2011 BME Year End Awards

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Rachel

Woops! Looks like somebody forgot to hit “post” on the 2011 Year End Awards! At least we didn’t forget to send out the Gift Certificates though! If you’re on the list below, check your email because you were sent anywhere from $20 to $1000. That’s right! We’ve gone from t-shirts to cold hard cash (gift certificates are like cash, right?!) If you see yourself on this page and didn’t see your gift certificate email then drop me a line at [email protected] and I’ll send it to you again!

If you haven’t noticed, the new leader boards are up. They’re linked in the footer on BME.com and we’ve also gone back in time (up to 2001 anyway!) and added leader boards for every year! This is the first year that we’ve also got video contributions so that’s another new thing we’re doing.

If you look at the numbers you’re probably thinking, “woah, wasn’t the top contributor 45k images for 2009?” and you’d be right. We’ve been trying to figure out how to make it as easy as it used to be to submit images and we thought the best way would be to make it so that you could email your submissions like you did since the dawn of BME. Give us a couple more weeks to finish working out the kinks and you’ll be able to email your submissions to the site just like the good ole days! We’re also busy working on integration into other sites so you’ll be able to update all of your social sites from BME and vice versus! You’ll be able to manage everything you want from BME with the bonus that you can keep your BME only entries safe behind IAM’s walls while sending out your other posts! No more having to log in to 20 different sites just to get your FB/twitter/tumblr/linkedin/so many other sites, can’t possible name them all, on!

Once again, I can’t thank you enough for contributing to BME. Check the leader boards to see where you ranked on collecting a cool cash prize! We’re going to start doing monthly gift certificate give aways to the top contributors in the photo and video galleries once the email submission tool is back online and I think we’ll see the submission numbers back to where they used to be. The one bonus is that our Year End Awards got to see some new faces because they didn’t have to upload tens of thousands of photos just to have a shot! While that was fun for one year, lets get back to submitting tens of thousands of photos, videos and stories!

Top 10 Image Contributors
1. 856 images

Joeltron

2. 469 images Naoise-Ryan Israel	3. 454 images The Sinner Team	4. 451 images 8bga-kipodd
5. 399 images 8ckf-olegek97	6. 341 images Supa	7. 292 images Self Sacrifice
8. 248 images skindependent	9. 243 images UrbanSoul	10. 156 images 8phv-l8onha

Top 10 Video Contributors

1. 132 videos 9bdz_kokomi3k	2. 56 videos 8bfh-udreisoern	3. 50 videos swen2
4. 33 videos 9vlm-pdebsk	5. 26 videos 9bgc-edziu1902	6. 25 videos xzotikmodz
7. 24 videos uwe	8. 22 videos smbite57	9. 20 videos jonjuan60
9. 20 videos 8ckf-olegek97	9. 20 videos wandalaput	10. 17 videos elevateur

Top 3 Story Contributors

1. 3 stories
katsaw

KatSaw

1. 3 stories

annalese

1. 3 stories

DollParts7

A big SHOUT OUT!!! goes out to the following people for being generally awesome and more specific things they’ve done to help BME keep ticking!

lextalonis
Sean Phillips

Sean helps out whenever we need him and he’s got a few minutes to spare. Sean being around makes me feel old since he’s been a member of BME since the dawn of time!

mcshady
Katie McShady

Katie was awesome and helped out with BMEshop while I got back into the swing of things after the cross country move from LA to VA. If you got orders in 2011, Katie and her beautiful hair probably graced your goods with her presence! 🙂

Midian2000

Midian has also been around for over a DECADE and he’s continued to throw the SoCal BME BBQ come hell or high water! If you’re looking for a BME BBQ on the West Coast to meet fellow BME members, his BBQ is the place to be!

nano
Nano

Nano also touched every single one of your BMEshop orders for most of 2011, that is until he got himself denied entry! That’s what you get for being an international playboy! We love Nano and miss him dearly!

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS

A huge “thank you” goes out to past and present editorial contributors to BME. Everyone has continued to grow with their own projects and while some former contributors to BME have been swamped with their own projects, it wouldn’t be right not to thank them for everything they’ve done in the past and what they continue to do not only for BME but for the community at large! Without them, BME wouldn’t have grown in the way it has over the past 18 years!

