A message from Richard Z – “Decknique is closing down”
+39 (9 votes)
Loading ...Posted on: June 5, 2009
Bad news for most of us, good news for some others.
Decknique, one of the biggest and most active communities about card flourishing and manipulation EVER, says goodbye.
It’s sad but it’s true, and it’s happening in two weeks time.
Here is Richard’s post:
” Hey all, personal message here… It’s long I know.
I wanted to announce today that I’m planning on closing Decknique. It’s been over 3 years, and it’s been stablished as the most popular cardistry-only community there is. But, as should be obvious by now, I’m spending my time on other things these days and do not have enough to do everything.
I don’t like how DN has been going around for so long with an active leader at the top of it all. If DN were to stay open, I would want to be spending more time on it and actively developing it rather than popping in most recently just once or twice a week.
I have been tossing around the idea of closing down DN for a while now, but since there have always been 200+ *registered* members visiting each day I didn’t want to just cut it off. Now I’ve also thought — DN has been getting by without myself being active, thanks in great part to Erik, Vinnie, C3rb3rus, and harapanong for moderating consistently and through difficult situations. But even though people are still active on DN I can’t bring myself to keep DN around in the stagnant shape that it’s in as a website. There is way more that could be done, but I don’t have time to do it.
The other option would be to pass DN to be led by somebody else. But as something that’s been under my name since mid-2005 (when the first DN video was pushed out), I wouldn’t want to hand it off to just anybody.
I will keep the DN page registered, but it will change to be just a set of static pages that give information about cardistry, give a bit of detail about Decknique, and provide some highlight videos/topics that can form a basis for other endeavors and so that the progress made with Decknique is not lost.
I also hope that “closing” Decknique will offer me more time to get the other things I want done instead. This doesn’t mean that I’m leaving the cardistry or magic community, I plan on still staying. But I hope to take on a more individual contributor role rather than managing this website for now. I mention magic because I’ve been working with somebody on developing a couple of magic ideas, although my main focus in cards is still on cardistry. But like I’v always said, it’s good to keep the doors open to everything around you, because the influence and inspiration is awesome. On top of which, the magic ideas are very cool and they’re fun to work on. I hope they will come to fruition soon.
I hope that I will also be given more time to practice cardistry myself instead of spending all my time having to squash arguments and fix troubles on the website. I also hope to spend more time with video editing, social life, and whatever else.
Who’s idea was it?
Purely my own. I’ve thought about it for a while (I even drafted this message over 2 weeks ago), but then realized I’ve been only checking DN VERY briefly about once every week for the past few months.
Why?
I’m spending my time on other things these days. I’ve got a full time job, I’ve been working on some side projects, I’m taking some night classes/activities to learn more things and meet interesting people, and then social life too.
Something will stay
As I mentioned earlier, I want to leave some static pages on Decknique so as to leave a footprint and not just vanish to be forgotten. I’m going to work over this until DN eventually closes, which leads up to the question…
When will it close?
Currently I plan on about 2 weeks out from now.
Will DN ever open back again?
There are currently no plans to open a forum up on DN again. If I get laid off, maybe I’ll reconsider I don’t think I’d plan on making a personal site out of this. “Decknique” to me is too engrained as a community website for me to feel right re-serving it as a personal website.
What will happen to the old posts?
Some of the old posts will be archived. There’s no sense in keeping it all here though, so it’d be nice to try and just highlight some of the best posts for reference.
Will there be an information site?
I do plan on keeping a brief FAQ on cardistry and also a bit of brief history, so that people have something to go off of.
Can I takeover/buy Decknique?
I’m currently not accepting any offers for Decknique, because whatever might actually sway me more than likely wouldn’t be worth your while.
What about theory11?
I’ll be straight. theory11’s a company, and they sell stuff. They have mostly magic, but that’s where the majority of their audience and money is. But I madly appreciate what they do. But honestly, after working with them for about 2 years, I think they are great. They are SO active, they come up with contests every single week, and 1-on-1s almost as often. And they have some great 1-on-1’s there. For those who say cardistry isn’t their top priority, that might be true for some people, but Andrei works for them now. He is planning to give more push for cardistry community in theory11, and I hope he starts soon. theory11 has amazing resources and and talented people who work full time on the website. I will continue doing work for them as well.
Lastly, I want to thank each and every one of you for making Decknique successful. It wouldn’t've lasted a week had it not been for people like you joining and contributing. I GREATLY hope that whatever you do next will help serve a few things:
- CONTRIBUTE to the community
- strive for EXELLENCE and EVOLUTION
- HELP one other instead of bashing each other. everybody starts off a newbie — trying to best each other at bashing people is not the right way
- do GOOD in the world”
-Richard Z
What now? Do you have an idea or solution? Post a comment.
