Nation Builders Community Photo Contest: Don't miss your chance to win a free T-Shirt in our photo contest to celebrate the International Day of Human Space Flight which will take place on the 12th. You have until the 09th to get your submission in! Full details available here: https://nationbuilders.space/international-day-of-human-space-flight/ Please note: Nation Builders is an independent organisation of Asgardians and is not officially affiliated with Asgardia's Administration, Government or Parliament.

It was great to see the Head of Nation's Livestream and talk about this epic event with our fellow Asgardians in the 'post-stream' discussion hosted by Nation Builders. Can't wait for the next one! https://nationbuilders.space/asgardias-head-of-nation-livestream-post-stream-discussion/ Nation Builders is a community of Asgardian Patriots and is not officially affiliated with Asgardia's Administration to the Head of Nation, Parliament of Government.

It was great to see the Head of Nation's Livestream and talk about this epic event with our fellow Asgardians in the 'post-stream' discussion hosted by Nation Builders. Can't wait for the next one! https://nationbuilders.space/asgardias-head-of-nation-livestream-post-stream-discussion/ Nation Builders is a community of Asgardian Patriots and is not officially affiliated with Asgardia's Administration to the Head of Nation, Parliament of Government.

To mark the International Day of Human Space Flight on the 12th of April, Nation Builders are holding a photo contest with 5 commemorative t shirts to be won. Check out https://nationbuilders.space/international-day-of-human-space-flight/ to learn more!

Year day, new year, old year day - whatever you want to call it, this is a time for both endings and new beginnings. And along that theme, I have an announcement to make about my position in Asgardia. With effect from the 31st of December, my contract with Asgardia will expire and I have decided to take this opportunity to pursue an official position in Asgardia's governmental structure and run for Mayor. After working with Asgardia for two years in a range of functions from Public Relations through to Digital Marketing, I have been uniquely positioned to see 'behind the veil' and I am more inspired and confident about Asgardia's future than ever. The Nation has an amazing team of passionate people who are working tirelessly in the Parliament and Government to crystallise this vision into a reality. First and foremost, I want to offer my thanks to our Head of Nation - without his vision and dedication to Asgardia, none of this would be possible. I want to thank everyone that I have had the pleasure of working with, especially the Minister of Information and Communication, Lena De Winne who has served as my mentor and principal point of contact during my time working for the Nation, The Chairman of Parliament, Lembit Opik whom I have worked closely with to promote Parliament, The Prime Minister, Ana Mercedes Diaz who has been a constant source of inspiration and all the members of Parliament and Government who I have had the honour of serving. I am not speaking lightly when I say that Asgardia has changed my life and I will never stop working for the Nation. I intend to really ramp up my activities in Asgardia in the coming year and I will be looking to meet with as many driven Asgardians as possible to help give people a tangible way to connect and contribute to the development of Asgardia. So with that said, thank you and I'll see you out there - Let's get to work!

Without trying to sound sycophantic, or making this all about me, I wanted to speak a little about Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli today as he celebrates his birthday. Way back when Asgardia launched I was looking for a change. Something to shake up my life, something to shake up the drab and hopeless world. That's when he revealed his visionary plan to drive humanity forward towards being a spacefaring people and to create the first 'Space Nation', I signed up straight away. It wasn't long before I found myself getting more and more involved in his project - I started writing blogs, sharing information, chatting with like-minded people and creating content for Asgardian 'Citizens'. I was getting swept up in the tides of change that Dr. Ashurbeyli's vision was creating and I had never felt more alive. Each day I was spending more and more time 'becoming an Asgardian'. I was hanging out online, on the forums and I even registered myself in the early 'trendsetter' system so that I could do more to help build the nation. Not long after this, I started working as a volunteer for Civic Asgardia and I threw my hat in with the Parliamentary Elections, hoping to become one of those key people that would be responsible for building the nation and defining the rules that the nation would run on. While I didn't make it as a member of Parliament I gained a lot of support from my fellow Asgardians and the door was opened for me to start contributing to Asgardia. I started to invest my time into creating content and working on Asgardia's digital media, talking with followers and residents and sharing information in an official capacity. I was fortunate enough to attend the inauguration of the Head of Nation doing work to help promote the event and share details with the people 'back home'. It was in Vienna on the 24th that I had my first opportunity to meet Dr. Ashurbeyli - Though I had already been working for Asgardia for some time, this was the first 'face-to-face' meeting that I had with him. It struck me how down to earth he was - yet he was able to speak with knowledge on a wide range of subjects and had an air of authority about him. I had an opportunity to ask a question about Virtual Reality, I was discussing how it could be an asset for Asgardia to move into the VR industry as it was growing and how it would offer synergies with our digital nation. Dr. Ashurbeyli told me that he agreed and that he found the technology very interesting - And he rounded off our discussion by saying "This is why we need young people - we need them for their innovation and fresh thinking. Let the old people worry about the laws and technical details and let the young people dream of a wonderful future." - I'm paraphrasing here, but it was very inspirational. The whole meeting really made me believe in Dr. Ashurbeyli as a visionary - the way he spoke, the way that he thought about the future and his willingness to work for the future of humanity with the understanding that he may never get to enjoy the benefits of the very thing that he is creating - It's the mark of a great man. While I may just be caught in the winds of this grand ambition and I'm tumbling along doing what I can to help, I can't really thank Dr. Ashurbeyli and Asgardia enough for having such a profound and lasting impact on my life. All the new connections, the new places, the new thoughts and the challenges that I have been exposed to in the past 2 years have really been a grand adventure for me. So with that, I offer my warmest wishes to the Head of Nation and bid him a happy birthday.

*Name*: Ross Cheeseright *Title*: Mr. _Hello World_ Don't mind me Just checking out all the formatting options and making sure that it all works fine-and-dandy for when I'm doing longer format posts! This is some text next to an image. It's a pretty cool thing to do if you're writing an article or a post with some images in it and you want them to appear side-by-side. However, I don't know what this is going to look like once it's posted and being displayed in the normal viewing experience presented by the new website. That's why I'm testing these things! I'm also interested to know what it's going to look like on mobile! So yeah. Apologies in advance for wasting your time with this :D This is some more text that would represent the article and just to keep going with the test, we're going to throw out some bullet points, too: >Bullet! >Bullet! >Bullet! That went pretty well, hopefully. Now let's try numbers: 1. Bullet! 2. Bullet! 3. Bullet! So that really concludes all the things that I wanted to test. It all seems to format fine in the blogging interface. Let's hope that the formatting holds up when we display it on the website!