Self-Storage Talk, the industry's largest online community, officially surpassed 5,000 members on April 9, a major milestone in the website and community's growth. To celebrate, we're inviting all SST members (and interested guests) to be at their computers and logged in this Friday, May 4, at 5 p.m. ET. It's also a great opportunity to kick off the Cinco de Mayo weekendbecause nothing signifies "5K" quite like a holiday on 5/5.

We'll host an hour-long online "party" in a designated discussion thread where members can introduce themselves, ask questions of each other and chat informally. It doesn't matter if you've got thousands of posts, a dozen, or if you're brand new to the forum and making your inaugural post that dayyou are invited. It's a great opportunity for members, new and experienced, to get know each other better. Traditional Mexican fare and beverages (did someone say "margaritas"?) are encouraged alongside the keyboard. I can taste the burrito, chips and guacamole already. Just be careful not to make a mess.

As an additional goal, we'd like to see if we can break our record for SST users online at once. The record, set a little longer than a year ago, is 1,286. Quick math tells me that all we need are for one out of every four members to log in Friday, and we can break the record. That's doable, right? We'll certainly give it a shot.

There's no time like Friday to take the plunge and join SST, where professionals from all roles of self-storage are constantly having topical conversations about important industry issues. On one part of the forum, a developer could be looking to acquire land in rural Iowa while in another area of the forum a manager might be trying to get rid of ants at his facility in New Zealand. Both topics would spur several responses from peers willing to help.

"Join the party" is a commonly used invitation to join the site, but this time, we mean it literally! To participate fully, you'll need to register a username, but it's free and can be done by visiting www.selfstoragetalk.com and clicking "register." By the way, the quest for 6,000 is already going strong. We've added 90 members since April 9, and we're not showing signs of slowing down.