pirate22, on 2012-September-08, 10:10, said:
At last some weight and momentum is being generated.How Roland was allowed
to slip into OBLIVION by the powers to be,is beyond comphrehension.
Who is responsible for this allmighty C*ck up. can we have some names plse.??
The voice Commentaries organised by Roland were an asset and a treat,
Top Quality,and it also motivated top commentators,what do we have now???
nothing-I say again nothing-in fact it has collapsed completely.
most events at present are barren.with Buffet Cup coming up,
Such an exciting event,about to be spoilt by the "AUTOMOORONS"
with fake written commentators.as i read the situation overall
Roland Wald has been alienated by some idiots.
aa a BBO member I am prepared to pay an annual sub to get back
the absolute pleasure and delight of the previous arrangement,
With Captain Roland at the helm-- Such ineptitude F.G.
I would appreciate your comments please..WHY WHY???
no doubt Barmar will scuttle up something Improve the situation
{how Fatious}
I was not directly involved in any of this, but since you asked let's have a reality check. What follows is based on my perception of reality. Since, as I said, I was not directly involved, it is possible (though not likely in my view) that some of what follows is not strictly accurate or complete.
Here is a list of the primary tasks that are involved in organizing a vugraph broadcast:
1) Organizer expresses interest in broadcasting a particular event
2) Organizer supplies various details (session starting times, number of tables being broadcast, event web site, etc)
3) This information is included in the vugraph schedule, organizer is supplied with vugraph ID and passwords, instructions, etc.
4) If organizer prefers that BBO supply text commentators, such commentators are provided. Some organizers prefer to assign their own commentators.
5) If BBO decides that the event in question is appropriate for voice commentary, voice commentators are provided. In principle I suppose it is possible that organizers handle this themselves as well, but voice commentary is still relatively new and I am not aware of any organizers who have opted to assign their own voice commentators in the past.
6) At the time of the broadcasts, both text and voice commentators must be given permission to chat/speak.
Before there was automation, Roland had been responsible for 1, 2, 5, and parts of 3 and 6. It has been at least several months since Roland has been involved in 4 (because Roland resigned from 4 in order to focus on 5 well before we even started work on vugraph automation). 4 is not relevant to this discussion.
In my view items 1, 2, and 3 are perfect candidates for automation. That is because I believe that most organizers should be able to deal with these tasks without any (human) help on our end thereby making the process more efficient and (hopefully) more accurate. Those organizers who feel that they need help from a human
have the choice of bypassing the automated system and dealing directly with a polite and competent human in our support department.
These are largely what I would call "mundane administrative tasks" - if I had Roland's job I suspect I would be very happy to be relieved of these duties. The same goes for 6.
Apparently Roland did not feel this way. His reaction to our giving organizers the
option of bypassing his services for 1, 2, and 3 was to resign from 5 (and to resign from being the human that organizers still had the right to contact if they
chose that "the human touch" was important to them for items 1, 2, and 3).
Speaking as a fan of vugraph, I personally regret that Roland chose to resign. Speaking as one of the owners of BBO, I can assure you that Roland was not fired nor was he pressured in any way to resign (quite the contrary - BBO made it clear that we wanted to continue to work with Roland once the automated system was in place).
In fact, the decisions that were made were not about Roland - they were about providing organizers with
options that we thought (and still think) have the potential to streamline the various processes involved in vugraph management. They were also about ensuring that vugraph could continue to run smoothly during times in which Roland was on vacation, sick, on strike, whatever.
While the current system is still very new and still far from perfect, it is working fairly well already. Several flaws have been found, but they have been quickly addressed by Barmar. I fully expect this to continue. For example, I expect it is only a matter of time until we automate parts of 6 above.
Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, the only effective difference from the vugraph audience's point of view between life with Roland and life post-Roland is that there is not as much voice commentary as before. That is too bad and it is especially too bad that Roland has not done much (if any) voice commentary himself - he is excellent at it.
But again, this has been Roland's choice. BBO made very sure Roland knew that, regardless of what happened in terms of his role as vugraph coordindator, we hoped that he would continue to contribute frequently as a voice commentator.
If you would like to see this happen then I suggest you and like-minded people let Roland know. In my view there is absolutely no reason why his decision to remove himself from vugraph coordination should have any impact on this role as a vugraph commentator. But please don't bug BBO about this - we are not going to start making software or policy decisions based on how often Roland (or anyone else) chooses to volunteer as a voice commentator. Hopefully you can understand that.
Despite some of your rude and insulting remarks toward BBO and its staff, I have decided to answer your request for a statement about these matters because there is a lot of misinformation floating around. I hope this post has managed to clarify things from my point of view (which has mostly been that of a neutral but well-informed observer).
That being said, I have no interest in getting into any further public discussion about this, to say anything that might publicly embarrass either my co-workers or my friend Roland, or to assign blame for what is in some ways an unfortunate state of affairs but for which I don't think anyone really did anything that is blameworthy.
Of course please feel to continue to discuss amongst yourselves, but please refrain from asking me any further questions about these matters. Everything I have to say has been written above.
Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com
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:)