There has been a lot of discontent among ChessLecture subscribers recently about the erratic timing of updates, culminating in a complete hiatus in new lectures for almost two weeks.
I can finally give you some answers about what has been going on, although the answers are necessarily incomplete. I’m just like the evening weatherman, who definitely does not know everything that is going on in the management of the TV station. Still, what I have heard gives me confidence that the service will improve, starting next week.
First, let me state a personal opinion: ChessLecture has been very “one-derstaffed” almost from the beginning. When I first signed on I dealt with two people, but after the first couple months one of them disappeared. For all I know there may be other people handling bookkeeping and stuff, but the technical recording of the lectures and running of the site has been basically a one-man show. He has done a truly heroic job, but it’s in the nature of one-person organizations that when that person’s energy runs low or his time gets divided among other things, the quality of service suffers.
The good news is that Help Is On Its Way, and soon. The man in charge has been telling me for months that he now has partners who are going to get more actively involved in the site. Up to now I have not seen any signs of that. But those two people (that’s right, two — not one — which is already a step in the right direction) are going to step in beginning next week. The partners (I won’t give names, they can identify themselves if they want to) are well-known people on the U.S. chess scene, and I think we can count on them to pump new vigor into ChessLecture and stay with it for the long haul.
I have some more good news — Jesse Kraai is coming back! Some of you might have noticed he hasn’t given any lectures for a couple months. He has been busy traveling and playing in tournaments, but the word is that he will be back August 10 and doing lectures soon after that. Also, Eugene Perelshteyn and Bill Paschall, two of the most popular ChessLecturers who have also been relatively quiet lately, will also be back soon with lots of new lectures.
That’s all I know for now. I will be waiting with as much interest as the rest of you to see the ways in which ChessLecture will change and grow or at least get back to the steady, timely delivery of new lectures that it managed for the first four years of my involvement. I want to express my appreciation to the old one-man army who made it all possible, and best wishes also to the new staff who will, hopefully, make it even bigger and better!
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