Once upon a time I had the briefest glimmer of an idea, a vision of an obscured reality which I knew could exist, but proved unreachable at the time.  This whisper of an idea floated through my mind in early July of 2004, yet I wasn’t able to pierce the fog surrounding the idea, bringing it into plain sight, until years later.  All I knew, all I felt I wanted, was a place where my baseless movie speculation and biased opinion could rub elbows with the critical insights of those already established in the film industry.

To feed this desire I created the World of KJ and subsequently approached my favorite posters at Box Office Mojo to see if they too were interested in sharing their voices.  I was blissfully unaware that within 4 months everything I set out to do would be flipped on its head, literally changing the course of my life and career.  I had no idea that by October 2004 the path I walked, the path I believed led toward pen and paper, literature and writing, had a new destination at its end.

As hundreds of amazing and unique individuals migrated to the freshly created WoKJ forums, I was faced with the numerous technical hurdles of handling such a crowd on the web.  In order to better promote film discussion and do justice to the collective voice of our newly minted community I had to reinvent my educational background and tackle the fundamentals of website architecture.  Before I knew it I was managing my own server, learning HTML, mastering Javascript and utilizing the PHP language.  When I finally pulled my head up and looked around there were no breadcrumbs to lead me back to whatever career path I thought I was on before. It’s been a tumultuous journey ever since, but also an extremely rewarding experience.

Through multiple site iterations the World of KJ evolved from a simple archive of movie reviews for a few to a fully-loaded movie site for the many.  But somewhere along the way the restrictions of the site design once again constrained the potential of its community.  Early in 2010 I realized it was time to stop trying to patch the holes of a creaky old ship and instead embark on a quest to fully realize that original, elusive idea which was meant to be the foundation of WoKJ.

This article, this new site, is the culmination of a journey that has seen WoKJ finally move towards what I had always intended it to be: A place where anyone could go to voice their opinions on film amongst their peers. A place where insightful commentary is encouraged, appreciated and recognized.  A place providing you, the movie-goer, with the tools necessary to forge a robust community, one that engages and entertains.  And most importantly, a place where your baseless movie speculation and biased opinion can rub elbows with everyone else's.

The new World of KJ allows users to create detailed profiles, babble snippets of consciousness, write in-depth, multimedia articles and follow the thoughts and interests of your fellow WoKJ users. Instead of perceptive movie reviews, uncanny box office predictions and conversation-starting comments being buried in forum threads, the new site will allow all users to rate each other’s work, insuring that the best content gets the most limelight.

This site is far from finished, and it’s far from perfect.  Over the coming months our development team, with your help, will fix any bugs you may find, improve the new site by acting on the suggestions we believe add the most value for the community and expand the reach of the site to open new areas and components. We have many ideas as to what we will spend our time developing next and your input will help make those improvements a reality. Please visit our About Us and FAQ pages for up-to-date site information as well as additional articles I’ll be publishing in the future.

I would never have been able to do all of this alone, and I want to thank all of the dedicated WoKJ users that have made this entire endeavor worthwhile from the very beginning. I couldn’t be happier and my words cannot express how grateful I am that you helped lure me off a much more ordinary career path. The film industry continues to be one of the most dynamic entertainment complexes in global culture, and I for one can’t wait to start discussing 2011 cinema with all of you.

Sincerely,

KJ