This has been another exciting year for us here at GameDev.net. A lot of that excitement comes from what's happening to us as a business. We dedicated a lot of time this year to attend various trade shows around the world (not just here in the states) and meet with many, many people in the industry. Mad props to Frizzlefry for taking those long hops over to Europe to connect with our second-largest audience outside of the US.

Besides business stuff, our community has also gotten bigger and stronger. In addition to our regular crowd of forum users, we have over 1000 followers on twitter and 3,870 fans on our Facebook page. Both of these outlets have been great ways to directly reach out and interact with our community for people who don't always frequent the forums but do come by the site every now and again for information.

Obviously by now you've been pointed towards Superpig's journal, where he's been updating sporadically with new information about V5, the next iteration of the site design/technology. It's not really his fault information hasn't been streaming out smoothly, and we're working hard to fix that and find the right balance between revealing our plans and over-hyping the new tech.

Rest assured every one of you is going to love the new site, rolling out early 2010. We don't expect the launch to be perfect in regards to everyone's expectations, but we will be prepared to work hard to correct and fix things very quickly.

I used to do weekly journal updates, but I have to admit the lack of feedback, when asked for, was a bit disheartening. I do know a lot of people are reading, however. Starting next month I'll be updating my journal on the last Wednesday of the month, every month, to do a review of that month and call for community response to any current items. This is a great chance for you to help shape the future of GDNet, so please let me hear you!

I'm going to start rambling soon, so let me just say that I'm really, really, really looking forward to 2010. We're still only halfway through our 10-year anniversary and have a shit load of stuff planned to make GameDev.net an even more vital resource to game developers of all fields around the world.

And of course, let me once again thank all of you, in the community, for supporting us and coming back every day for more. Safe and happy holidays to all, and I will see you in the new year!!