This past weekend was amazing. Not only did we help organize a group trip for fan clubs around the country but it was also the Dolphins annual Web Weekend a conference of Miami Dolphins web masters that I have attended 11 years in a row.  Also the Dolphins played one of their most dominant games in the history of the franchise so that was nice too.

Dolfans NYC was founded because of Web Weekend. Michelle and I both ran Dolphins fan sites and realized we both lived in NYC and started watching games together. A few years later we abandoned our former sites and started Dolfans NYC. This is the 6th time we have attended as Dolfans NYC and the weekends keep getting better.

This year we donated $5000 to the Miami Dolphins Foundation beating our $3000 donation last year after giving $1000 in both 2011 and 2012. That’s $10,000 to the Foundation thanks to you guys. To celebrate we are holding a FREE raffle this week at Slattery’s Midtown Pub for the Lions game. All you have to do is show up and you get a ticket! We should have some cool prizes including a Dolfans NYC shirt signed by AJ Duhe.

Speaking of AJ Duhe, he and Chris Chambers came and spoke to us during Web Weekend. We also had GM Dennis Hickey and CEO Tom Garfinkel in attendance as well. It was pretty great. Plus Jordan Tripp, Michael Thomas and the Finsiders joined us at a party on Friday. Coach Philbin was supposed to speak with us but unfortunately he was out of town because of the death of his father. As always Michelle stepped up and bought a condolence card that we all signed.

The last event of the weekend (aside from the game!) was the Dolphins Webby Awards which are given out to Dolphins Websites. It means a huge amount to me that we have now won the Eddie Jones Community award all three years of its existence. This club has become as much about giving back as it is about football and so that award means a ton to me. We also won the social networking award which I take a bit of pride in considering I do 90% of the social networking for Dolfans NYC. Our third award was the “Most Informative Site” award which is kinda silly considering I haven’t updated this site in a month. That being said our Twitter account and Facebook page serve as great newswires and it still means a great deal because the awards are voted on by our fellow web masters.

Anyway, check out the pictures in this Flickr gallery below. I took all the pictures with our logo watermarked on the images. The other shots are courtesy of the Miami Dolphins. See you guys Sunday!

[tylr-slidr]http://www.flickr.com/photos/dolfansnyc/sets/72157648718752277/[/tylr-slidr]

For the last ten years the Miami Dolphins have invited a group of Miami Dolphins fans who run websites down to Miami. I am one of four people who have been to all ten of them. I used to run another Dolphins website that no one ever read but somehow the Dolphins found me. We would go down every year and I just would update my site enough to keep getting invited.  Around year four I met the 2 Michelle’s, two girls from NYC who had a Dolphins blog. I started watching games with them and after Tall Michelle moved Short Michelle and I founded DolfansNYC.

Last year was a really big one for us. We donated a ton of money to the Miami Dolphins foundation and ended up winning a “Webby Award’ for best community website. We also used the opportunity to reach out to other Dolphins fan sites and raise even more money for hurricane Sandy relief efforts. It was a pretty amazing trip.

This year was even better for us. We won the community webby again and we ended up raising $3000 already this year that we donated to the Miami Dolphins Foundation. We also donated another $300 to two Dolphins Cycling Challenge riders who are doing a bike ride to raise money for the Sylvester Cancer Center at the University of Miami. We gave Joe Philbin, Sam Madison and OJ McDuffie DolfansNYC shirts and OJ told us he might wear it to our #MetLifeTakeover event on December 1st! He posted a photo of himself wearing it on Twitter too!

We also got to meet Brandon Fields and John Denny who signed some stuff for us to raffle off and we also had John Offerdahl sign some stuff too. He spoke to us and promoted his Gridiron Grill Off which you should check out if you are in South Florida. That guy is always hilarious but he had just come from a food and wine festival and had a few drinks in him and he was so so funny. All of us were dying. That guy is a legend.

The highlight of the trip for us was when we presented new CEO Tom Garfinkel our Miami Dolphins Foundation donation. He seemed genuinely moved and invited us to his suite to watch the game. We were honored and got to watch the game at the 45 yard line with free food and 2 Live Crew’s Luther Campbell sitting a few feet from us. We talked to a bunch of the Dolphins marketing staff and they had told us that they were big fans of what we were doing in NYC and we had come up in meetings. We spoke to Mr. Garfinkel a little more in detail about what we were doing as well. The whole thing was pretty amazing.

In the end the game turned out very poorly and sadly we left Miami with a bitter tastes in our mouths but looking back in a few years we won’t remember this one loss to the Bills, but we will remember the experience and how we took another step towards taking NYC back from the Jets fans! DolfansNYC over everything!

Hope to see you guys tomorrow at Slattery’s Midtown Pub to watch the Patriots game. Win or lose we will have a ton of fun and we will have new DolfansNYC hats for sale! Phins up!

Check out our photos from Web Weekend X below!

[tylr-slidr]http://www.flickr.com/photos/dolfansnyc/sets/72157636982066955/[/tylr-slidr]

When Michelle and I started DolfansNYC we knew there were opportunities to make money doing it, but both of us felt the exact same way. We didn’t want to bring money into the equation because we are doing this for the love of the Miami Dolphins. We never even really had a conversation about it but we knew we would donate all of the money we made to charity.

Since 2009 we have been making yearly donations to both The Miami Dolphins Foundation and a local charity the I Will Foundation. The last two years we have also made donations to Ride DCC, the Dolphins Cycling Challenge. It’s been great to be able to give back, but this year has been really special.

Aside from the three charities I mentioned we also made a small donation to a breast cancer foundation and did a big online fundraiser for Hurricane Sandy relief. Hurricane Sandy hit DolfansNYC hard and we wanted to do something to help out. Originally we were raising money for the Red Cross but after I took a trip out to the Rockaways, Roxbury and Breezy Point we decided to donate the money instead to Habitat For Humanity. Almost everyone we talked to said they were doing the most good in the area. We are also going take another $500 and donate it to a yet to be named Rockaways specific charity in honor of one of our most committed DolfansNYC members Bryan who had thousands of dollars of damage done to his place including losing 90% of his Dolphins memorabilia.

In 2012 we raised over $4000 for charity and here are the breakdowns of where the money went:

• $2000 to Habitat For Humanity
• $1000 to The Miami Dolphins Foundation
• $500 to a yet to be named Sandy relief charity
• $300 to the I Will Foundation
• $300 to Ride DCC
• $50 to a breast cancer charity

On top of all that money raised we also raised enough to buy a new order of DolfansNYC shirts, pay for some food/supplies for our Jets tailgate and pay for some other random club costs. It was a great year despite the Dolphins play on the field and we hope this is a new standard that we can reach every year. Thanks so much everyone! Go Dolphins!

Ps. If you donated do the online Sandy Fundraiser I am going to be sending your prizes out soon. You should have them by Christmas!