One of the things that has happened every time I've ever attended a Rivals Publishers Conferences is that I'll come out of them with a rejuvenation and a sense of purpose.
I'll feel more committed than ever to make Orangebloods the best it can be. I'll want to be a better content creator... a better owner of the site... a better publisher... a better communicator with everyone.
Basically, I want to... wait for it... Be Better.
Among the changes/additions I want to make on the site is to commit to doing a monthly State of Orangebloods post that will allow us to discuss matters related to the site as transparently as possible Having a few days to think about some of the things rolling around in my head really made me understand how important this level of communication can and should be. The last thing that I would ever want from any of our OB family members is to believe that we don't care what they think or that we take them for granted.
So, here we are. My plan is to do a variation of this post once per month near the 1st of every month. Even if the occasional monthly post is a mere fraction in length of this one, it's important to do this from my vantage point.
Let's get started...
No.1 - Attaboy, @ZachattheDisch ....
When we replaced @DustinMcComas a few years ago on the baseball side of things, we originally did so with two people. This year is the first year that Zach has worked the beat on his own and I think we would all agree that he's done a fantastic job covering the team on a daily basis.
Yet, covering a coaching change is a whole different ball of wax. make a mistake there... even with an assistant coach hire... and you might be hearing "85%" for the next 13 years.
Through it all, I thought Zach's coverage of the baseball coaching situation over the course of the last few weeks has been absolutely fantastic and I wanted to give him a public "attaboy". These situations add stress to your life as a reporter in a lot of different ways and for a guy dealing with this kind of stress for the first time in his life, he did so with relative ease.
Nice work, Zack.
No.2 - Speaking of baseball....
In the next week or so, we'll be unveiling a new partnership at Orangebloods and inside of that partnership will be a thirst from our new partner to create a way for NIL money can be raised for baseball.
We've had this idea ready to go for about a month, but wanted to wait until the coaching situation was resolved because we didn't want any appearances of this new idea being hatched up in connection to a coaching change. The timing of what will be launched in the month of July really doesn't have anything to do with what just happened in the turnover of coaching staffs, but will probably be perfect considering all of the new enthusiasm in Texas Baseball.
Stay tuned. The announcement is coming.
No.3 - Speaking of kudos....
Just wanted to give the entire Orangebloods staff an "attaboy" for the work done in the month of June. With so many members of the staff taking time off at various points in the month, I thought everyone did a good job of picking up the slack when needed.
The best job of teamwork was probably on the recruiting side of things, as a team of @Suchomel, @Jalenb, @Sunny Nelson, @CodyClearmanOB @CodyCarpentier @Alex Dunlap and myself all teamed up to help with the coverage in a variety of ways all month.
From chasing dudes down at the airport to providing previews of visits to helping track updates following visits, I thought our coverage throughout was excellent and it couldn't have happened without a full team commitment. Obviously, no one does more for us on such occasions as @Suchomel, but I wanted to really give a shout out to the team.
That being said, great job as usual the pride of Bay City. Suchomel is our Hart Lee Dykes in recruiting.
No.4 - The Rivals Conference....
Overall, I was pleased with what came out of the conference this week in Jacksonville. Here's a list of items that I think most need to be shared with all of you reading this...
a. From a personnel standpoint, I've never seen the owners of Rivals give a stronger commitment in terms of infrastructure for much of the last two decades. In terms of analysts covering recruiting to the volume of engineers (nearly 2 dozen) to the addition of dynamic creative leads to a commitment to continuing to build on our successes and not resting on them... I witnessed a lot of what I wanted to see. I'm hopeful that this investment into infrastructure is something that you will see and feel over the next 12 months and not just hear me talk about.
b. There are a lot of different projects in the works, one of which was the re-launch of the brand and changes that were felt throughout the site. Inside of the improvements that Rivals is planning to make in the months to come is a continued commitment to listen to our subscribers about tweaks that can be made to improve the overall user experience.
We don't need pitchforks. They will listen. They want to make you happy and not alienated. I think the best example I can give is with the changes to the color of font that took place throughout the week. Once there was a real sense of what the community preferred, they rushed to provide that, which was fantastic to see from my perspective. Expect more tweaks in the coming weeks and month in the name of improving your user experience.
5. Ok, let's talk about the iOS loading/refresh issues...
No one is more frustrated with this ongoing issue that can't seem to end than yours truly. I've listened to a team of really smart people explain all of the reasons why this remains a problem that can't be totally solved and the best thing I can tell you is that it's complicated.
What's the issue?
Bottom line: it's a memory deal. With millions of posts on this board, many filled with gifs, tweets, instagram posts, etc... there's just a lot of memory that has to be accounted for.
I know you guys think we've only got one half-dead hamster over at Rivals half-ass looking at this, but Rivals actually has a large team of engineers that has spent countless hours on trying to solve this riddle. It has tried numerous things to create less stress from a memory standpoint, including pruning near-decade old unused threads on the board. None of the things they've tried have really worked.
