A warm hello to all the Winamp faithful who are reading this blog and who give their time and devotion to Winamp -- the best media player in the world!

My name is Ben London (a.k.a. "B-Lo") and I have been working on the Winamp team from here in Dulles, Virgina for the past 4 years now. With Winamp being a 10+ year old application, its history reaches far back before my time, and I'm sure it will extend far past my time as well -- as no human can out live the almighty Llama. For the time being though, I love being a part of the ride and wanted to use my first post to talk about all the great people who help comprise "Team Winamp".

So who is the Winamp team?

That is actually a much harder question to answer than you would think. The first place to start is our Alumni page. The names & mugshots you'll find there represent the geniuses from Winamp's past and I wouldn't be writing this blog post if it weren't for their contributions. If any alumni are reading this post -- I am bowing to you and can only say, thank you!

Next on the Team Winamp tour are the geniuses of today. For this stop, I am lucky enough to have the best seat on the bus, as I get to work along side some truly great people. While many of us are here in Dulles, Virginia (Benski, Maksim, Carl, Grace, Matt, Sam, Larry, John and Tarik to name a few) , the "official" team is almost as global as the Winamp user base. Its a good thing I don't have to pay long distance charges because here is a sampling of who I'm talking to everyday -- Dave (San Francisco), Taber (Upstate New York), Jonathan (Tucson), Wonmu (New York), DJ Egg (UK), and our awesome new team in Bangalore, India (Chitra, Vinay, Rekha, Sumanta, Mohan, Ashok, Prassana, Madhuri, Venkatesh, Vanaja).

These names make up the core day to day team and cover all sorts of skills -- client application development, web development, quality assurance testing, design, product strategy, project management, business development, community management, and whatever it is that I do (still unknown). There are also a ton of part timers in other parts of the company who help keep the Llama fed on a daily basis -- too many roles/names to list in one post.

The last, but most important, stop on the Team Winamp tour is YOU!! I can't begin to tell you how vital our user & developer community is to the continued growth and success of Winamp. There are so many people who I have never spoken to directly that play a huge role on the team. From the skin/plugin community developers to the skin/plugin staff reviewers to the forum moderators to the beta testers and on down to the casual user -- I consider each and every one of you a part of the team and I cannot thank you enough for all that you give to Winamp.

So I guess the main point to my maiden post here is that Team Winamp is all over the globe (and hopefully one day on Mars). I'm looking forward to your comments and I'll be sure to be back in touch very soon.

Cheers,
B-Lo