This time last year, the small team that produces the I-Report section on CNN.com didn't have a whole lot to do.

We'd raced to launch the brand new section page, filled it up with simple forms for collecting video and photos, and made big plans with our friends and colleagues who produce CNN TV to get the I-Reports on the air once they came in.

Then we waited. Would I-Report catch on? Would people send stories? Could we get them on CNN?

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A year later, before leaving work Wednesday night, I started to type up a celebratory blog post (What a year! Go team!), when I heard CNN.com producer Tyson Wheatley yell from across the newsroom, "Lila, turn up your TV! I-Report!"

A bridge had collapsed in downtown Minneapolis, plunging cars into the Mississippi River below. And there on CNN was Wolf Blitzer, getting the details by phone from I-Reporter Mark Lacroix, whose apartment overlooks the bridge. Lacroix's first instinct when he saw the deadly scene was to call 911. His second was to pick up his camera, document the disaster and send the photos to I-Report.

Lacroix explained to Blitzer during the live broadcast that he often crosses that bridge on his way home, and had just happened to leave work earlier than usual that day. He’s not a professional journalist with a polished delivery - he’s someone who watched a tragic event from his apartment window, and his voice and first-person account immediately conveyed the shock and grief that any of us would feel if something so awful had happened in our own hometown.

In the last year, Lacroix and hundreds of others like him have changed the way news stories are gathered and told on CNN. I-Report contributors have shared vivid, first-person accounts of breaking stories and helped to give voice and perspective to the issues behind the headlines. (You can see some of the year’s best in our interactive timeline.)

In the next year, we hope I-Report contributors will have an even stronger voice in CNN’s coverage. And we’re working on some new ways to make that happen, including a new design for our page and plans to highlight I-Report debate around issues in election politics.

What else would you like to see? Post a comment below to let us know, or send your own story as an I-Report.