Part of the reason why it's really complicated is that from an Apple/iOS standpoint, there's not a problem that needs to be fixed. The refresh/reload is its answer to the problem. Therefore, it leaves Rivals in a position of trying to lessen the memory load in such a way that the stress that is being created is lessened, but without the help from those connected to the platform where the problem is occurring.
No great answer has yet emerged. I wish I could tell you otherwise.
Who are the people being impacted by this?
It's mostly (although not 100%) people who use Safari browsers on Apple products. Mostly people with older products, but we've also seen people with very new products have these issues.
As far as I can tell this is exclusively a Safari issue. I use Chrome on all devices and have never once experienced any of these issues that those who are on Safari are experiencing.
In the immediate aftermath of this post, I am going to post a much more detailed explanation from our engineering team that explains in more specific, exact detail the issues that exist.
What can we do RIGHT NOW to make this better for those experiencing problems?
1. Send me a DM with a request to turn off ads for you. This isn't an issue that's being caused by ads, as I'm dealing with OB family members in the last 48 hours who have seen ads disabled on their accounts and are still having issues. Yet, the ads certainly don't help with regards to lessening the memory stress and we're willing to take that problem away in the name of finding solutions for you. Please, my DMs early await the change to help.
You aren't going to be any kind of pain in the butt by sending this request. It takes me about 10 seconds to process.
I would ballpark guess that this has proven to be a working solution for 4 out of 5 people. That still leaves a sizable chunk of people that need help and I have sent the names of every single person who is still having issues to the lead engineer of Rivals in an attempt to find working solutions. We haven't found answers yet for those people, but we are not giving up.
2. I know this is not a solution that some of you even want to consider, but... you can use a different browser not named Safari. Use Chrome. Use Brave. Literally use anything not named Safari.
I'm not much different than a lot of you. I prefer Chrome and NEVER use Safari. Yet, on Monday night on a United flight, the only way I could access in-slight wi-fi was to use Safari instead of Chrome. It irked me for about three seconds, but once I was online and no longer unsuccessfully beating my head into the wall with a browser that was having issues, all of the angst pretty much went away.
It's just a suggestion. I don't want anyone to feel forced into a browser dungeon, BUT... if you use something other than Safari... you're gold.
*****
Anyways, that's a wrap on the first Orangebloods SOTU of 2024. I'll be in this thread to answer questions and take comments.
Otherwise, see you guys tomorrow with my 10TFTW.
gk
I'll feel more committed than ever to make Orangebloods the best it can be. I'll want to be a better content creator... a better owner of the site... a better publisher... a better communicator with everyone.
Basically, I want to... wait for it... Be Better.
Among the changes/additions I want to make on the site is to commit to doing a monthly State of Orangebloods post that will allow us to discuss matters related to the site as transparently as possible Having a few days to think about some of the things rolling around in my head really made me understand how important this level of communication can and should be. The last thing that I would ever want from any of our OB family members is to believe that we don't care what they think or that we take them for granted.
So, here we are. My plan is to do a variation of this post once per month near the 1st of every month. Even if the occasional monthly post is a mere fraction in length of this one, it's important to do this from my vantage point.
Let's get started...
No.1 - Attaboy, @ZachattheDisch ....
When we replaced @DustinMcComas a few years ago on the baseball side of things, we originally did so with two people. This year is the first year that Zach has worked the beat on his own and I think we would all agree that he's done a fantastic job covering the team on a daily basis.
Yet, covering a coaching change is a whole different ball of wax. make a mistake there... even with an assistant coach hire... and you might be hearing "85%" for the next 13 years.
Through it all, I thought Zach's coverage of the baseball coaching situation over the course of the last few weeks has been absolutely fantastic and I wanted to give him a public "attaboy". These situations add stress to your life as a reporter in a lot of different ways and for a guy dealing with this kind of stress for the first time in his life, he did so with relative ease.
Nice work, Zack.
No.2 - Speaking of baseball....
In the next week or so, we'll be unveiling a new partnership at Orangebloods and inside of that partnership will be a thirst from our new partner to create a way for NIL money can be raised for baseball.
We've had this idea ready to go for about a month, but wanted to wait until the coaching situation was resolved because we didn't want any appearances of this new idea being hatched up in connection to a coaching change. The timing of what will be launched in the month of July really doesn't have anything to do with what just happened in the turnover of coaching staffs, but will probably be perfect considering all of the new enthusiasm in Texas Baseball.
Stay tuned. The announcement is coming.
No.3 - Speaking of kudos....
Just wanted to give the entire Orangebloods staff an "attaboy" for the work done in the month of June. With so many members of the staff taking time off at various points in the month, I thought everyone did a good job of picking up the slack when needed.