Allen Falkner
Roundtable, Author

Ferg
Author

Russ Foxx
Ask.BME staff

Ron Garza
Roundtable, Author

Warren Hiller
Ask.BME staff

Derek Lowe
Ask.BME, Roundtable

John Joyce
Roundtable member

Paul King
Author

Lexci Million
Ask.BME staff

Ryan Ouellette
Ask.BME, Roundtable

Sean Philips
Ask.BME staff, Modblog

Shawn Porter
Ask.BME, Author

Efix Roy
Ask.BME staff

Joy Rumore
Roundtable

Lori St. Leone
Ask.BME staff

Steve Truitt
Roundtable member

Tiff Badhairdo
Ask.BME staff

Brian Decker
Roundtable member

Stephen DeToma
Roundtable member

BME Staff

BME staff.. What can I say about the people listed below? You know and love (well most of them!) dearly because some of them (Mike and Jen!) have been around BME for almost as long as it’s been online! There is a newcomer in the group and his name is Diego! He’s our new programmer and he’s been fixing bugs, adding new features and generally kicking ass since he hit the ground running!

For those of you who didn’t notice, Mike moved from the snowy horridness of the New England area to sunny Hawaii and we are all so jealous it makes us want to do very bad things to him.. Very bad! We let it slide though because when the servers hit the floor, Mike is the first one there to pick them up and put them back where they belong! Without Mike, BME would have had some serious outages over the years!

If you’ve had any kind of issue with your account, you’ve talked to Jen. She was possibly grumpy and short (she can’t help being 4′ 11″!) but she probably solved your issue and got you back on the site! Jen has been solving member issues since 2004! She took over 10 years ago after I had my daughter and couldn’t keep up with member support while juggling everything else BME and a beautiful baby girl!

I’m not sure that Rob needs any kind of introduction. He sorts through the moderation queue and pulls out submissions to showcase on modblog. He takes your beatings when “nothing new and ground breaking” has been posted because he hasn’t been out on the street inventing body modifications because he’s too busy moderating content and posting links to body modification news around the web. We also like him because of his thick skin!

Rob ModBlog Beard Guy	Diego Sys-Admin Guy	CT Tropical Sys-Admin Guy
Jen Girl-Friday	Rachel HBIC

I know I’ve been MIA from Modblog and IAM for most of 2011 but that’s because I’ve been busy behind the scenes. Between going back to being a full time Mom, running BMEshop single handed and dealing with non-stop medical issues, I haven’t had the time that I’d like to post online in general. I’m hoping that we’re able to wrap up fixing all of the issues with rebuilding the site from the ground up and that I can move on to building fun features and new applications for BME. I have a TON of stuff launching in the next few months and I’m hoping that lightens the load on all of us here at BME. I know that people often give credit to the staff of BME for it being what it is but it truly is a community effort. BME wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the collective efforts of millions of body modification enthusiasts world wide. Without you, there wouldn’t be BME. I hope to see you on the Year End Awards next year!

Wrapping it up for the year

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Rob

It’s been a while since we’ve done them, but the BME Year-End Awards are coming up! Now, because we didn’t do them last year, we’ll be doing the 2010** awards this month as well. Now if you don’t know what the awards are, they’re how we recognize the top contributors to BME. We look at 3 categories, photos, videos, and experiences*. The top 10 in each category win fabulous prizes!

Now in the past, with the way the system worked is that we’d cut off submissions for the year end awards some time in December. This year, with all the changes to the site, we can now take submissions up until midnight on December 31st. So that means if you’re one of the top contributors come New Year’s Day, you’ll be getting a gift certificate to the BMEShop. In past years we’ve given away t-shirts, but this time we thought it would be nice if the winners got to choose what they received. Here’s how the prizes break down. The top 10 contributors in each category will each win the following:

1st place: $1000
2nd place: $500
3rd place: $250
4th place: $100
5th place: $50
6th place: $40
7th place: $30
8th place: $30
9th place: $30
10th place: $20

If you do the math we’re giving away over six thousand dollars in prizes this year!

So what does this mean to you? Well you’ve still got a few weeks to send in your submissions, so before the end of December upload your photos, videos and experiences* to BME. Who knows, if you’ve submitted enough to be in the top ten, you’ll be getting a prize! If you’ve been sitting on a bunch of photos that you haven’t uploaded yet, now is the time!

