Diolch yn fawr iawn @ianspencer from one of the many people who have benefited/are benefitting from what you helped make possible
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Iām always happy to take a pat on the back but my software involvement came before that though. Aran had his own webserver - I think it was one of his many bright ideas. There was some complicated backstory to that too. Anyway, it was creakier than a creaky thing and just as Aran was getting the forum going and it was turning into something special, it fell into a sad heap of nothingness and Aran couldnāt get it sorted.
There then followed a mad afternoon of āletās do somethingā (sort of Letās Make a Musical! without the music or entertainment value). I was working at home at the time, so decided to get stuck in. Aran had come across the cloud server system he still uses (good choice but a ābraveā early adopter decision) and we grabbed the old forum, rebuilt it and went back live in about 3 hours. I think Aran has erased that painful day from his memory - I donāt blame him. If I recall correctly, it was easier for me to do it because I had broadband as opposed to a Welsh piece of twine purporting to be a network connection. I donāt think we really knew each other then, not sure we had met at that point (the first time we did meet he still didnāt trust me enough to reveal he lived in a pig sty!).
I remember a bit more about the charging. There was quite a lively debate behind the scenes (mainly Aran trying to work out how to extract money from the project to support a family without anyone having to pay anything to anybody), but the idea of a voluntary subscription in part came out of an experience I had had with Radio Paradise(https://www.radioparadise.com/) - an early American Internet radio station which I enjoyed listening to. We had a similar debate there, and as I was very anti-advertising, I encouraged looking at other ideas, and the guy who ran it gave the voluntary subscription a punt. Heās still going. Also from the software world, back in the 90s I was involved in forums (on CompuServe, before the Internet was a twinkle in most peopleās eye) and there I worked with Borland. I learnt that the people who came onto the forum could be very heated and yet with the right approach you could get them off the ceiling, and the key to that was getting the community to do the policing and create a positive atmosphere. The other thing I learnt from the American community I was involved in was the concept of ādonāt return the favour, pass it on.ā I think that is the ethos that has permeated SSiW - the people who need help are not the people who have helped you, but the next generation.
Yes, the money for the bootcamp. āEr, Aran, so that covers the room and accommodation. What about the travel expenses to get there?ā (Quizzical look then dawning realisation)." What about something for you and Iestynās time" (ditto!). I guess it was at that point it dawned on Aran that Bootcamps might be a real thing rather than a fraudulent misrepresentation of his educational abilities.
I am proud of doing my bit for SSiW, and though Iāve moved on in many different ways, I feel Iāve already had my reward from the warmth I still feel from my good friends Iāve made here.
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Oh, yes, I kind of conflated the ease of movement from Spennyware->Jennyware->SSiBorg!
Must be a memory thingā¦
[Add to Seren yr Wythnos post: Spenny saved our hides more times than I can remember (apparently) when actual stuff like servers needed to be working].
Happy days, werenāt they?! Looking forward to see you (plural!) up here some timeā¦ 
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Oh, there was another reason for the software. Aran had all the lessons recorded and digitised in one long file which took about 20 minutes to load up into Audacity (panad amser) and then all you had was a waveform squiggle to guess where on earth the mistake to be corrected might be. Then there was creating the replacement, and trying to slip it in without destroying the whole lesson, export out to MP3, upload and so on. A single edit could take an hour or more if Aran could remember what he was doing when he started. Impractical and unmaintainable. All that and dealing with forum requests to clarify what the response to something was because the dogs were having a fight in the background on the recording or the chickens were on the move again (frightened by Catrinās sneezing probably). Still, Aran didnāt worry about this as Iestyn & Cat were doing it sitting in the sink of a campervan while on a grand European tour so he had the easy bit.
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Oh, God, yes.
I had genuinely forgotten about that.
I kind of remember āthe time before Spennywareā as a permanent dance in fire and brimstone, but the actual details of the pain have happily fadedā¦
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Hi, Spenny! Nice to see you (figuratively speaking). Thank you for being who you are and at the right time and place to help make SSiW what it is now!
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Amazing amazing story!!! I barely managed to sign up to the newsletter, so how you did that I doubt Iāll ever understand!!! Diolch yn fawr!!!
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It was after meeting Spenny at the first bootcamp that I became really aware of his software genius. That was when I joined the ranks of those who crunched the raw voice files of the Fab Four into the lessons we all got to know and love. Despite a life-long involvement with IT, I was a little intimidated by Spennyware at first. I had to follow a detailed induction before I was set free on the actual voice files. Like all powerful software, its complexity demanded a fair bit of operator skill but once Iād mastered it, I became quite slick. 
I was really impressed by how efficiently it worked. I had some insight later into how it formed the basis of āJennywareā or Spennyware 2.1 as it might systematically be called (but that might become clear later).
It was great to meet Spenny again and his wife-to-be-now-wife, Anna at our Mag 7 reunion a few weeks ago.
Diolch yn fawr, cyfaill.
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You werenāt going to learn a lot about me at Bootcamp when all I usually said was āDwyān meddolā¦ā and never got any further.
Sum total of my Bootcamp experience:
Pam 
?*
*The first ever Bootcamp joke, thanks, Dee!
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Youāve beaten me on this one, @aran . I canāt go within my style here so what Iāll do instead ā¦ Iāll say
(Image created especially for you for this occassion just about 10 (or so) minutes ago. Hope you like it.)
