Editor's story: How iModeler came to be

My name is Martin Waligorski and I love modeling. It has been my favorite hobby for as long as I dare to remember.

My Internet adventure begun in 1996, when the web was still young, Trimaster 1/48 Fw 190s were considered the best model kits on the planet, and nobody has even heard of Eduard, digital photography, smartphones or even buying model supplies on the internet. It sounds like ancient history, doesn't it?

This was when I started my first website for a local modeling club, IPMS Stockholm. These were the early days: Google and Amazon existed only as someone else's garage projects. About the only other modeling page on the web was that of another club far, far away: the IPMS Houston. It served as our initial inspiration, but we wanted to do more, soon finding ourselves posting articles, scanning photos, engaging other modelers to contribute.

Within a few years, the IPMS Stockholm had grown to become one of the most popular web communities of its kind. Other websites followed, some of them reaching and exceeding our success. Eventually, our publication had become too big and complex to be managed within a framework of a modeling club. After 12 years, we decided to go separate ways but I never stopped thinking about what I believed a digital hobby community of the future should be.

The IPMS years also gave me a ton of experience, laying a foundation for the great many things, including many of the ideas and features incorporated today at iModeler. As my circumstances evolved, so did the possibility to do something again for the hobby community. This is how iModeler came to be.

Building this site took a professional development effort of three years to complete. It comprised developing a software platform; state-of-the-art cloud hosting; user experience studies. Finally, seemingly endless testing, fixing, improving and once again testing, fixing, improving...

And here we have it: iModeler, a modern kind of online hobby community. Designed to inherit all the good capabilities of the popular modeling websites of today, while bringing your interactive experience to a whole new level.

I am proud of the platform that is in front of you today, but all the content you see it is continuously created by the iModeler members, and it is awesome. iModeler truly is the Best Modeling Club on the Planet.

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