Saturday, December 19, 2009

Farewell and thank you, Mike Schramm!

This is a very much unplanned for extra post at the Pink Pigtail Inn, written at 02.15 am Saturday morning, when I should rather be asleep if I was any sensible at all. But something came up that needed to be commented on, and as I've never quite gotten rid of my journalistic instinct it had to be done asap. So that's why you'll get a PPI post at this unusual hour.

What happened was that out of the blue, Mike Schramm at wow.com has suddenly informed us that he's going to quit his job.

Embracing the community
I don't know if you have any idea of who Mike Schramm is. Maybe you do like most of us, browsing the headlines at Wow.com in order to stay updated, occasionally plowing into a post that somehow grabs your attention - making you upset, curious or entertained. You don't spend too much time thinking about the author behind it.

However, Mike Schramm has certainly put his personal mark on Wow.com over the years. As a blogger I especially appreciate how he has embraced the blogging community - not by taking advantage of it, using ideas without giving credit for it. Instead he has put a spotlight on posts hat have interested him, no matter if the blogger in question has been an established one or completely unknown to the audience.

I believe that there are more than one blogger around who have Mike Schramm to thank for their breakthrough. I'm one of those - Mike is by far the writer at WoW.com who has quoted PPI most. To be honest I'm not sure if anyone else in the staff reads PPI. But Mike surely did - and not only that, he has even commented at the PPI on a couple of occasions. And that's what I like so much about him. He's not a stranger - he's clearly one of us.

In his farewell post, Mike tells the story once again how he started at Wow.com, at that point called Wow-Insider, as a forum troll. When an opportunity opened up to join the staff he grabbed it, and until now he has written no less than 3 300 posts. That is just amazing, especially since I believe many of them are pretty well written. Somehow Mike manages to give his posts a personal touch. Without looking at the author name I can tell which posts that are his.

A guest of honour
We can only speculate on the reason why Mike Schramm is leaving his position now - the post doesn't tell. Maybe it's just a natural development. I've done it myself a few times in my career. One day you wake up and realize that you've learned what you can learn from your current job, that you need to move on to keep learning and growing in your profession.

I hope the motive for leaving is along those lines and that Mike Schramm has some really exciting projects awaiting now. I hope his heading somewhere, rather than escaping from something.

Mike - if you're reading this, I just want to let you know that the PPI always will receive you as a dear and honored guest.

Considering this, I refuse to say "farewell". I will rather say "see you later", hoping that you'll keep stopping by here, not for professional reasons, but just because you feel at home.

Thank you for all that you gave the community. You will be missed.

Cheers!

10 comments:

Magma said...

Here, Here!

Anonymous said...

I thought his going away message was a little obtuse in the sense that he did not offer any reason why he was leaving. Not even a "desire to spend time with family".

But like you I wish him well in his career.

Stabs said...

All the best, Mike.

Kromus said...

All the best.

I like people who go for quality over popularity-- rather then playing it safe and linking to popular sites all the time, good show!

Lynda said...

Mike may not stray so far :

"...working on our mothership blog Joystiq"

Happy Trails Mike.

Ophelie said...

I have yet to pick my jaw up off the floor. I didn't see it coming at all. I've always thought of Mike Shramm as the backbone of wow.com and it just won't be wow.com without him.

From his goodbye post, it does sound like he has other projects on the go, so I'm sure we'll be hearing lots from Mike in the future.

Mike Schramm said...

Of course I'm reading, thank you so much. I've been overwhelmed by the outpouring on the blog, on twitter, and elsewhere. I really appreciate it.

And yes, I'll be around, working on Joystiq and TUAW, and reading and commenting on all my favorite WoW blogs as well. I'm not leaving the game at all, still playing my hunter and pally. Hopefully I'll see you all around.

Unknown said...

i was shocked as well. i will miss his work for the WoW community, but at least i still get to read his work at TUAW!

Larísa said...

@Elnia: yeah, it didn't exactly sound as he was happy about it. But I try to see things from teh bright side as always. I hope this will turn out to something good.

@Mike Schramm: /wave
I hope we'll see some more WoW related posts coming on your personal blog now! Share the adventures of your hunter and pala, please!

Tim Moon said...

Dang, that's weird. He probably got a good gig somewhere else though. Mike is a cool guy, I interviewed him at the end of 2009.