Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/856624
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S U M M E R 2 0 1 7 31 on R.A.M.P.S. was made March 18 [2017]." I'm not sure the masses really know how much work Jeff has put into growing this. JWSound is a thick, rich wealth of knowledge that has a global following. It didn't get there overnight but I was curious how it did get there. I was reading and sometimes posting on this forum, unknowing of all the work and innovation going on behind the scenes. Jeff explained: "And this is prior to Facebook having anything like the Facebook groups or any of the rest of that stuff. But I also realized that it had been so open and not particularly focused on any one thing. I wanted to do something that was more focused for sound people. So, I finally segued into doing JWSound, first using Simple Machines Forum—SMF—which was software that you load onto your own server. I had a couple of server accounts because I had done some websites and stuff like that. SMF turned out to be kind of squirrely software that was really fighting me all the way. But I was getting people signing up every other day and it seemed to be something that people were really going to participate in. So, we ran that for maybe a year or so and then two years later, I went over to Invision Power Services for Invision Power Board—IPB—as the software backbone or platform, and everything got a lot better because it was much better in terms of posting images." I'll note a pattern I've seen with any interactive internet discussion is that it often segues into a physical gathering. This idea is well over two decades old as the "R.A.M.P.S./JWSound" party at NAB shows us. Jeff tells me the huge number I was waiting for on the age of this party: "Well, our last R.A.M.P.S. party actually was at its 27th [anniversary] this year. Eric [Toline] has been doing the party and when I had been to the R.A.M.P.S. party many, many years before the year that, we started JWSound, and I said, 'There's no way we're " " R.A.M.P.S. served the great purpose of getting those immediate answers to things when people were having problems with something and they really needed a very quick answer. –Jeff Wexler going to change the name.' Well, the next year, everyone said, 'You really ought to change the name,' because— also, everything to deal with the party was happening on JWSound. (The announcement and the sign-ups and all that.) So, I then agreed one year and said, 'Well, let's call it the R.A.M.P.S./JWSound party.'" This gathering trend continues today here in Los Angeles and across the country. Steve Morantz CAS had put together many impromptu lunch gatherings over the years and now collaborates with myself and Chris Howland CAS in organizing a variety of gatherings year-round with the help of the internet—well, the Jeff Wexler CAS of JWSound (left) with Devendra Cleary CAS