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Back to the future

Hi, I'm Marc Perton, and I'm Engadget's new Executive Editor. Those of you who've followed this site for a while may dimly remember me; I was with Engadget in its early days, and somehow managed to write a couple of thousand posts from 2004 through 2006 (my fave: Engadget 1985, a group post I worked on with some other folks you may have heard of). Back then, Engadget was a scrappy startup that produced some great work with very limited resources. I still remember my first trip to CES with the Engadget team; we shared rooms in a hotel miles from the show, and relied on a rented van (and our feet) to get to the venue. The whole team probably slept a collective six hours all week.

Today's Engadget is light years ahead of that, with content like Distro, The Engadget Show, and liveblogs from events around the world, that we never could have dreamed of back then -- not to mention major events like Expand and Engadget+gdgt Live. But the site still has the spirit of a scrappy startup, and I suspect that the team doesn't get a whole lot more sleep during CES today than we did in 2006. Much of Engadget's growth is thanks to the hard work of Tim Stevens, who stepped down as Editor-in-Chief last week, along with the incredible team he built here. Tim successfully led Engadget during a challenging period in the site's history, and he'll be sorely missed.

As Executive Editor, I'm here to focus on all of Engadget's content, following in the footsteps of Tim and the site's previous Editors-in-Chief, all of whom helped make Engadget what it is today. And, very soon, I'll be joined by a new Editor-in-Chief, who as well as helping guide the direction of the site, will work on a lot of the exciting things that didn't exist a few years ago, like our live events, major media appearances, and brand expansion. That's right: just as our team has grown to include editors around the globe, our editorial management team also needs to expand to keep up with all of the new opportunities that await us.

As we grow, our relationship with you remains our most important asset. I'd love to hear your thoughts about the site, the Editor-in-Chief role, or anything else. Contact me at marc (at) engadget.com.

While I have deep roots at Engadget, my priority is very much the site's future. Engadget is bigger, better, and and even more important as a key source of news and information than it was when I last worked here, and my job is to make sure that it continues to grow and serve your needs. There's no going back to the Engadget of 2005. Or 1985.