The best job of teamwork was probably on the recruiting side of things, as a team of @Suchomel, @Jalenb, @Sunny Nelson, @CodyClearmanOB @CodyCarpentier @Alex Dunlap and myself all teamed up to help with the coverage in a variety of ways all month.
From chasing dudes down at the airport to providing previews of visits to helping track updates following visits, I thought our coverage throughout was excellent and it couldn't have happened without a full team commitment. Obviously, no one does more for us on such occasions as @Suchomel, but I wanted to really give a shout out to the team.
That being said, great job as usual the pride of Bay City. Suchomel is our Hart Lee Dykes in recruiting.
No.4 - The Rivals Conference....
Overall, I was pleased with what came out of the conference this week in Jacksonville. Here's a list of items that I think most need to be shared with all of you reading this...
a. From a personnel standpoint, I've never seen the owners of Rivals give a stronger commitment in terms of infrastructure for much of the last two decades. In terms of analysts covering recruiting to the volume of engineers (nearly 2 dozen) to the addition of dynamic creative leads to a commitment to continuing to build on our successes and not resting on them... I witnessed a lot of what I wanted to see. I'm hopeful that this investment into infrastructure is something that you will see and feel over the next 12 months and not just hear me talk about.
b. There are a lot of different projects in the works, one of which was the re-launch of the brand and changes that were felt throughout the site. Inside of the improvements that Rivals is planning to make in the months to come is a continued commitment to listen to our subscribers about tweaks that can be made to improve the overall user experience.
We don't need pitchforks. They will listen. They want to make you happy and not alienated. I think the best example I can give is with the changes to the color of font that took place throughout the week. Once there was a real sense of what the community preferred, they rushed to provide that, which was fantastic to see from my perspective. Expect more tweaks in the coming weeks and month in the name of improving your user experience.
5. Ok, let's talk about the iOS loading/refresh issues...
No one is more frustrated with this ongoing issue that can't seem to end than yours truly. I've listened to a team of really smart people explain all of the reasons why this remains a problem that can't be totally solved and the best thing I can tell you is that it's complicated.
What's the issue?
Bottom line: it's a memory deal. With millions of posts on this board, many filled with gifs, tweets, instagram posts, etc... there's just a lot of memory that has to be accounted for.
I know you guys think we've only got one half-dead hamster over at Rivals half-ass looking at this, but Rivals actually has a large team of engineers that has spent countless hours on trying to solve this riddle. It has tried numerous things to create less stress from a memory standpoint, including pruning near-decade old unused threads on the board. None of the things they've tried have really worked.
Part of the reason why it's really complicated is that from an Apple/iOS standpoint, there's not a problem that needs to be fixed. The refresh/reload is its answer to the problem. Therefore, it leaves Rivals in a position of trying to lessen the memory load in such a way that the stress that is being created is lessened, but without the help from those connected to the platform where the problem is occurring.
No great answer has yet emerged. I wish I could tell you otherwise.
Who are the people being impacted by this?
It's mostly (although not 100%) people who use Safari browsers on Apple products. Mostly people with older products, but we've also seen people with very new products have these issues.
As far as I can tell this is exclusively a Safari issue. I use Chrome on all devices and have never once experienced any of these issues that those who are on Safari are experiencing.
In the immediate aftermath of this post, I am going to post a much more detailed explanation from our engineering team that explains in more specific, exact detail the issues that exist.
What can we do RIGHT NOW to make this better for those experiencing problems?
1. Send me a DM with a request to turn off ads for you. This isn't an issue that's being caused by ads, as I'm dealing with OB family members in the last 48 hours who have seen ads disabled on their accounts and are still having issues. Yet, the ads certainly don't help with regards to lessening the memory stress and we're willing to take that problem away in the name of finding solutions for you. Please, my DMs early await the change to help.
You aren't going to be any kind of pain in the butt by sending this request. It takes me about 10 seconds to process.
I would ballpark guess that this has proven to be a working solution for 4 out of 5 people. That still leaves a sizable chunk of people that need help and I have sent the names of every single person who is still having issues to the lead engineer of Rivals in an attempt to find working solutions. We haven't found answers yet for those people, but we are not giving up.
2. I know this is not a solution that some of you even want to consider, but... you can use a different browser not named Safari. Use Chrome. Use Brave. Literally use anything not named Safari.
I'm not much different than a lot of you. I prefer Chrome and NEVER use Safari. Yet, on Monday night on a United flight, the only way I could access in-slight wi-fi was to use Safari instead of Chrome. It irked me for about three seconds, but once I was online and no longer unsuccessfully beating my head into the wall with a browser that was having issues, all of the angst pretty much went away.
It's just a suggestion. I don't want anyone to feel forced into a browser dungeon, BUT... if you use something other than Safari... you're gold.
*****
Anyways, that's a wrap on the first Orangebloods SOTU of 2024. I'll be in this thread to answer questions and take comments.
Otherwise, see you guys tomorrow with my 10TFTW.
gk
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