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Happy 10th anniversary Stack Overflow! Commence ... au festival!

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Stack Overflow turns 10 years old today. In the world of Internet startups, that's a pretty big deal — most assumed we would have flopped or gotten ourselves acquired by now. Many of us have had pets that didn't last this long, and in dog years, we're really pushing it. See the linked blog post for some pretty interesting numbers (and you've gotta watch the video), and those are numbers that we should all feel good about.

When you look at the ground that we've covered through the rear-view mirror, it's hard to not be a little amazed that we navigated it as well as we did. We ended the crappy practice of baiting people with knowledge in search engines, we turned the best elements of the tools we had for knowledge sharing on their head and invented something better, and we built a colossal community consisting of the smartest and most selfless people anyone would ever have the pleasure to know.

As we stand where we do today, passionately finding better ways to come together so all of us have a seat at the table as we look for the best way forward, it's important to not lose track of what we've accomplished thus far. That's why this party is all about you.

Tim, can we get to the 'au festival' part?

Yes, we certainly can. Starting in the very near future, we're going to be writing some interesting posts here and on MSE. While the network itself isn't turning 10, its DNA (the realization that we innovated a better way to learn) has. And, our network sites do a great job of putting up with Stack Overflow getting all the shiny new stuff initially, so they are getting their fair share of treats at this party.

Your missions, should you care to accept them, are to accomplish whatever unit of 'fun' we set up in a series of posts in order to unlock some pretty awesome limited edition swag. And we're not just talking t-shirts and stickers here (though, those are awesome, they're also too typical for this occasion). We're talking the good stuff.

Bigger gifts mean bigger asks. Maybe you'll be looking at our rendered markup for proof that Joe Friend is really Illuminati. Maybe we'll ask for a few paragraphs sharing your thoughts on a particular moment in time. Maybe we'll ask you to break out the craft supplies again. What's important is you can expect something special every 7 - 10 days from now until just before the start of Winter Bash (which may or may not be heavily inspired by fondant, LEGO bricks and constrained closet space).

I won't say any more this early, and you won't break me, ever.

The point is, you're awesome, and thank you. We really mean it.

None of us would have these awesome jobs where we get to annoy you constantly if it weren't for your support. Wait, that didn't exactly come out right. Well, I guess it's a small part of it, but it's more about the millions of people that get help every single day simply by clicking the top link in their search results.

You've taken a craft that once required a considerable amount of failure just to uncover a glimmer of success and you've made it more accessible than it has ever been before. You've taken a huge stab at removing the barrier of needing to learn English proficiently in order to learn programming through our international initiatives. You're doing your best to help us be sincere when we tell every visitor that they will be respected, and that those who show some ownership in their problems will be welcomed by getting the kind of help that we've become famous for providing.

You, all of you, have taken control of a major part of our future by showing people a better way to learn, and for mostly better and sometimes worse, helping them find the best versions of themselves.

I know this, because that's what this place has done for me, and I know I'm not alone.

So, any last suggestions for cool swag ideas? Anything else you want to share? A haiku? A GDPR-compliant recipe for cookies we could bake and eat together in chat?

Our only request: Let's just enjoy this. We <3 all of you, and we're looking forward to going out of our way to try and delight you outside of our everyday problems straight into the holidays. We'll work on serious stuff, too, but ..

Let's have some fun.


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