—
Save 20% On Custom Playing Card Packs
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email newsletter. You can also try Twitter if you want to know more about Alejandro Portela. Thanks for visiting!
You might also enjoy these posts...
Get my new posts in your email
Arcane Playing Cards
Related Posts
Learn Card Flourishes
Follow .thecuso on Twitter
Increase your youtube views
Similar Posts
- Kate – I Only Go Up
- Vinnie C goes Underground
- The future of the flourishing world
- What is Theory11
- Cardistry Collaboration Contest 2008
- Artwo talks about Patter
- Randomflourisher – Elusive Abstraction
- How to date a deck of cards
- Up and Coming #3: Chotu Singh from India
- How to get traffic to your magic blog.
- Allan Hagen brought Scott and Sean Watters back!
- TheCuso – 2009
- Anaconda Dribble DVD Pre-Release Info: Get it NOW!
- Do you act like a Wynner?
- [CCC 2008] Adam on the Contest results
June 6th, 2009 at 2:20 am
sad thing..lol
June 6th, 2009 at 3:04 am
hey do you think the cuso might get a forum? hinty hint
June 6th, 2009 at 3:43 am
W00T.
June 6th, 2009 at 6:04 am
LOL^
June 6th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Actually a few people told me if there is someone that should make a forum, that’d be me…
But for now, i don’t think that’s a good idea.
I like the way .thecuso is right now.
But hey, i’m open to suggestions…
June 6th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
well… that sucks.
June 6th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
what the hell ive been appart of this community for ages and just to see it close is very dissapointing. Goodbuy decknique
June 6th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Shocking..
June 6th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Nothing lasts forever right? =)
June 6th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
http://decknique.net/forums/thread:9092
For the future of cardistry.
June 7th, 2009 at 4:04 am
I’m curious, Cuso, why you stated that this is good news for some others? I’m pretty sure I know what you meant but don’t want to assume. Can you clarify?
June 7th, 2009 at 5:38 am
It seems he meant that it’s good news for HL, although if they actually cared about advancing the art like they say they do and not just about their own ego’s, it should be bad for them to hear that the most populated card manipulation community is going down.
June 7th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Well, so far a couple of people laughed at the facr that is closing so…
June 7th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
you mean jamal and darian? They were never real/respected members of the community. Please don’t follow to sebastians new forum guys, I’d think you’d be content with hl.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:01 am
LOL I was laughing at the fact that the person above me was happy. Besides I’ve helped more people on that forum than you have. All you ever did was complain about the noobs and fight with me.
June 25th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
[...] For Richard Z’s message in full, here it is. [...]
September 12th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Cuso you are really an opportunist. You have one thing which people rarely have though, assumed self worth.
Don’t get me wrong though, I’m talking positive.
I never got to be a part of decknique.
I started with magic in march 2007 with a 20 cent deck which you get in India, then I moved to normal Bikes.
2008 hit, studied science, fucked up hard shit in physics and chemistry and maths, figured out this isn’t my way of life. Discovered the underground seduction community and I got allured with the first girl I ever really hung out with, till 2009 March, and fucked my examinations up.
Continued with the same shit, started going out to practice pickup, with a girl who was visiting here from California, used to get along a lot. But then she leaves half way through and in July I realize my life is actually fucked, so I make a proactive decision to do the right thing and resume most of my good shit.
As of September 2009, I’m back practicing magic and Xcm, I skateboard and play streetball, hang out with ill dudes and we ball all day and rap all night.
Gunna start working closeup/table hopping and also opening a social dynamics company(pickup/seduction/self actualization) back in asia,
I’m keepin ‘ it real.
Decknique is a good resource just for anyone, hope it just don’t close out and become blank, I noticed Fletch(trash) had 5000 posts, damn, and even Mike(hardcorexcmer) loved it, it must be damn fucked up to close it down.
However I strongly feel that Richard you are taking a one sided perspective, and since you started it to help the community, there was no point in making it static, its just an excuse to me.
Peace
Emotional post from me lol.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
THANK YOU, I NEEDED THAT
September 13th, 2009 at 3:30 am
Shut up dimi, you are a PUA wannabe too! :P
Love.
September 13th, 2009 at 7:14 am
WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT!?!?!!??!?!when did this turn into an autobiography thread.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
I haven’t laughed so hard for a long time.
Thanks gangstar, you made my day.
September 13th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
looks like someone found a way to have his own “thecuso interview” :D LOL
February 1st, 2010 at 8:44 pm
разместил на своем народовском сайте ссылку на этот пост. думаю, многим будет интересно!
March 13th, 2010 at 12:41 am
Nice one! If I could write like this I would be well chuffed. The more I see articles of such quality as this (which is rare), the more I think there could be a future for the Web. Keep it up, as it were.