Computex 2018 will be here sooner than you think, and we’re incredibly excited to once again have a crew on the ground, asking the questions that are relevant to the SFF community. Last year was the first time we were able to attend the conference, and because of it we were able to create a bunch of news posts, a number of exclusives, and literally hundreds of caliper shots. This is not to mention the long string of in-depth reviews we were able to do as a result of reporting and relationships that originated on the show floor.
This is especially impressive given the fact that SFF Network is a fairly small (pun intended) team of hardworking folks, who commit many hours outside of their lives and day jobs to create and publish their work. These are enthusiasts who are passionate about small form factor systems, preaching the virtues of the SFF philosophy to the world through their craft. They’re you and me, in other words. But it takes resources alongside that passion to do what we do; equipment, event attendance, and much more goes into creating the content we make. And all of that gets expensive, fast.
We are eternally grateful for the support we’ve received to date, and I’d specifically like to call out those in the SFF Forum community who are already ongoing supporters. The monthly or annual subscriptions we provide on the forum are what pay the bills to keep the forum alive, and are also what allow us to avoid saturating the forum experience with advertising. It’s clear, however, that we need to do for SFF Network what we’ve done for SFF Forum: find a way to provide just enough sustainable revenue to enable us to focus on making more content, and better content. It’s also crucial for a good chunk of this revenue to come directly from readers, since it better obligates us to provide relevant content, and provides the team with a tangible barometer of community sentiment and support for our work.
To do that, we’ve created a Patreon page! I won’t elaborate much on the tiers available beyond saying that, at certain levels of funding, we are able to commit to more content – from the return of the Low Volume podcast, to the introduction of build guides. We’re even providing some swanky certifications and forum banners to all who pledge support, even at the $1 level, since contributions as low as a dollar a month really add up. If you’ve found value in the reporting and reviews we’ve done, consider kicking in to help us keep that work going.
We’re also launching a great giveaway, as thanks to our readership and community! To start, we’ve put aside a Geeek A30 chassis to send to a lucky community member, as reviewed here. Furthermore, we are also giving away a DREVO Tyrfing V2 mechanical keyboard, an ASRock AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac AM4 motherboard, and a Streacom FC8 Passively cooled ITX case as we hit the $100, $250 and $500 funding goals for our Patreon, which you can learn more about on our Patreon page. See the bottom paragraph on this post for a disclaimer regarding the giveaway.
But wait, there’s more! We’ve also released a limited edition run of ‘Caliper & Ruler’ t-shirts that you can check out here. We’re only selling these during May (which we’ve dubbed ‘SFF Month’), so be sure to grab one if you’re interested.
Finally, if you’d like to learn more about supporting the forum specifically, you can do so here. In a sentence, we provide supporter tiers that bill monthly or annually, which provide some additional forum functionality and access to chat and other resources.
We don’t take asking for your support lightly, but we do it with an eye towards producing the right content for our community, in a sustainable and transparent way. Thanks to everyone – past, present and future – for your support!
Discuss in the forums here!