Now, all that said, we know there were some problems with the t-shirts in 2009 (I’m looking at you Angela). If you were a winner of a 2009 year end award, and did not receive your shirt, send an e-mail to [email protected] with your shipping address, phone number, and shirt size (mens sm-2xl or womens s-xl), and we’ll send them out.

On top of all of this, the BME New Year’s Eve party is coming up! We’re only a few days away from bonfires, suspensions, and all kinds of shenanigans! Check the event listing for all the details! BMEHQ is located right near King’s Dominion in Virginia, just outside of Richmond.

*Top 10 consists of the top 10 BME members who have submitted more than 1 experience.
**2010 prizes will be announced at a later date.

BMEShop Year End Sale! Coupon Code: holiday20off

40% off Diablo Ogranics Jewelry!! Coupon Code: 40offdiablo

5000th Order Shipped Out Receives $100 Gift Certificate!

2009 BME Year End Awards

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Rachel

Happy New Year!! Let’s start this off by giving away free stuff!

It must have been the year I turned 21 that each day started by passing more and more quickly. I remember being 12 thinking I”d never be 16, then 18, then 21 and now I’m 4 months away from being 30. It means another year of growing BME has come and gone. It seems like the 2008 Awards were posted just a few days ago but it’s been a year. A whole year. We’ve seen so many ups and downs. This year marks the largest contribution by one person over the course of a year, which is also the largest contribution by one person during a year in the history of BME. There are also a couple faces here from last year that we couldn’t kick off the leader boards if we tried. Perk900, I’m talking to you, let’s see you get first place next year!! With this being the last day of 2009, I figured I’d kick it off right and present the 2009 Year End Contributor Awards!

You’ll also note that if you check the leader boards you’ll see different people listed in the top ten for image contributions than are listed below. Our 2nd and 3rd place winner is actually the same person so they’ve been combined and Jen gets disqualified and doesn’t get to win a contributor staff shirt because she already gets one for being staff! That moves everybody up one or two spots and that’s how we’ve come up with the list below.

If you are on the list, you’ll be contacted by me personally. If you don’t hear from me, check your spam or please email me with your address and shirt size to [email protected]. We will be sending out a very special surprise to the top contributor in each section!

I’m throwing in some BME trivia for you all to enjoy as well:

BME Facts:
Photos: 4,493,138
Experiences: 46,980
Videos: 7,942 (plus more that have been posted on Modblog!)
Posts on Modblog: 8,061
Comments on Modblog alone: 177,491
Average Daily Modblog readers; 112,387
Tattoo & Piercing Shops listed on 411.BME: 10,680 (not including the shops that are pending verification
Countries with users on BME: 70
Ask.BME answers: 1,083 (not including the previous version of the QOD)
Ask.BME comments: 2,870

There are tons of other things I haven’t included but I just wanted to show what we have all built together and thank you all again for contributing to BME and making the site what it is today.

TOP 10 IMAGE CONTRIBUTORS

1. 45,802 images

Kitano Karyuudo

See the rest of this year’s top contributors after the break!

2. 15,488 images

kokomi.3k

3. 2,717 images

Perk900

4. 1.014 images

Alienboy

5. 872 images

UREA

6. 626 images

China Tattoo Portfolio

7. 577images

Allen Falkner

8. 560 images

LilFunky1

9. 559 images

JOSEPH DOWNUNDER

10. 473 images

Thou_Art

TOP 9 EXPERIENCE CONTRIBUTORS

1. 7 experiences

Devro

2. 7 experiences

Larry666

3. 6 experiences (tie)

Bluestar

3. 6 experiences (tie)

MissBrutal

4. 5 experiences (tie)
hoboqueen

4. 5 experiences (tie)
ScarlettRose

4. 5 experiences (tie)

dear29

4. 5 experiences (tie)

sevendaze

4. 5 experiences (tie)

Ycul

Experience Reviewers:

I wanted to add in a special thank you to our reviewing volunteers who vote on experiences so they can be added to the site. Without them, Jen and I would be reading a lot of experiences and going cross eyed. Experience reviewers earn credits towards limited edition tshirts through out the year. The 25 linked are logged by experience reviews for all time, not broken down by year which is why they’re generally not included in the Year End Awards but I wanted to give them some extra recognition and say thank you again for the reviewing that you do. I appreciate it a lot.

