The CodeIgniter community has announced a new level for involvement in the framework's community - CodeIgniter Community Chieftain, volunteers that have shown commitment to the framework and its community.

As the community grows, the EllisLab development team often does not have the time that we would like to interact with the community in various ways, but it's always been a key part of our success. So as the need arises, we have created this program to help keep the wheels greased so to speak, making sure that our forums, wiki, and bug tracker are handling the needs of the community and are properly moderated.

They have already brought in their first Chieftan, Michael Wales, a staff sergeant in the US Air Force.

The CodeIgniter blog has posted their latest "Community Voice" feature highlighting an article from Michael Wales:

This week, our Community Voice author is Michael Wales, a programmer, a father, an aspiring author, and an award winning Airman. For the past 3 years, he's been focusing the majority of his time on CodeIgniter. He is among the most consistent contributors to the community, has released numerous libraries and tutorials, and is one of the most highly sought after freelancers within the community.

Michael talks about some of his experiences in developing web applications - both CodeIgniter driven and not. He notes that the framework does allow him to look at things from "outside the box" a bit more since it takes the hard bits off his shoulders.