One good sign in the healthy development of an entrepreneurial initiative is passing the three year point. If you stick with something that long, there can be no doubt you are committed. And if you can make something survive that long, it is possible you can keep it going longer. Most start-ups fail long before three years of operations. REALNEO did not fail, despite great challenges and opposition. In fact, REALNEO literally took on a life of its own, as was always the intention.

There are too many people to congratulate on this achievement so I will just say good work real NEO community, one and all. Millions of people have visited REALNEO, and 100s have been active making this an exciting, interesting and valuable social network and virtual community.

As a Drupal-based Content Management System, this is a permanent record of important knowledge of all sorts, authored by many real people, and that is of historic value and significance. In the coming years and decades that will increase in value and sophistication, forever.

That we are open source is core to our success and sustainability. 1,000,000s of amazing people around the world have contributed to our success. REALNEO would not be possible or exist today without open source software, and the great global citizens who create that.

Thank you, FOSS community!

REALNEO is significant in the transformation of this region, and represents the region in the global new economy. We are innovators in social computing and communications in general, here, and participate in one of the most sophisticated, innovative, transformational economies in the world... the digital revolution.

Our community is sophisticated in thought and insight, making REALNEO content some of the most dynamic, engaging and interesting material on the Internet, or in print, and we are visited and joined by people world-wide.

REALNEO shows greatness may be found anywhere, any time, among any people, when people are empowered to be great.

FOSS, Drupal and REALNEO empower people to be great.

Do not take this power lightly.

I view each day's failure by today's generation to seriously address today's problems as a day lost in the lives of future generations, and one way I address today's problems is to explore them on REALNEO. I take that responsibility seriously, as clearly do many others in our communty, and that serves us all well.

I have learned about so many importnt issues and solutions on REALNEO I can say REALNEO has rewriten my life, because others wrote here.

In the coming year, I expect REALNEO will evolve in many important ways. We have just upgraded the version of Drupal we are running, still with some growing pains, and we have relocated servers, and we have put together a formidable support team, all allowing us to leverge much stronger software capabilities than we have had available to us in the past. We can use more modules offering more features, and can configure capabiltiies in truly revolutionary ways, in due time.

For now, we are more stable, and scalable, and safer from failure than ever in our history, and prepared for an exciting future together.

And by together, I mean together. We have been exploring how to structure REALNEO as a legal co-op, in which all members will have stakes in the enterprise, based on their level of participation in the community. We'll all explore that further as the details come together (any lawyers out there?).

In any case, the core principle of REALNEO is and has always been, from the terms of use: I. License - You own your information, and maintain a copyright in all your Postings on this site.

The terms of use will be rewritten to reflect the co-op model being developed, but the bottom line is you own your content - your ideas - your digital identity on REALNEO, and always will!

I remember having a conversation with a foundation-type about REALNEO and she said she didn't get it. I'll have to ask her now, four years later, if that has changed.

Perhaps you may help her see the light!

What's your Birthday toast, to REALNEO?

Mine is "Taking real NEO to the Max!"