December 2005

It's that time of year again, when we look back upon what we've heard, take stock of what we've done, and make plans for the months to come. Please read on for all the details...

1. 2005 Top Ten Lists: Your Vote Counts!
2. Quick Tips Page
3. This Year's Developments at AAJ
4. IAJE 2006: Just Around the Corner
5. Help Wanted: Time Line Editors
6. The Year Ahead...

2005 Top Ten Lists: Your Vote Counts!

As veteran AAJers know, we have a longstanding tradition of polling contributors to determine the collective top ten discs of the year. Since we're getting close to the end of the year, we'd like you to look over the music you've heard in 2005 and see which discs strike you as the most outstanding new releases (and reissues).

In the next few days, we'll send you a link to the online voting form where you can list your top picks of 2005. For the curious, here the results from previous years...

2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001

More related "best of" collections can be found here.

Quick Tips Page

We've modified our Quick Tips Page and wanted to bring it to your attention. We encourage anyone who recently started with AAJ to take a moment and peruse this page. Long-time contributors will also learn a thing or two, so please make one pass through each section.

This Year's Developments

2005 was a very busy year behind the scenes at AAJ, and here are just a few of the most important accomplishments we made this year:

• Launched the Visual Arts Center (currently featuring 135 photo albums and 7,800 images), the Download Center, the Poster Store, the Video Center and the Podcast Center.
• Ran a successful fund drive
• Upgraded our Bulletin Board technology, our server hardware (twice), the Upcoming Releases Center, the News Center and the Showcase service.
• Redesigned the site
• Set an all-time best for most CD reviews published in a month (331, back in August) and for most visitors in a month (800,552 in October)
• Incorporated Extended Analysis & Multiple CD Review articles within the CD Review Center
• Created public Top 50 pages for most-read CD reviews, articles and news items. We also created "all time" most-read reports.
• On the back end, we can now schedule articles and CD reviews well in advance and they will automatically activate at the start of a new day
• Added a jazz blog directory

IAJE 2006: Just Around the Corner

The 2006 IAJE Conference will be held in New York from January 11-14. We expect to see several AAJ contributors at the event. We are planning a get together in the city, so contact Nils if you'll be there, and he'll let you know the specifics.

Help Wanted: Timeline Editors

We're looking to recruit several time line contributors and rather than ask one person to edit the 100+ years in the Jazz Timeline, we'd like to find contributors who can fact check and build out the time line by decade—making it a real team effort. If you're knowledgeable about a certain time period of jazz and would like to lend your time and expertise to this ongoing effort, please contact Nils.

The Year Ahead...

If you thought 2005 was impressive, wait till you see happens in 2006. MY AAJ will soon become the centerpiece of the site and we plan to begin development on it shortly after we return from IAJE. Once that system is up and running, we plan to shift our focus immediately to the Regional Calendar of Events. Both long anticipated, these two systems will touch every aspect of AAJ. And once they're in place, we can finally say we finished the first phase of AAJ development. It only took ten years!

We expect to have a version 1.0 of each system in place sometime this summer.

As always, we welcome your ideas and input. Thank you, one and all, for another outstanding year. We are making a difference. Best wishes for a happy and safe holiday season!

Mike and Nils