Last year, I discovered the GoGirlsMusic.com Twitter chat #ggchat. Those chats are hosted by the fabulous Madalyn Sklar. From my very first chat, I met many amazing musicians. Some of those musicians became Amused Now featured artists and guest bloggers. I credit Madalyn with expanding the Amused Now universe, so I asked her to be a featured artist too. Madalyn founded the wildly successful GoGirlsMusic.com in 1996, and today her organization is stronger than ever. Back in late 1995, “I was married to a techy guy who enlightened me about this new thing, internet and dot-com, and I was completely hooked. What a great place to connect with other people. At the time, I was a guitar player, and I thought maybe I could meet other musicians, especially other female guitar players. ” At the time, Madalyn was really frustrated with the treatment she received at guitar shops near her home in Houston, TX. She wondered, “Is this because I’m a woman? Is it because I live in the South?” Madalyn wanted to talk to other female guitar players and find out if they have similar experiences. She thought she could use the internet to find other guitarists around the country to talk with, which sparked the idea to start GoGirlsMusic. Madalyn Sklar was learning web design, so she started building the first site from scratch. “Back in 1995-96, we didn’t have these HTML programs that do all the heavy lifting for you. You had to type code off the top of your head into Notepad. I thought it would be a neat way to learn web development and meet other female musicians, and, gosh, here we are 18 years later: The oldest and largest online community of indie women in music. A lot of inspiration and empowering goes on in the community.” To put this into perspective, Madalyn Sklar founded GoGirlsMusic before Facebook, before Twitter, before message boards and forums. “What’s so cool is that I developed a social network, before we even knew what a social network was. It’s so interesting when you look back. In the early days, it was just email. You had a static page and you could direct people to an email address. In the first 2 years, it was just emailing back-and-forth. I would take information from people and post it on the website.” The turning point for GoGirlsMusic was in 1998, “We got hooked up with Yahoo! Groups, an amazing place that was like a message board. I set it up and directed everybody to this group. When you sent out an email, it would go to everybody that signed up. People would post ‘I’m touring across the country and I’m looking venues to contact and acts to open for while I’m on tour.’ I had people report back to me and tell me they put together a national tour and a lot of it was done through your group.” The community grows and stays relevant, because Madalyn Sklar works hard to stay relevant. “I read a lot of blogs. I read lots of newsletters. When everybody is sleeping at 2 o’clock in the morning, I’m usually up learning how to use the newest coolest app or reading articles about the newest social network. I’m always eager to learn how to keep things moving along and how to stay ahead of the curve.” GoGirlsMusic.com offers an elite membership program, which Madalyn started in 2002. She waited before offering a program where she charged money, because “I was hearing people getting disgruntled with some of the other groups, saying ‘they don’t do anything for me.’ I’m such a people pleaser, I didn’t want anybody saying anything about me like that. I like to over deliver in everything I do. In 2002, I only charged $35 a year. Here we are in 2014, and I’ve never raised the price. All the members of...