KarateForums.com Award for HeidiKarateForums.com is currently celebrating due to the community reaching the 500,000 posts milestone. Yesterday, as part of that celebration, I presented a long term member with a physical award.

The idea for it was planted back in June, when Heidi (ninjanurse on the community) marked 10 years as a member of my staff. I have been managing forums for more than 13 years and I have never had a staff member that experienced that type of longevity. It is very impressive. As such, I decided that we would honor her again when we hit 500,000 posts.

Once I had a general idea, I contacted the other staff members. But not through the staff forums – through email. This is so Heidi wouldn’t find out. We talked about what we could do and I settled on the idea of a physical award. I mocked up a couple of designs and asked for feedback before placing an order.

When we finally hit the milestone, I took the award out of the box and shot a video where I presented it to her (I’ll embed it at the bottom of this article). I then wrote a thank you card and placed it in the box and shipped it off to her without any notice to her.

Once I received a message from her letting me know it had arrived, I published an announcement on the community and released the video. Heidi was surprised and appreciate the gift, which was my goal. To provide her with a small token of our appreciation and something that she could look at, wherever life takes her, and be reminded of the time that she has spent at KarateForums.com.

I’m really glad that I had the opportunity to do this, so I wanted to share it with you. It can be a great way to express appreciation to members who have really made a long term difference in your community.