Shoutout to the SportsCastr Community: THE FREEZER
416 days. That’s how long it’s been since the first live stream on SportsCastr. Since that day the vast majority of our resources have been devoted to developing and refining our technology. You can follow the progress we have made by visiting the Updates section on SportsCastr.com. We think it is important to be transparent about what we are building. A core ethic we maintain in the SportsCastr office is one of honesty. Implicit in that core ethic is the appreciation that each member of our team is a person who carries with them unique passions, perspectives and educations. Extending that ethic to include our users, we recognize the energy that SportsCastrs pour into their broadcasts, and, we being compassionate people, we bear sincere gratitude for the time our users spend on our platform.
Among our most devoted SportsCastrs is Stacy, who has created one helluva weekly program about his beloved Calgary Flames, which he calls The Freezer. As a result of his encyclopedic knowledge we have all become ersatz Flames fans; and as a result of his cultural references (Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Harry Dean Stanton) and humor, everyone here at SportsCastr feels like he is our friend. It’s been 207 days since Stacy went live for the first time. Each week since then he has delivered full one-hour broadcasts, and we have had the pleasure of seeing them evolve into 60-minute streams that are entertaining, endearing and brimming with deep info on the C of Red.
The Freezer began as one man with a deep love and knowledge of the Calgary Flames, live on SportsCastr. Now The Freezer includes a lovable cast of characters, the most prominent of whom is Carol, Stacy’s sister, herself a Flames devotee. The two, as you might expect, have a legitimate chemistry and elevate The Freezer into something much more than a show about a hockey team.
Because of his consistent participation, we created a custom logo and icon for The Freezer. We’ve done this for a handful of our most regular and excellent users. (We’ll be posting articles just like this one about many of them.) Ultimately, we will convert this element of personalization into something programmatic. That is, once a user crosses some achievement threshold they will be able to generate their own user icon. For now, though, we think it is important that we make and take the time to make sure our users are recognized, first and foremost, by us.
In the future, as the community grows, it’s only reasonable to assume that at least some portion of the human backend will be supplemented by automated resources. But even as such transitions take place, the essentials that bind the team members behind SportsCastr will remain the essentials that keep us close to our users. It’s a symbiotic relationship, for as the platform matures we are able to provide an increasingly excellent experience for our SportsCastrs; and likewise we get the satisfaction of knowing that what we are building has true purpose for real people.
-Nick Schupak, VP Community
