AudiWorld Founder Jason Teller Announces Retirement from Website Duties

Dear AudiWorld Readers,

It is with mixed emotions that I am announcing today that I have resigned my ongoing duties as Managing Editor of AudiWorld. I want to emphasize that this is not the result of any of the recent trials and tribulations around the site’s move to vBulletin Discussion Forum software, but rather something that has been in the works for some time.

I feel very fortunate to have been accepted to a world-class Executive MBA program with classes starting in mid-May. Given, first and foremost, my commitment to my family (particularly my three young daughters), I did not feel that I could put the required time into my now 10-year-old ongoing career at Cisco Systems, upcoming school and AudiWorld at the same time.

This is a traumatic event to be certain! When I started the very humble JET’s A4 Pages back in 1996 I had no idea it would become AudiWorld, but through the amazing ups and downs it has become an inherent part of my identity. My family and friends know me simply as “the Audi guy,” I have come to take for granted tremendous inside access to Audi-related individuals, information and automobiles and I have built an entire lifestyle around the many hours of work it takes to maintain a website of AudiWorld’s size and scope.

I knew I could never do it alone, and certainly I didn’t. I’m almost not comfortable calling out individuals because there have been so many integral people over the past 13 years. That said, thank you Matt Daniels for having the vision and energy to help take AudiWorld from a model-specific fan site to a comprehensive Audi publication. Matt’s design creativity has been pervasive on AudiWorld for the past decade.

Thank you also to Johannes Erdfelt for being my alter ego in so many ways. Where I was weak in technology he was strong. Where I pushed the envelope in other areas he always kept me grounded.

There are so many other people too – AudiWorld’s secret of success is clearly the collaborative attitudes adopted by literally hundreds of contributors, moderators, freelancers and sponsors, not to mention the thousands of readers themselves.

I have NEVER had more fun doing anything in my life. AudiWorld has been a dream hobby, and has rarely if ever felt like work. Going forward I still expect to be around the site, although I will become a reader and occasional contributor like many of you. Internet Brands, AudiWorld’s corporate owner, is currently finalizing ongoing site management plans, but I am confident that the site will continue operating business as usual in my absence.

Thank you to each and every one of you, and know that despite Audi’s unbelievable success over the past 15 years that the best is most certainly yet to come for the Four Rings brand!

Jason Teller (jteller@audiworld.com)
Founder & Managing Editor
AudiWorld.com