Today is Gameops.com’s 10th Birthday. Which is fun to think about and I enjoy looking back over the years at what the site started as and what it’s become.

I remember the wonder I felt buying a URL and posting a page live for the world to see, how amazing it all seemed.

I remember looking at the daily traffic reports and being thrilled at hitting double digits as word of the site grew past my immediate friends and family and now I am amazed at the daily visitor numbers.

I think about all the time spent building new layout and logos (and wish I could find that original goofy logo) and how bizarre it was to see a I logo I made on my TV screen as Stephen Colbert did a little blurb about Gameops.com on his show.

Gameops.com has gone from a handful of pages built on FrontPage to several hundred pages, thousands of ideas, products, ideas, blogs and video from every corner of sports. Later this month we will unveil Gameops.com 3.0 (what I call this third major rebuild of the site) which will take the reader experience to the next level and greatly expand how we can present content.

The best part is that the excitement I had sitting down those first weeks building the site hasn’t left, and I still love coming to work and trying to build a better mousetrap and help teams enhance their show. The challenges are always a little different, the scope of the tasks are now a little bigger, but the fun is still there.

Thanks to everyone who has lent a hand, given support, read, submitted, spell-checked, and challenged me along the way. You are too numerous to mention, but without all of you it’s safe to say I wouldn’t have made it 10 years.

Thank you.

–Cudo

As I have noted here a couple times, we are in the midst of some rather large changes at Gameops.com. Aug 6th is our 10 year Anniversary on the web and to celebrate we have spent much of the last 6 months in a total rebuild of the website. Some parts are done, some are close, and others are still a few weeks away. The glorious vision of launching this new updated site on the day of the 10 year anniversary is slipping away, but we are very close so that slightly less glorious relaunch day is coming soon. With that bit of background I have a couple announcements/thoughts:

1. Starting today (Monday July 28th) I will be blogging daily (Monday thru Friday) until the new site launches. I do this to keep fresh content on the site and it’s also an August Anniversary Tradition. I start slightly early this year since this will be a temporary replacement for the monthly site content. The old site (which we are moving away from) is time-consuming to update….so I don’t want to spend time updating something that will be discontinued in less than a month. The blog is a more efficient way to add content and focus our efforts on completing the upgrade.
2. I wanted to give a shout out to two people for their tireless efforts on this overhaul. First is web-guru Scott from Memorize Media. Scott has been building a new site for us for months, customizing everything from logos to forms (or soup to nuts). Between our host throwing him curve balls and my whiny emails, he has managed to keep his wits and has built a great site. Second, Jenny Oblock (our “Summer Coordinator”) who has been the Queen of Cut and Paste as she has diligently transfered hundreds of pages from our old site to our new platform. She has been a tremendous addition both with our web project as well as our marketing efforts.
3. Our monthly email blast will be sent out later in August. It will note all the updated content as well as the discounts in The Store. (if you want to save $ in our store and get the update you can click here.)
4. Our monthly interivew will be with Dan Migala from the Migala Report. I spent an hour with Dan on the phone and the interview is probably the best we have done in 10 years on Gameops.com. The full interview will launch with the new site, but parts of this conversation will be included in blog entries in August.

That’s it for now. Thanks for your patience. I look forward to the relaunch and hope you enjoy the Blogapalooza in the mean time.

–Cudo

Yesterday I had the great priviledge to spend about an hour on the phone with Sports Marketing guru Dan Migala of The Migala Report. Dan is our guest for the August Interview on Gameops.com and without over-hyping it….I think this could be the best interview on the site.

We chatted about sports marketing, giveaway items, game promotions, mascots and much more. This long form interview is something I have moved away from in recent years on the site, since they are much more time consuming to write, transcribe and create….but it was a reminder of how enjoyable it can be to hear from some of the industry leaders. I am looking forward to working more on the story and posting that next month.

We also talked briefly about Dan’s book Dugout Wisdom, which is getting rave reviews on Amazon.com. I just ordered a copy as well and I will certainly review it here after I get a chance to read it.

“In Dugout Wisdom: Life Lessons From Baseball, author Dan Migala finds the heart in baseball, collecting and sharing words of wisdom from 55 greats of the game. These first person accounts of baseball’s pivotal life moments feature noted players such as Sparky Anderson, Wade Boggs, Rod Carew, Whitey Ford, Goose Gossage, Monte Irvin, Kirby Puckett, Nolan Ryan, Ryne Sandberg, Ron Santo and Mike Schmidt.”

–Cudo

With the summer months sliding by I finally had a moment to look back at this month’s update tonight.  Sometimes as I piece together content over a month or so it is hard to tell how well it all comes together until after it’s posted.  This month was stacked with a slew of projects, leaving the update to seem like a bit of an afterthought.

The update features a new “Pro Panel” discussion.  Five industry pros shared their take on how they might handle a potentially offensive giveaway.  It’s always fun to get the creative juices flowing with a handful of people who know their stuff.

Pat Walker also jumped back in with another column and I think this is his best yet.  Pat looks back at the NBA playoffs and the balance of entertainment during the playoffs.  It’s a great read.

While we continue to add products to the new Store on Gameops.com, this month we spent all our efforts on the Shirt Launcher and Cannon pages.  A couple new cannons and accessories are up now and there are still a few more coming soon.  Our goal has been to be one-stop shopping with great pricing and the shirt launcher page is on target for that goal.

Finally we spotlight the Schedule Keychain.  This keychain unrolls to reveal a full color pocket schedule.  Many of our hockey team clients from last season are raving about this product, and it’s sister product the Schedule Pen.  Its a great alternative to the popular schedule magnet for opening night.

As noted a couple times, we are in the final stretch of a huge site overhaul.  You will see some significant changes to Gameops.com in the next two months as we invest in keeping Gameops.com the #1 resource website for game operations and entertianment.

Enjoy the new content and have a great 4th of July.

–Cudo

Apologies for the lighter blog schedule this month, we have a lot of things happening behind the scenes at Gameops.com and the summer just tends to be a little slower.

One aspect of the site we have been working on (and that is up and running) is an enhanced section on The Store featuring Shirt Launchers. We have had always had a couple options for shooting shirts on Gameops.com, but our new store has brought a new products and accessories making Gameops.com an unbeatable resource for cannons and launchers.

We now have three manufactures of shirt launchers represented. Each has been tested by us. Over the last few years we have had a couple manufactures come and go, some having guns that are great, but service that we were not 100% comfortable with, or slow delivery, or higher prices. I now feel like we have the best options, pricing and service all flushed out for our readers.

We also have options for shooting Stress Balls and Pucks, as well as offering the ammunition for the launchers. And, as always, the ever-popular Sling Shots.

Check out the new options in the Gameops.com Store.

Enjoy the weekend.

–Cudo

This is my 300th blog entry, and as is the tradition I take this opportunity to rib my friend Ed who initially suggested the blog idea.

While I love the blog, it has emerged as a large chunk of my efforts….so I like to make sure I thank him on the milestone posts for adding to my workload. (see post 200)

If you like numbers we are approaching another milestone at Gameops.com. Sometime around June 10th we will post the millionth banner ad view. To offset some of the costs of maintaining the website we have an ad banner on the top of each page (going back many years). I religiously track the number of views and was excited to have done a million of anything (but not excited enough to give that it’s own blog post).

So, thanks a million Ed. I look forward to giving you more grief in post number 400.

–Cudo