One of the most powerful resources our company has is our community of Advocates. These are the people who voluntarily choose to help test CrossOver and then share their knowledge with other CrossOver users. They write the Tips & Tricks. They post on the Forums. Often, they find ways to get applications running when we simply don't have the time. In short, they are absolutely critical to the success of our Compatibility Center, which is one of our most valuable resources. As such, I'm pleased to announce that we've made a major set of changes in our Advocate program.

Some of these new features are modest tuneups our advocates have asked for, like being able to vote more than once, being able to easily advocate more applications, and having advocate ranks be more meaningful. However, the really fun stuff revolves around morphing our Compatibility Center into the MMO 'World of Compatibility' . No, this was not some sick idea of our World of Warcraft-addicted COO. Well, maybe it was. But whatever its genesis, we've built a whole system for recognizing our Advocates and their contributions. Because now, when Advocates help others by posting, or submitting beta reports, or just by being upstanding CodeWeavers citizens, they earn Experience Points that let them gain 'ranks' and show off to the world just how cool and helpful they are.

As part of this effort, we've gone back and combed through the forum posts and beta reports that our Advocates have made down through the years, and awarded XP based on prior performance. So, not all Advocates will start at ground zero; we appreciate these folks' past efforts too much for that. Thus far, the highest ranked Advocates on our 'realm' are the redoubtable Andrew Skinner, and the enigmatically named Mensch. Both have been duly accorded the rank of Raging Atomic Dragon Turbo Chief Senior Advocate. But even higher ranks await, and no doubt others will rise to seek their destiny. And if we find that we have to scramble and invent some new ranks; hey, we can make that happen. Jon, our COO, lives to make new icons.

Anyway, we hope that this will be seen as a fun way to thank and recognize our Advocates. I have to say I'm particularly proud of this change. We took a problem - how to detect and handle Advocates that weren't really living up to their end of the bargain - and turned it on its head by making it a positive for the folks who really help us. Not only that, but it was fun for Jeremy Newman, Jon Parshall, and our team of elite Support Ninjas to dream up a way to implement all of this. So, to all of our Advocates - thanks! You have our deepest gratitude, and hopefully a fun way to see how important you are to us.

Now we just have to start figuring out appropriate rewards for uber-high XP earners...

Cheers,
Jeremy