Symphony.

I'll spare the suspense and cut right to the chase: A long long time ago, in a forest far far away...

I kid, I kid.

Here's the scoop -- as of today, Craig Zheng joins our team! When I said we have something planned, this was it. As many of you know, Craig has been developing with Symphony before I was even born. How is that possible you ask? It's not, but cut my exaggeration by 10 fold and you still get, "a Symphony veteran, whose name is Craig" or something to that effect. What Craig has, something which the rest of the team lacked, was his way with words. And no, Craig didn't try to woo me -- as you trendy kids would say; well, not wittingly at least. Rather, he is a very articulate person and really gets Symphony. Just look at the slab of testimonial with his beautiful words carved on the homepage.

So how did it all began? Let's rewind back to earlier this year, around January. I flew over to New York, New York on official Symphony business. Part of my agenda was to conduct several video interviews with companies and individuals who develop websites with Symphony. One of whom was Craig. This video, originally meant as a case study now became a job interview that neither party were aware of at the time. After the interview, I came away rather impressed by his insight to Symphony's philosophies and much of that was to do with his past experiences (and general discontent) with other content management systems. Of course, it wasn't all talk and no show with this guy. Craig launched a very impressive website recently and that sparked the discussion on the potential of getting him on board.

As Symphony moves into the next stage of its life cycle, it was apparent that we really need someone to take care of the community while the rest of the Symphony team including Airlock, knuckle down and work on system improvements and website services. Enter Craig. As Symphony's community lead, he will be the overseer of taking the community's voice and booming them across to Lalaland (not to be mistaken with Disneyland) where the developers seem to go at times. He will also help us with version updates, helping us manage community contributions (pull requests) and ensure that they are appropriate and uphold the integrity of the system that the community has come to expect. Last and certainly not least of which, Craig Zheng will head up the documentation efforts, something that I'm sure everyone will agree is our number one Achilles heel.

I cannot put in words how much excitement I have for the near future of Symphony, the number of things we've planned for the next six to eight months is enough for me to want to sell my left kidney to get a sneak-peek preview -- and I'm a sodding developer, I already know it all! The amount of awesome stuff planned are simply too much for the existing members to bear alone. Help is needed and we are certain that Craig will fit into this role snugly.

Welcome on board, Craig Zheng!