Chapter 2

The first years of IVAO – The International Virtual Aviation Organization

The first years I used all available time to build up IVAO, and as the perfectionist I am,
I made almost anything myself. (If you want it done as you wish, there’s only one
who can do it...... yourself.)
When I ran into technical problems, I consulted Erwin Lion which always had a solution.
As Erwin had better technical knowledge than I when it came to database programming
it naturally quickly changed a bit, so that I came with ideas, graphics and initial web-layout,
and Erwin made the technical web-programming – Extracting of data from database etc.

An example of this could be the Scheduling system, the scrolling Notam,
or the Terminal TV.
A ruff guess would be that I personally have created +90% of all graphics used -
F.i. all rating badges, the (original) logos, the awards (some more have been added since,
but that is simply to find an icon to put into the award distinguish.).

Other things could be dividing of the world into regions, finding each and every country
in each region, their codes and flags. The organization structure, the database systems,
the exam system, the newsgroups (later replaced by the forum)

This continued for a long period, and as the organization expanded, and more
and more employees arrived, I let my staff handle more and more of the workload.
I had to use more of my time, to maintain my personal career, and as I also had used
a lot of energy, I needed to re-load a bit.

During this period I let my staff run IVAO, except if some critical issues needed attention.
Some might remember issues in NL in this period, where I stepped in and instructed
the NL-DIR to be replaced – from phone on my vacation in Austria.
So when really needed - I was there !
But there was no need to use too much energy as long as things were running fine.
- My first error !



Morten Hansen
Founder and owner of IVAO.org - The International Virtual Aviation Organization
email: morten.hansen@it.dk
email: morten.hansen@ivao.org