After a busy month of June laying groundwork and raising funding via Kickstarter and a busy July working on all the details to launch the site, Canes and Coffee is finally here!
I am thrilled to be starting down the road of building the web site, the community for it and gradually over time a bit of a team to do even more.
I am also incredibly grateful to everyone to helped make this possible.
–Thank you to everyone who read and put up with my ‘yammering’ way back when on various Carolina Hurricanes message boards.
–Thank you to everyone who has read my blogs and contributed comments, feedback and encouragement during the past 10 years I have written at Hockeybuzz.
–Thank you to everyone who contributed to the launch of Canes and Coffee including Kickstarter contributors and also the numerous people who have provided help in the form of feedback, survey responses and encouragement.
–Thank you to everyone who played a role in getting the site off the ground, especially Rob and Drago at Oak City Tech, Jamie Kellner for providing photos and Marty Smith from Curagami for sharing his insight and experience designing content sites and building online communities.
–Finally, thank you to everyone in the Carolina Hurricanes hockey community.
More formal and individual thank yous are up on the Founders’ page. (If you did not respond to the email/survey that the Kickstarter triggered and are an anonymous who did not wish to be anonymous, please just contact me via the contact form at the bottom of the main page.) I will also send emails and letters as requested by Kickstarter contributors in the next couple days.
I look forward to working with everyone in the Canes hockey community to grow Canes and Coffee to become something that gives back to the fan base, helps grow it and is a positive part of our hockey community.
Finally, I would like to close by saying I wish that every Canes fan could have walked in my shoes through the process of considering this site, raising funding to get it off the ground and working to launch it. In what seems like a bit of a down time in Canes history while we chase the elusive next playoff berth, I have been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the Carolina Hurricanes fan base. So many people offered encouragement and the positive energy to make the lack of sleep this summer worthwhile. And from talking with so many Canes fans and trading Canes stories and thoughts about the future, I feel like the core of the Hurricanes fan base is incredibly strong, passionate, loyal and even optimistic (at least long-term).
We really do have something special with the team and the community that is built around it!
Thanks and Go Canes!
Matt Karash
