In what has become an annual tradition, we’d like to extend a big Thank You to the folks of WAUPM. We’ve just returned from the Western Association of University Publications Managers’ annual meeting, hosted this year in downtown San Antonio, Texas. As usual the location was picturesque and the food terrific (thanks Susan and Linda!), and like last year, we came away with a deep sense of gratitude for the things we learn while in the company of this group. (And I’m not referring specifically to the Margarita recipe, as far as you know, nor the fact that we can now tell the difference between good tequila and the kind with the plastic hat.)

It was just a year ago — during the 2009 annual WAUPM meeting in Baltimore — that we first announced our hosted CMS service. Since then, we’ve added five more newspapers to our CMS client roster (two of them WAUPM members), revamped our Fotobroker Admin Tools, launched a bunch of new Fotobroker sites, upgraded all of our hardware and moved into a new colocation facility. It’s been a big year, and thanks are due in no small part to strong support from WAUPM member schools — more than a dozen of them use Gryphon or Fotobroker (or both) — that we’ve been able to survive the economic rollercoaster of the last two years in order to reach this turning point in our company’s evolution.

Speaking of evolution and Thanks Due, this month marks Patrick Wellever’s first anniversary with our company. I think it’s fair to say we’ve been pleased with his performance, given that he’s improved everything he’s touched in a nonstop, rarely-sleeping kind of way since we first convinced him to leave Beijing and start working with us last spring. His work is remarkable when viewed up close, for sure, but when you step back and see how much ground we’ve covered in the last year thanks to his efforts, it’s downright startling.

So thanks, WAUPM — Your positive feedback this year sent us home energized and full of ideas, as well as warm & fuzzy. Patrick, thanks for a superb first year.