It seems like only a couple of weeks ago I announced that I’d be heading off soon to pastures new and yet somehow that time has already come – today is my last day working with the Zooniverse.

It’s pretty much impossible for me to describe how much fun I’ve had over the past five years. Playing a part in shaping the Zooniverse from the early days of Galaxy Zoo (2) when we were a tiny team in Oxford through to where we are today has been a blast. In a coincidence of timing my son Caio has been around for almost exactly the same amount of time as I’ve been involved with the Zooniverse, and to be honest I’m not really sure I remember life before either. I checked the commit logs of the Galaxy Zoo 2 codebase and the first code was saved on 25th October 2008 – just over a month before Caio came into the world. Significantly this was more than two months before Chris began paying me but that’s just a testament to what a remarkably persuasive individual he is 🙂

These last few years have been filled with so many significant moments it’s hard to pick out highlights but if I had to then the launch of Galaxy Zoo 2 and furiously coding as people around me were sipping champagne is pretty memorable. Taking what felt like a massive leap into the unknown with Planet Hunters and then going to find exoplanets is definitely up there too. And announcing Old Weather (still my favourite Zooniverse project) to the world and seeing how people responded to the Zooniverse doing something ‘other’ than astro was very special.

I’m not going to try and thank every individual I’ve been working with because I’m bound to forget important people. Suffices to say, I love you all dearly and I’m going to miss working with you day to day immensely.

So farewell and stay in touch!

ArfX