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS

Tiff Badhairdo
Ask.BME staff

Meg Barber
Roundtable member,
BMEshop

Brian Decker
Roundtable member

Stephen DeToma
Roundtable member

Allen Falkner
Roundtable, Author

Ferg
Author

Russ Foxx
Ask.BME staff

Ron Garza
Roundtable, Author

Warren Hiller
Ask.BME staff

Derek Lowe
Ask.BME, Roundtable

John Joyce
Roundtable member

Paul King
Author

Lexci Million
Ask.BME staff

Ryan Ouellette
Ask.BME, Roundtable

Sean Philips
Ask.BME staff, Modblog

Shawn Porter
Ask.BME, Author

Efix Roy
Ask.BME staff

Joy Rumore
Roundtable

Lori St. Leone
Ask.BME staff

Steve Truitt
Roundtable member

James Weber
APP Author

Since everyone works from home, I’m not able to give each and every one of them a huge hug and say thank you for all the help that they do behind the scenes in making BME such a great place, not to mention keeping it updated, the servers running properly and the members happy! If you can, drop them a line and say thanks! Without them, I’d probably go crazier than I already am!

BME STAFF

Phil Barbosa
Image processing, party
planning, mustache rides

Mike Brum
Server maintenance,
TOS banhammer

Jen Savage
Customer service,
loud noises

RETIRED BME STAFF

Jordan Ginsberg
Former Witty Guy who took amost two
years of beatdowns courtesy of
Modblog

RooRaaah Crumbs
BMEvideo

Tristan Henry-Wilson
Designer Extroidinarre, whom we
call upon from time to time!

Jonathon Marshall
Our thanks still go out to Jon who helps us
whenever we need him!

Jason
Former Admin

Shannon Larratt
BME’s founder and former EIC

I can’t thank everyone enough for continuing to support BME, not only the site itself but the community that it has fostered over the years. I look forward to a new year with new goals, obstacles and hopefully many many triumphs. The first one being the long overdue launch of the new Beta BME Galleries, then the rest of BME and finally the transition of IAM onto the new software. I’ll be able to start adding new features, aside from the ones already implemented in the new site, and BME can continue to grow while giving itself back to the community where it belongs. I can’t wait!

I also wanted to give a special thank you to the people who have contributed to BME’s Legal Defense Fund. To date we’ve raised $1,470.00, which certainly helps. As I’ve mentioned before any and cost recovered if we’re awarded attorney’s fees will be donated to BME’s Legal Defense Fund that I’ve started to help defend the body modification community at large.

And now what you’ve all been waiting for, this year’s award is the t-shirt below! I wanted to figure out how to make a shirt that said “I was a top contributor to BME and all I got was a bag of dicks!” but Alie K. came up with this great design! Check more of her work out at GoodTattoos.ca if you want to get tattooed by her or need someone to do design work. She’s come up with more than a few gems for BMEshop.

Rachel Larratt

* * *

2008 BME Year-End Awards

Posted on January 3, 2009 by BME

Some may find it trite to say things like, “Without the readers, none of this would be possible,” but with BME it could not be more true — each and every year, the community sustains us. Without you, there would be nothing here, and we’re routinely awed by the amount and quality of submissions we receive. This year, we published thousands upon thousands of new photos and experiences, to say nothing of guest articles, Ask.BME contributions and roundtable participation, and that, friends, is incredible. And now, on with the awards!

TOP 10 IMAGE CONTRIBUTORS

1. 8,707 images

kokomi.3k

2. 5,834 images

Kitano Karyuudo

3. 2,930 images

Perk900

4. 1,476 images

Joao Caldara

5. 1,339 images

Alienboy

6. 1,027 images
Freakboy

7. 995 images
Inksation

8. 979 images
Allen Falkner

9. 929 images
Bena

10. 903 images
Holeybody

TOP 12 EXPERIENCE CONTRIBUTORS

1. 12 experiences Bluestar	2. 10 experiences Popecatapetal	3. 9 experiences Deadly Pale	4. 8 experiences PhoenixTX
5. 7 experiences (tie) Devro	5. 7 experiences (tie) Trannyboy	7. 5 experiences (tie) Bondage-Kit	7. 5 experiences (tie) Metal Faced Yazzy
7. 5 experiences (tie) Dreadlocksmile	7. 5 experiences (tie) Melissa Rose	7. 5 experiences (tie) LotN	7. 5 experiences (tie) Lucass

