And It's Goodbye From Me

You've probably read that Richard has packed his bags to head off to Taiwan. Well, he's not the only one who is moving on, as it's also time for me to announce that I am moving onto my next challenge.

While Richard's move won't really change anything (he'll carry on writing for the site), my own move has changed things at bit-tech - I've not been around an awful lot for a while, so you're probably not going to notice anything different now because the change happened a few months back.
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From when Dennis acquired bit-tech, it was quickly apparent that they wanted to use my experience of running successful websites and I focused a lot of my time working with some of the company's other brands to help improve their online presence. I'm still doing that work today, but most of my time now is focused on a new project, which I started work on in May last year.

My time was split 50-50 between bit-tech and the new project up until October, when we held the inaugural bit-tech and Custom PC awards. That, in effect, was my last official appearance as Editor of bit-tech and I then moved to focusing 100 per cent of my time to the new project, which was launched in January as Expert Reviews.

Expert Reviews is very consumer-focused, as you'll see if you have a browse around, and it's a completely different direction for me. It's also a fresh challenge because, after nearly ten years of working on bit-tech in various capacities, I began to find that bit-tech was no longer a challenge - everything we achieved during my time as Editor was frankly beyond my wildest dreams. I really didn't expect it to become as successful or world-renowned as it has.

bit-tech has grown phenomenally - both in terms of readership and as a business - while I have been involved and there's no reason why the site cannot continue to grow leaps and bounds. Every comment, whether positive or negative, has meant so much to me and the team - the same can be said for every email I've received from readers over the years, even though I haven't had chance to respond to all of them personally.

bit-tech was a way of life for me for a long time and I hope the passion for the site came through in the direction we took it in - I felt that passion was mirrored in the community too and I want to thank every single one of you for supporting the site while I was Editor. There's still a tremendous amount of potential with bit-tech as a brand and I hope that it will continue to fulfil this in the future.

Unfortunately, while this change happened a while ago, I've not really been able to say an awful lot about the editorial changes as I didn't want to pre-announce my new challenge before I'd finished my final project on bit-tech - I also had to launch my new website.

I've been working with the team on a bit-tech redesign since before Dennis acquired the business, so it was important for me to continue on with that work and complete the job. Now that the new version of the site is finally in beta, my work here is almost done.

What happens next, then? Well, throughout 2009, the existing bit-tech guys worked closely with the Custom PC guys, and we're at the point where behind it's one team now - if you've seen a copy of the magazine recently you'll know Joe writes its game reviews, and both Rich and Harry's reviews feature, too. The original CPC team - Alex, James, Antony and Clive - have contributed many to bit-tech. Alex will be taking up the reigns of editing bit-tech as well as editing Custom PC, and I think working across the two will mean good things for both.

For me, as well as working on Expert Reviews, I'll still be contributing to the site occasionally, as well as hanging around in the bit-tech forums, on Twitter and on Flickr, so I hope to see you all still contributing in the way that you have. bit-tech has always been about its community and I see no reason why that cannot continue in the future.

Thanks once again for all the support over the years - it's been awesome!