Yesterday my first lecture in a long time went up at www.chesslecture.com. It was called “Learn From Your Fellow Amateurs, Episode XXX: Good News, Bad News, Good News.” I got lots of positive feedback, both from people welcoming me back and also from people who were glad to see the “Learn From Your Fellow Amateurs” series continue. I appreciate all of those comments!
It’s been seven weeks since my previous lecture (“My Favorite Opponent,” which aired on February 2), and some of you might wonder where I’ve been. Well, actually, I’ve been right here. I did have a four-week hiatus in recording ChessLectures (which basically means that I skipped one turn, because I usually do them every other week). But that four weeks got amplified into seven because ChessLecture has accumulated a huge backlog of recordings.
This change is part of the new management’s philosophy and I think it’s a good thing, but only up to a point. The previous management had almost no backlog of lectures at all. Very often I would record a lecture and it would go up the next day. If not, it would go up in two or three days. The good thing about this approach was that we could have very timely lectures. During big events like the world championship or major tournaments, we would have coverage of important games within two or three days.
The downside, however, became apparent last year. The site started running behind, first posting lectures a day late and finally falling behind by more than a week. That was when the new management came in, and ever since then the site has been running flawlessly and posting new videos every day. That is, of course, job number one for a subscription service: you’ve got to give people what they paid for, no ifs, ands, buts, or excuses.
Now they have a huge backlog of recorded lectures, and this poses a new problem. You’re no longer in danger of running out of material, but on the other hand you don’t have the flexibility to report on events in a timely way. Lectures that I record now will not air for six weeks. The air of spontaneity and up-to-dateness is lost.
I’m not sure what the solution is, but the new management is aware of the problem and thinking about it.
Meanwhile, for any of my readers out there who are also ChessLecture subscribers (or even if you aren’t), if you like the “Learn From Your Fellow Amateur” series and want to keep it going, please send me your games! Right now I don’t have any “LFYFA” submissions so if you send me one, you might be the next one to get your game on the air. (Of course, you’ll probably have to wait six weeks to see the video.)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Dana,
I was very pleased to see the return of the LFYFA series! I believe I submitted a game to you last year but I’ve had a game featured before a couple of years ago so perhaps that would make it ineligible (and, of course, I shouldn’t assume that the game was even that interesting). However, I think others have had multiple games featured so I’m not sure.
Would you still be interested in receiving games even from those of us who’ve had a game featured before? And please let me know if I should re-send the game I sent last year (I was white vs D. Matson) in case you didn’t get it. But again, if it the game wasn’t interesting enough, then that’s no problem! I can always see if i can rustle up some more… 😉
-Matt
One solution is to push lectures into one of two queues – the NOW queue for time-sensitive lectures, and the WHENEVER queue, whose lectures are published when the NOW queue is empty.
You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend http://www.danamackenzie.com!