A week ago, we passed another milestone for CorelDRAW.com: the 15,000 members mark flew by so quickly. It took almost a year to reach the first 10,000 members and we are on track to double that number in almost half the time.

But more importantly than that, it's the wealth of information and sharing that you all bring to the table that make it such a great place to go. The forums have been terrific for each of us to ask and answer questions, and I am truly amazed by the stunning work posted in the galleries. And the Corel employees who have been taking part in the forum discussions and the monthly real-time chat sessions have really enjoyed talking to you.

Looking back, we knew that the CorelDRAW family of products had passionate and active users around the world and we wanted you to have a tool to open-up the communication amongst yourselves and with Corel employees. User feedback is a critical part of our product development, but in the past, we only got feedback from some of you through on-site visits, phone interviews and surveys. We wanted to do more. So, to make this community a reality with a reasonable investment, we decided to get CorelDRAW.com running with an off-the-shelf solution, using Telligent's Community Server engine in the background. And it's been running since then. For the nostalgic ones, here is how the site looked like at launch:

Yes, I know, we've come a long way. Since then, we used the feedback you provided in the forums to drive the development of X4 and to prioritize the things to fix in Service Pack 1, we made a beta version of Corel DESIGNER X4 available to the members of the community, and we've been showcasing some of the amazing artwork you've posted in the gallery directly within the welcome screen of CorelDRAW, Corel DESIGNER and Corel PHOTO-PAINT.

Looking forward, we have been experimenting with a Wiki for the members of the community to capture information that is coming up on a regular basis. The current implementation isn't working as well as we want and have therefore decided to postpone it slightly. Good news is that Telligent announced that a Wiki is on the roadmap for their next version of the engine, which means we will be able to roll that out with the next major update of the community (just don't ask when right now).

In light of all this, I have to say thanks. We couldn't have built this great site without you.

We're pretty proud of what we've all done here and have decided to submit CorelDRAW.com to the Groundswell Awards which honor projects that make exceptional use of social technologies. Feel free to check it out and to rate / add your comments to the submissions. The nominees include a whole list of cool sites and communities.