I am probably a new name to everyone but I have been a lurker on other ant forums and recognize everyone's names (so far) from those forums.
I am an IT Director for a company in Newport Beach, CA that also happens to employ Andrew. We have many conversations about ants and building formicariums (while getting paid) 
I even have a test tube setup with a small Solenopsis xyloni colony (thanks to Andrew) in the server room. Actually, they could be the Formiculture mascots because their test tube is actually sitting in the server rack on top of the server this forum is running on.
When Andrew said he wanted to start this forum I thought it was a fantastic idea so I provided the hardware, software and bandwidth to get it started. Andrew and I determined that it would be better if we didn't use one of the free(or even paid) forum hosting services. Having complete control over both the software and the hardware affords us the ability to implement things that may not be possible on a hosted forum. That being said, we welcome everyone's input on how to improve Formiculture. Please use the "Forum Support, Feedback & Suggestions" topic to post your suggestions/issues.
I also want to say that we do appreciate your patience as we launch Formiculture. The forum software we decided to use is pretty complex and we are trying to fine tune all the small details. If you experience any problems/bugs just send either of us an email and we will look into it.
Enjoy,
-Bryan
tl;dr Welcome everyone, and enjoy!
and for forum + machine...
