Hallo hallo, another "long time listener, first time caller" for the list
A long time fan of VGM; Vinyl & CD collector, obsessive fan-music listener, occasional VGM remixer with my partner. I was finally able to make it to MAGfest this year (I come from far off Europe, and it only cost.... Ye gods, over a thousand buckaroos!) where I met so many amazing friends, and even more amazing strangers, and had so many amazing conversations with 'my people', where I had a sort of, 'wait, I'm not alone, thousands of people are just like me!' moment.
Especially it was great to hang out with the ever wonderful KyleJCrb, who I went to the con with, and spent a lot of the weekend with (and crashed the room of many times) - I was planning to check out the OCR panel regardless, but as he was one of the speakers, I made extra sure to clear my con schedule - and as I sat there at the panel, I wondered suddenly why I was lurking, because I felt like I would very much like to be a present part of all of this.
I spent a while after I arrived home observing the site much more closely, asking around interestedly to my friends of their own VGM projects, then I decided to poke my head in for real. So... Er... Hello!