain is damn good.

I have wrote up some more promotion and PR ideas to go through with Tuomas, but getting that man's attention even for 5 minutes is damn hard at the moment. Trust me though, if I get the green light for some of these.. you guys are in for a right treat.

Well I'll leave it there until next time............

Ruse revealed

Well lets start with what I said about keeping quiet till after the staff meeting weekend gone. I kind of lied about having new ideas to share with the team this weekend, it was all a ruse. I had organised with Tuomas around 3 weeks prior to come onto the chat room to meet the team etc, so I wanted to keep it a surprise. We had a lovely night, he joined us for around 2 hours and steadily getting more and more tipsy. He made us laugh a lot, taking his "boss" role seriously and ordering people to misbehave...something I will wind him up about at a later date. He really enjoyed it and thought it was a really cool experience, and he did really well for a chat room first timer. I'll get him back on in the future.

I went for the job interview today- it was ok but I don't think I'll get the job. By the way they described the role I don't think I have enough experience for it. Also the fact they have 32 people going for the job. So we will see hopefully next week. But I may have another thing coming up soon so time will tell.

Should have some nice website updates soon, have something with Tuomas' mother in the pipeline so we will see if we can sort something out. I'm also working on some new promotion ideas, nothing concrete to share yet but as soon as I do and I speak to the boss; I'll share.

When I thought I would do another blog update, I expected to write more.. but now that I have started it seems I don't have a much to say as I originally thought.

Oh well- until next time

Job interview goodness and other random stuff

Well normal service is now resumed after my bit of venting in my last update.
Beginning of last week was a bit crappy. Had some suspicions confirmed over things concerning a team member working on the site, and it took a while to get proof and sort it out. Things got better towards the end of the week and into the weekend though. I dealt with the issue and employed a new staff member to replace the recently departed. I wasn't going to replace, but Liz is already on good terms we the rest of the team and she's just as crazy as us all too. She also bothers to come on IRC.. so that's a good start :)
So we have some good things happening with the site, but I'm not going to write about it yet- You will have to wait till after the staff meeting on Saturday :) It's all exciting stuff...and I like to tease :))

Another good thing that happened was the disappearance of that 'hate' blog I mentioned last time. It was updated 2 more times until it was taken offline. It was funny at first, but towards the end it was just becoming annoying. I have suspicions who was behind it, but as long as nothing else surfaces I'll leave it alone.

I hopefully will be having a TH team member come visit me for a few days back end of next week, our resident loony Cyntia. It should be a good laugh, although there is not a huge amount to do around here. I'm sure we will find something to do, although I will have to make sure she doesn't drool too much on Tuomas' hat while she is here :)
Speaking of Tuomas, I had a good chat with him a week and a half ago. First time that I remember he was sending emails in real time so didn't have to wait the usual week or two for a reply. Again more plotting and more ideas, but have to wait till June for that when he goes home ...again more teasing :)

I applied for a great job recently and I've been waiting to hear from it, I got a phone call today that I have an interview which is a big relief. The job isn't perfect, I mean it's working in a petrol station. However the hours and pay would be perfect, as well as practically on my doorstep.

So at present I'm enjoying my time at home with my toddler as hopefully I'll get a job soon. If I want to have the chance to be able to book and afford Kitee at the end of the year followed quickly by the Nightwish tour, I'm going to have to start and put some money away.

So until next time :)

Open "letter" to the critics

Okay I thought about this for a bit, and recently events I wont go into made me decide to write this as a blog people can read.

Well lot of people I know are aware we get some great site support, but there are people on the internet still spreading false rumours about me and even a "hate" blog. (For the record this blog actually made me laugh more than offend.)

To the critics etc
Yes I do read all your emails, and yes I do not answer them for a reason. I see no need to take precious time out of my day to reply, hence this blog post.
First of all lets address the "fangirl" and "only doing this site to get close to the band/get things" comments.
  Number 1: I had the idea for some kind of dedication site etc, long before I knew who Tuomas truly was. I really only knew his musical creations should have more support. This was around 2000-2002
  Number 2: When I first created the site it was never intended to seek official status or get "close" to a band member or gain access to any perks that would of came with the position.
  Number 3: Do you really think I would of been given this opportunity if Tuomas/Ewo even slightly suspected me as a "fangirl" etc.
  Number 4: I do not demand Tuomas does things or gives things to the site. Anything he has done for us has been from his own wishes or out of casual discussion of ideas.

I won't go into some of the stupid rumours people are talking on the net, but seriously.. how old are you guys? Spreading false rumour why? Jealousy? Immaturity? You really need to just grow up a bit and just be happy that there is a dedicated team supporting Tuomas and doing promotion for him.
To those criticising me supporting various Nightwish sites.. why? I heard that it was stupid for me to support sites/communities that speak languages etc I don't speak. I fail to see the issue here. I have the TH site in other languages, and if other communities are doing a good job or aiming for a goal I think is a benefit to fans, of course I will promote this to the best of my ability. End of the day, yes I run the TH site but I also try my best to provide support to Nightwish fans across the net; no language/country restrictions.

To those who still think that I am some obsessed fan, come talk to me. We have a chat room on the site and I am regularly online. I'm an open person to any questions and I have had people come to me as sceptics who now are regulars online and support the website themselves in various ways.
Also to those people who 1) keep telling me to prove Tuomas supports us by getting him to email/write/call 2) those who ask for his contact details endlessly over and over... Please don't waste your time with these requests. To contact Tuomas write to his management in letter form, all emails I get are appreciated and are lovely and I do tell Tuomas this, but please understand I cannot forward 50+ emails to him a day and I will never share any of his contact details.

I hope this has cleared some things up for some people.

Normal service to the blog will resume next post

Carol

Plotting, back-pain and others

Well since my "Pillow" kindly reminded me my blog needed updating, guess what I'm doing?

Last few weeks have been a mixture of good and bad. The development of a bad back and now flu like symptoms make me think yet again I'm burning the candle at both ends, coupled with some misunderstandings; things got pretty low recently.

Things quickly picked back up after everything was cleared up, my staff gave me a whipping. Also Plamen's DVD of Tuomas playing the sax helped too, nice of him to send it for us to put on the website.
Also some good proactive plotting with Tuomas always makes me smile, but I was also involved in getting a Brazilian Nightwish forum online.

We were talking about the idea for this forum for a while for various reasons I won't go into except Brazil had no official forum. A chat to Ewo got the status sorted and then we got it all together. Of course my non existant multi-lingual skills means I'll promote only for Luis and Cyntia, but if it helps.. great. http://nightwishforum.com.br/ is the address you need to check it out. 70 members in 2 days though, amazing!

Another cool thing that happened was Alex from The Islanders visit to Durham. He came down here and hung out at my place, tried on Tuomas' hat hehe and next day I showed him around the city and we sat in the hotel a few hours planning the fanclub. Made some good progress and ideas, including getting contact with Troy Donockley.

Bit of a mess this blog but while typing this I also have 8 open conversations going on hehe. Will have some cool reports in a few weeks, so until then...Ciao