2025! Can you believe it? It was the year 2000 when Gordon May and his son, Byron, launched SB Magazine. This year is our silver anniversary. It seems like only yesterday that we were anticipating a complete technology shutdown with Y2K. Think about it. We’ve gone from using a floppy disk to using flash drives. “Google It” is a common phrase. YouTube is the most popular video-sharing website in the world. I remember telling my mother as I was talking to her on my “bag phone” (you can google that), “One day, I will be able to call you and see your face.” Skype. Bluetooth keeps us connected without tangled-up wires to frustrate us. We have electric cars – driverless cars are not too far in our future. We have 3D printing (I’d love to publish SB Magazine in 3 dimensions). Most impressive is gene editing, which could hopefully eliminate some major diseases. And there’s Facebook, which can be a good thing or a very bad thing (bullying and doxing – it happened to us this past year). A platform that people can hide behind and make themselves appear better than they are. Or it can be a fabulous way to do business, spread joy and kindness, and reach people you haven’t heard from in years. SB Magazine has over 21000 Facebook followers. Our goal on our Facebook page and physical magazine is to share news, discuss the good things happening in the SBC, promote area businesses, and lift up our community. Sure, we’re going to make mistakes. We’ll misspell names, get them out of order, and forget a period or two here and there. (I can’t count how many times my own name has been screwed up in print – it happens). But we will spend the next 25 years striving for perfection because our readers enjoy the physical experience of reading SB. The information we provide is absorbed differently when read from a page instead of a screen. What’s more, people can keep SB around for longer than five minutes to pick up and re-read or share an article with a friend – always a bonus for our advertisers.

We have been so blessed by the support of our readers and advertisers over the years. We can’t thank you enough, and I hope the next 25 years will bring even more great things to our community through SB Magazine. Let’s enjoy the journey together in 2025.