So, the first person who I actually would have to give my thank you (in another thread) is you @ianspencer1. Youāve enabled one poor soul from the part of this prety Earth where thereās no Cymraeg even near to be heard (OK, was for that matter) who desperately wanted and kind of needed to learn the language to actually being able to learn it! If there wouldnāt be you doing magnificent stuff for SSiW, there wouldnāt be me speaking Welsh either! Thank you thousand times!
Oh, and Iām prety aware what a nightmare editing long files in Audacity can be ā¦ edited quite some by myself (some also for my Welsh learning purpose before I found SSiW, too). You can spoil the file in a split of second and you donāt know what actually has happened (or better where has happened) .
Thank you for the URL to that Paradise radio which Iām listening to just right now (how coincidently they are playing something about Paradise. ) . OK, guys, itās not Welsh though but this is NON STOP MUSIC where moderator gives his voice only to show heās sttill there and alive what suits so well to me!
Top notch Visual C++! My son really loves it. He says itās efficient and simple enough yet quite powerful! (yah, I have one of those techy kids in the house ).
So, out of curiousity: is this the right book youāre the (co)author of?
And thank you for bein one of those Magnificent 7 because of who the bootcamps came to reality and we can enjoy them today! If there wouldnāt be you (and the other pioneers) Iād never be to Cymru and to lovely Tresaith speaking Cymraeg, walking around and drinking beer in the tafarn in the evenings! Oh, and of course, Iād never meet Magnificent (legendary) four! And, for that matter, Iād never meet all of you, lovely people who I owe so much and so all together we owe to Ian a lot ā¦
Diolch, diolch, diolch!
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Doing my best! If Iād know @ianspencer1 is a (secret) singer and Iād find a recording of his singing heād surely appear on here with it.
On a sirious note. Thank you @hewrop. It means a lot.
I always am trying to compose something special for special people. I hope Iām succeeding in my mission.
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My magnum opus (over 1000 pages!) was Teach Yourself OWL Programming in 21 Days
It earned me trips to America and all sorts. Unfortunately, it became obsolete pretty quickly under the onslaught of Microsoft VC++.
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Yes, I can imagine ā¦
Diolch yn fawr iawn iawn i ti, Ian!
I know from personal experience how good your Spennyware is.
Ages ago, when I first started recording the SSiDutch lessons, there was a period where I recorded and edited everything manually, until Aran handed me a copy of your software. Well, what a difference that made! Instead of spending close to a week pasting, cutting, adjusting sound bites into a lesson in the evenings, I could do one lesson in one evening, truly great stuff. I still miss the old Spennyware days though, but thereās no stopping progressā¦
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I cannot believe that I missed the week that one of my closest friends became Seren yr Wythnos! In my defence I have had a very busy few weeks with March being especially busy with family birthdays. One aged 4, two aged 37, one 69 and one 80! Also I have had a week of looking after my granddaughters.
So, to Dee!
I first met Dee about seven and a half years ago when I went to a quiz for learners that I had seen advertised. I was one of the first to arrive, met Dee and a guy from West Wales. We formed part of a team which my husband, Phil, joined later. Several of the teams had fluent, first-language Welsh speakers in them, so we felt rather at a disadvantage. Dee handed me a business card for SSIW and I put it in my bag. A week or so later I found it and decided to log on and join the forum and look at the lessons. I tentatively started to listen to Iestyn and Cat, but did not work in earnest at that point. I attended classes in which we hardly spoke, so found it hard even talking out loud to myself, let alone to Iestyn and Cat!
Fast forward to January and I saw the first Bootcamp advertised and decided that the discipline of talking only in Welsh would be good for me. I arrived a day after the start as we had been away skiing, so when I met the other six they had already established a bond with each other in English, whereas I was straight in in Welsh. Thankfully I recognised Dee and felt happier. And so our friendship started. She has been exceedingly patient with me over the years, insisting in speaking only Welsh to me, even if I lapsed into English. Thatās not to say that we never speak English to each other. We have talked well into the early hours of the morning (once until way past 4 am!) in English, when our Welsh vocabulary would have been too restricting.
Together we joined Merched y Wawr and also went to a Welsh Folk Dancing group. And with Desmond we started the first conversation group in Cardiff, meeting weekly and another monthly on a Saturday morning. In the early days if there was only Dee and I at the Mochyn Du we would play Scrabble yn Cymraeg. Her move to Llandysul was a blow to me, but we both have āopen doorsā for each other, so we do see each other, although we now try to go to bed before midnight!
Dee is calm, generous, patient, committed to learning languages herself and encouraging others in their language learning, non-judgmental, welcoming and friendly - and has many other positive traits, and I feel truly honoured to be able to call her a close friend. Throughout her illness and recovery she has kept positive and researched what is best for her, and informed others of any significant finds that she has made. ALWAYS helping others, even when times have been difficult for herself. An excellent choice for Seren yr Wythnos!
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Diolch Alison! Iām sure weāll be friends for many more years to come 
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There is so much to laugh about from that first bootcamp. If I didnāt love the Welsh language before, then I truly fell for it during that week.
I remember that āDw iān meddwl ā¦ā then long pauses with a finger in the air for dramatic effect, while we all waited expectantly to see what was coming next. Then when nothing did, we all fell about laughing! Probably you had to be there, but that Spenny-grin was one of the highlights of bootcamp.
Itās always great to catch up with you, Spenny, and lovely to meet Anna recently. Thanks for all youāve done for SSiW and I hope it wonāt be too long until we meet again.
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Weāve all heard of āThe Fab Fourā, and itās obvious who they are, but actually, along with Dee, they also all become āThe Fab Fiveā!
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Diolch yn fawr, Spenny. Dw iān dal defnyddio nhw.