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS

Tiff Badhairdo Ask.BME staff	Meg Barber Roundtable member	Brian Decker Roundtable member	Stephen DeToma Roundtable member
Allen Falkner Roundtable, Author	Ferg Author	Russ Foxx Ask.BME staff	Ron Garza Roundtable, Author
Warren Hiller Ask.BME staff	Derek Lowe Ask.BME, Roundtable	John Joyce Roundtable member	Paul King Author
Lexci Million Ask.BME staff	Ryan Ouellette Ask.BME, Roundtable	Sean Philips Ask.BME staff	Shawn Porter Ask.BME, Author
Efix Roy Ask.BME staff	Joy Rumore Roundtable	Lori St. Leone Ask.BME staff	Steve Truitt Roundtable member
James Weber Author

BME STAFF

Phil Barbosa Image processing, party planning, mustache rides	Mike Brum Server maintenance, TOS banhammer	Jason Cartwright Programmer, code- monkey	RooRaaah Crumbs BMEvideo guru, Mod- Blogger, whimsy
Jordan Ginsberg Managing editor, head writer, dick jokes	Tristan Henry-Wilson Graphics, T-shirt design, lithe	Jen Savage Customer service, loud noises	Jonathon Marshall Former programmer and over-all tech genie

Rachel Larratt
Publisher, Editor-in-
Chief, BMEshop, HBIC

If you’re pictured above, BME will contact you privately. Thanks again, everyone, and we’re looking very forward to an even bigger and better 2009!

* * *

Please consider buying a membership to BME so we can continue bringing you articles like this one.

2006 BME YEAR END AWARDS

Posted on January 1, 2007 by Shannon Larratt

2006 BME YEAR END AWARDS

Let me first apologize for the terrible layout and style of this piece… I thought it was more important to get it online than to waste time prettying it up.

Thanks again to everyone for a year full of wonderful pictures, articles, and experiences. I think we (everyone from the person who helped financially, to the person who submitted a single navel piercing, to the megacontributors) did a great job bringing BME into it’s thirteenth year online, and continue to stay true to the reasons it was started in the first place… Essentially, to let people know that the way they feel is not just normal, but valuable.

For the second year in a row, our over top contributor was KitanoKaryuudo (who is pictured to the right) with a truly staggering 6,526 images submitted in 2006. What’s even more amazing is that Kokomi (another BME/HARD ultracontributor, and last year’s second place contributor) was only twelve images shy! Even outside of the BME/HARD realm, the top contributors submitted just amazing numbers of images. It blows my mind how generous everyone continues to be with their time. I can not thank you enough.

Anyway, I try to do these things a little differently every year. This year I decided it might be fun to do a regional breakdown, so I split the contributions into regions that roughly represented the number of contributions they generated… On the lists below you can see those winners along with their local and overall ranking. Links go to their IAM pages.

TOP IMAGE SUBMITTORS, OVERALL, BY REGION

ASIA
Regional Ranking	Overall Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	1	6,526	KitanoKaryuudo
2	29	592	Crazy Glamour
3	37	507	Sui Otoko
4	61	304	nobcatz
5	62	300	BME/HARD – Anonymous

MAINLAND EUROPE AND SCANDINAVIA
Regional Ranking	Overall Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	2	6,514	kokomi.3k
2	8	1,991	madmax
3	14	1,447	BME/HARD – Anonymous
4	15	1,391	bena
5	25	657	BME/HARD – Anonymous
6	33	547	babakhin
7	34	543	BME/HARD – Anonymous
8	40	480	BME/HARD – Anonymous
9	49	413	tan0k
10	53	403	Shadark

CANADA
Regional Ranking	Overall Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	3	3,056	RussFoxx
2	6	2,362	Lexci Million
3	10	1,705	Holy Flesh
4	20	834	jasonvandervee
5	27	599	Efix
6	31	580	lilfunky1
7	35	521	Myke
8	55	387	Cerra
9	57	358	Vex Hecubus
10	70	258	JesseV

