Forum Suggestions for November 3rd Announcement

[Jonathan Stevenson]

The Redcine-X Pro announcement, IMO, didn't go very smoothly. 7000 people hitting refresh on Reduser really kills the site and it's impossible to actually see what's going on. Then, once Jim actually starts posting, you have about 300 "Awesome!" posts that make it even harder to read relevant information. I can't imagine the hell that moderators were experiencing either. With the popularity of Scarlet, I have a feeling things will be about 100 times worse on November 3rd (i.e. server crashes, mob with torches, lighting couches on fire in the streets, general rioting, etc).

A few humble suggestions/ideas for the Red Team to help the big announcement go smoothly...

- Locked Announcement Threads, a la November 30th announcement a few years ago (i.e. Jim has a locked thread with all the good announcements, with a secondary thread for discussion. Helps cut down on the "wading").
- The "RED TEAM" function within threads is great. Maybe take it a step further and add individual buttons for Jim and Jarred.
- Perhaps, within the locked announcement thread, Jim and Jarred's posts are automatically added to the thread, creating a one-stop shop for people wanting to follow the discussion.

BIGGER ideas...
- Live Blogging feature on Red.com that will update real time while Jim/Jarred post to the site. Skip posting on Reduser completely and do the announcement live on Red.com
- Live Video streaming event, a la Apple, at Red Studios.

These are a few of my ideas. I'm sure other folks here have better ones. Hopefully the November 3rd announcement will be as smooth and painless, as well as monumental.

 

[Andy White]

A lot of this makes sense - being in the UK and sitting through Jim's last announcement with server outage etc was painful. It must have been a nightmare on Red's side.

Maybe just lock off all posting unless it's Jim, Jarred, Red Team or Mods... until the initial info is out there?

 

[Scott Crawley]

Interesting ideas, but the Red Team button is a search function that apparently slows the servers more than refresh. I guess that is why it was the first to go for the RCX-pro event.

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

Now that they've stated that Scarlets go on sale November 3rd, I'm even more worried about the RED servers crashing... haha

 

[Imran Farouk]

For me being in the UK right now its seriously worrying because I don't want to miss out on the first batch or anything like that, my internets so slow alarm bells are going off in my head...especially with how hammered the site is going to get when that magic button is hit and it all goes live...

AAAHHHH!!! Let's hope there's more supply or just enough supply for the demand but then again, The demand for RED Scarlets will definitely out do the initial supply... heres hoping to Cameron not placing a 50 camera order on the Scarlets

 

[Jake Bastian]

One of those times the #R3D search on twitter will be immensely useful. I got more info faster out of that during the RCX-Pro announcement than i did on reduser thanks to guys like Joseph Hutson posting stuff as it came up.

 

[Tyson Benard]

I agree, something like a locked thread or a streaming session would be very cool and help stop the constant refreshing. It was very irritating waiting for a refresh during the RCX-Pro announcement, it would be even more frustrating here. Anything to make it easier on the RED Team will obviously be the best, but if it can help us as well, then that would be great. I for one don't want to have to be waiting for 5 minutes for the page to refresh while Jim is making such an important announcement.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

The heck with it, I think Jim should just announce it on CNN. Then people can watch it on cable or on the web depending on which is running smoother. Just a thought.

 

[Bruce Allen]

You guys can watch Reduser, I will watch the www.red.com store

Actually, this nice guy from Canon gave me a suitcase of cash on the condition that I keep hitting the New Threads button A LOT on Nov 3rd for some reason.

I was planning on doing that to distract everyone anyway while I ordered 50 Scarlets from the store... but now I'm gonna really hammer that button :reddevil:

On a more serious note, why you guys placed deposits, did a credit card work? Just trying to figure out if I need to hoard money in my checking account for Nov 3, haha...

Of course, that's assuming RED allows me to buy a Scarlet after they read this post.

More on-top though... there are plenty of "better" ways to do it... for example:
- official "Press Releases" on one server (maybe red.com)... and then a link to where you discuss it on Reduser (on a different server)
- or just have redrecon.com or redteam.com...

But I think having the announcements here has become kind of a crazy fun tradition.

No harm in upgrading the severs mightily though.

If a single Red Epic can process 1327 million pixels per second, Reduser might as well follow suit

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Andrew Gentle]

I agree that the locked announcement thread and the additional responses thread is a great way to do it, assuming REDUSER stays up.

Twitter as off site backup works well, as long as those who see the news first repost it before a potential server crash happens.

It is annoying when search is disabled to cut through the noise and read the Red Team posts (that button stops working when search is disabled, I'm pretty sure) so I've set my preferences to show as many posts per page as possible. Having 40 posts to a page is useful because I have to load fewer pages (reducing server load) and I can use my browser's Ctrl + F find function to look for usernames which interest me. If you'd like to, you can set that preference here if you're logged in.

 

[Jason Ramsey]

reduser will have new hardware in time for nov 3rd.

 

[J Davis]

But I think having the announcements here has become kind of a crazy fun tradition.

+1 yes good times !

I'll never forget that day when I hit refresh and read the words 5k, 9k and ... 28k ... and 3D

 

[Bob Minervini]

reduser will have new hardware in time for nov 3rd.

good...we wouldn't like to miss anything!

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

I don't know that server upgrades will solve every issue here though, such as wading, having to deactivate searches, etc. Guess there's not much we can do about that though...

 

[Jason Ramsey]

as far as how red chooses to make the announcements (in a closed thread, with a separate discussion thread, etc) is up to them, but, i'm sure they will read this thread too .

the red team button should be functioning fine though during the announcement assuming the server holds up, and is a very good way to navigate through very long and fast paced announcement threads and get right to the meat.

As far as performance issues we've encountered in previous announcements, and having to disable search (which makes it more difficult to keep up from an end user perspective)... we'll have hardware several times more powerful than what is currently running reduser. So, we should be solid there. That's my area for Jarred. and the hardware is being ordered and built over the next several days. Should be making those upgrades several weeks out in front of the announcement.

 

[Eren Ozkural]

Awesome! Thanks for the update My only concern now is that the RED.com store will be able to handle the traffic

 

[Andy White]

Awesome! Thanks for the update My only concern now is that the RED.com store will be able to handle the traffic

I was thinking the same... especially with all the security measures for purchasing via C/C and the nature of adding stuff to baskets etc. It'll be like the traffic on Amazon or another massive site, but squeezed into a miniscule time window...

Glad I'm not having to think about it or work out what to do!

I'm sure Red are - they have to be aware of the Scarlet 'factor'. Just look at the number of new users or the amount of posts in the various Jim/Scarlet threads... we normally get a few hundred views. Now, the 3rd November thread is nearing 44K views in about 36 hours (!) and others are massive in their views.

Let's hope they're ready for it

 

[Brent J. Craig]

As far as performance issues we've encountered in previous announcements, and having to disable search (which makes it more difficult to keep up from an end user perspective)... we'll have hardware several times more powerful than what is currently running reducer...

There are services designed to handle extreme temporary loads. Have you investigated things like Amazon cloud and Akamai?

 

[Elmer Tenkink]

Why not get some real mobile horse power with combat station for Jim and Jarred to get things smooth

 

[Jason Ramsey]

we will be fine.