USA
Regional Ranking	Overall Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	4	2,775	perk900
2	5	2,426	stainless
3	9	1,739	SteveBennett
4	16	1,372	Big Rick
5	17	970	KIVAKA
6	26	606	j_scarab
7	32	552	holeybody
8	36	507	BME/HARD – Anonymous
9	43	445	Allen Falkner
10	44	435	Shawn O’Hare
11	46	423	MUTE-ONE
12	46	423	Melissa
13	48	414	Zebra Tattoo
14	51	408	barryb
15	52	406	CaptNipp
16	56	372	HollywoodPiercer
17	60	306	toxicskin
18	69	265	Piercer Dave
19	72	250	phoenixxx
20	76	225	tattooedheart

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
Regional Ranking	Overall Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	7	2,323	Valnei
2	11	1,640	cutuvi
3	13	1,485	Joao_Caldara
4	22	725	Lucas Takano
5	39	487	UREA
6	41	460	peco
7	42	450	Freakboy
8	45	430	RAFAEL
9	58	341	deb
10	63	288	wild skin

THE UK, IRELAND, AUSTRALIA, AND NEW ZEALAND
Regional Ranking	Overall Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	12	1,501	alienboy
2	18	967	Piercing Pete
3	19	877	dispel
4	21	797	Stretcher
5	23	723	holierthanthou
6	24	715	strawberry
7	28	598	joker
8	30	580	vampy
9	38	503	tattoodfreak
10	50	410	VEAL

THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
Regional Ranking	Overall Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	134	138	dave

Admittedly, the race for the top few spots is daunting, but depending on where you live, submitting enough to win a placement is definitely doable… It’s also interesting looking at the breakdown to note that different types of pictures are dominant in different areas.

As all years, there are prizes as well as recognition. This year there are three different prizes. First of all, everyone who places (on any of the lists here) gets either a staff shirt or a container (more about that below), or both if they place more than once. The staff shirts (which you may have already seen on my IAM page) are based on a sectional view of a head containing various body modifications, and their explanations in Latin. And of course he’s got BME on the brain…

TOP IMAGE SUBMITTORS, BY SECTION

As well as splitting up the results by geographic region, we generated them by section of the site again. Those lists follow:

TATTOOS
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	910	Big Rick
2	479	babakhin
3	285	j_scarab
3	285	Joao_Caldara
5	278	Zebra Tattoo

PIERCING
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	1,097	alienboy
2	724	KIVAKA
3	654	Lexci Million
4	529	holierthanthou
5	385	Valnei

SCARIFICATION
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	641	Valnei
2	527	Lucas Takano
3	513	madmax
4	324	Lexci Million
5	318	Joao_Caldara

RITUAL
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	2,614	RussFoxx
2	2,073	stainless
3	1,228	SteveBennett
4	1,092	cutuvi
5	964	bena

BME/EXTREME
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	523	madmax
2	267	SLS-Frank
3	247	Valnei
4	181	old soldier
5	173	SteveBennett
6	169	RussFoxx
7	156	Stretcher
8	146	holierthanthou
9	126	Shawn O’Hare
10	122	Anonymous

BME/HARD
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	6,517	KitanoKaryuudo
2	6,514	kokomi.3k
3	1,447	Urban Soul
4	832	jasonvandervee
5	609	Stretcher
6	592	Crazy Glamour
7	543	AvantGarde
8	526	Holy Flesh
9	507	Sui Otoko
9	507	Anonymous

As I mentioned earlier, as well as printing shirts, I’m also printing containers (sort of like a sharps or first aid container) with the same logo (although single color). Maybe a place to keep your jewelry, maybe a place to keep your play piercing needles… The exact style of container isn’t confirmed yet so I can’t show you a picture but it’ll be printed with the logo in one of these two ways:

THE SCRIBES OF OUR COMMUNITY

As well as pictures, personal stories and articles are the other core part of BME’s mission to inform and share experiences. The top writers wrote huge numbers of articles, with the top dozen all writing at least a full-length article a month.

EXPERIENCES AND ARTICLES
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	50	Silhouettes
2	26	strawberry
3	24	broken_wings
4	19	Fuzzybeast
5	16	Caroline June
6	14	Ribibe
7	13	delusionalfairy
7	13	sweetcheeks
7	13	aniorange
10	12	MilllieB
10	12	deadly pale
10	12	kyo
10	12	rwethereyet
14	11	Bondage-Kit
14	11	Flutterfly
14	11	GucciGurl
17	10	Blackvampyremage
17	10	Kyrenna
17	10	ubergeekgawdess

SPECIAL RECOGNITION!

As well as the obvious submissions, there are many other parts of BME that are generated by the volunteer work of people who go largely unthanked (including quite a few that I haven’t even mentioned in this article!). For example, there’s BME’s newsfeed, which has been tirelessly maintained by volunteers even though updates have been sometimes sporadic (my fault).

NEWSFEED SUBMISSIONS
Ranking	# Submissions	Contact
1	909	deadly pale
2	758	rebekah
3	261	Ebowlotus1960

As well as obvious and “official” parts of BME, there are large parts of the BME community which are run wholly independently and autonomously that deserve recognition as well. I’m sure there are many more important ones that I don’t know about… I asked at the end of the year who had made contributions to this community (that isn’t otherwise mentioned here), and a few names stood out with regularity… These included:

Shawn Porter for organizing both fun events and the Scar Wars series of conventions, and his work in creating a cohesive scarification community both online and offline.

Monica for maintaining the series of IAM.Pregnant forums which have been invaluable resources to the many new parents on IAM/BME as this community ages.

Warren for his IAM.Learning forum for people learning to pierce.

Rebekah for her tireless work promoting IAM/BME members and for her hard work with Modified-News.

Anaesthetise‘s Postcard Exchange Forum on IAM is enormous fun for the many participants.

Wlfdrgn has undertaken the important task of managing the IAM/BME Scholarship Fund (see BME’s guest articles for more information, or visit his IAM page), now in its third year.

Havve and Christiane for their suspension work in Norway and elsewhere.

Allen Falkner for — among many other things — suspenion.org.

Vampy and Dispel for their many suspension events in the UK and their excellent documentation.

Perk900 for a series of great parties and a ton of photos.

I could really go on and on, and in a way I feel guilty stopping… There are so many other places people have contributed — reviewing experiences, helping me on technical issues, writing for and editing the encyclopedia, and more.

QOD STAFF

The core staff of BME’s QOD (Question of the Day — book coming soon!) continues to provide wonderful educational resource. They’re made up of Ryan Ouellette, John Joyce, Shawn Porter, Lori St. Leone, Sean Phillips, and Lassi.

Clockwise starting at top-left: Shawn Porter, Sean Phillips, Ryan Ouellette, John Joyce, Lassi, Lori St. Leone.

CORE STAFF

Finally, let me mention BME’s core staff, some of whom you probably already know, and some of whom you may not be aware of… Without these people, it would be much more difficult to keep BME going. Rachel runs the business end of things. Phil processes pretty much every picture that’s added to the site. Rooraaah does the same, but for naughty videos. Jon keeps our UNIX servers going and develops new toys for BME’s users, and Mike helps me keep our Windows boxes alive and uncompromised. Jen handles the customer support, and finally, there’s me, Shannon. Mostly I just put out articles long behind schedule.

Clockwise starting at top-left: Jen, Roo (and me in the background), Phil, Mike, Jon, Rachel.

And that doesn’t even include the staff of BMEshop (primarily Ryan and Corrie).

NOTE TO CONTRIBUTORS

You’ll receive an email and/or IM on IAM from me in the next week with a form where you’ll need to fill in your address and shirt size and all that. I haven’t sent those out yet, but if you don’t hear from me within the week make sure that you contact either me or Ryan and Corrie so nothing gets missed… Other than that, I wanted to mention that there is one very special prize, sort of a secret talisman that will be going out to the very top contributors. Whether they reveal what that item is or not is up to them.

I won’t reveal it here, and probably won’t on my IAM page either, but let me say that (1) it’s very, very cool, and (2) it was created by an award winning butter sculptor.

Thank you everyone for another wonderful year. BME would be nothing without the community that surrounds it and creates it. If you’re reading this, there is a very good chance that you took part in creating this all… If so, thank you. You’ve helped me, and you’ve helped a lot of other people, and I hope you’ve helped yourself as well.

Shannon Larratt
BME.com