SPECIAL EDITION OFFICE HOURS! Thursday, 9/12 @4:30pm PST/7:30pm EST

Greetings, friends!

Next Thursday, September 12th, at 4:30pm PST/7:30pm PST, we are going to be holding a very special edition of Office Hours in honor of DC Universe’s first trip around the sun!

We get a lot of questions here in the community, but sometimes, us moderators can’t always answer them as thoroughly as you might like. That’s why this week and this week only, you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions of:

:pouting_man:t2:@DC_Hal - Captain of our ship, the mastermind who oversees all elements of what makes the DC Universe Engagement team (and then some) tick.

:ok_man:t3:@Rob - Developer extraordinaire! The brains behind the tech and ringmaster of developers, programmers, coders, and more.

:man_scientist:t3:@DCU_Joe - News Editor, manager of staff of writers, knower of all things, and do-er of Encyclopedia.

:ok_man:t4:@TBD Username/Robin - The News Coordinator, who makes sure all our news gets out on time, and that everything has hilarious titles and sharp wit imbued into all we do, from push notifications to Newsletters to you-name-it.

💁🏽@TBD Username/Halo - The person who gets together all our newsletters and coordinates what events and comic issues and television to highlight every week.

:man_scientist:t2:@SiegeHey - Our Master of Collections, who compiles each and every collection we put on the service. This is also DC Santa, who hand-selects the gifts for every Community Hero.

:woman_shrugging:t2:@merpbert - Our asset manager, who makes sure that all the artwork we feature on the service is high quality and the best possible choice to represent what we’re trying to communicate. She is also the person who organizes our office parties and makes sure we dress up for Halloween!

:cat2: @Applejack - And then there’s me. I oversee the forums and our incredible team of moderators. I also ensure the feedback we read on the forums is fed upward to the proper channels to inspire change and/or strike fear in the hearts of men.

“WAIT- WHAT IS SPECIAL EDITION OFFICE HOURS?”

Next Thursday September 12th at 4:30pm PST, a huge portion of the whole dang staff will make themselves available right here in this thread to answer any and all questions you might have about working for the service, running the news, running at streaming platform, creating collections, our content, suggestions for improvement, anything else you might want to know about DC Universe!

Ask questions to the group, to one person in particular, or just about DC in general :mega: :mega: :mega:

WHAT ISN’T OFFICE HOURS?

This thread is NOT a replacement for our technical Help Center, which can be reached at yourdcu.com/help. All technical reports found in the comments below will be deleted.

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Please feel free to start populating the comments here with your questions- We’re so excited to hang out with you all! :green_heart:

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The Fine Print:

:eight_spoked_asterisk:This thread IS NOT a replacement for our technical support team, who can be reached at yourdcu.com/help. All technical reports found in the comments below will be deleted.

:eight_spoked_asterisk:Sometimes, we will not be able to answer a question due to non-disclosure agreements, public relations sensitivities, or the stipulations of the Witness Protection Program. we will always be clear and honest, but if the answer is “I’m not able to discuss that”, please respect the cone of silence.

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Very cool!

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Wowzer!

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For @Rob

How are you load balancing the streaming? Do you have your own DC (data centers) or do you outsource to somebody like AWS. If so are you using SW VMs or HW VMs.

Given the potential peaks and valleys of data streaming bandwidth, are you using a bandwidth on demand type service or are just oversubscribing bandwidth to handle the peak loads and accepting it will be underutilized some of the time?

From a development side, do you have a threading model you prefer? I’m guessing that threads are usually applied to a specific user instance, so race conditions are reduced? Do you have a preference or requirement for development language(s)? Is your development workstation platform unix or windows based?

(I know…a lot of questions, but 30+ years as a Unix geek warps the brain. :wink: )

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A Special Edition, eh? Groovy, it feels like 1997.

All I ask is that the original edition of Office Hours be made available in addition to the Special Edition, and that they’re both of equal quality in their presentations. That way all audiences can be happy all the time with all versions. Thanks George/AJ :wink:

pulls his Inquiry Axe off the wall and begins to sharpen it on his mental grindstone

What to ask? WildC.A.T.S coming to DCU? ETA on the remainder of the Filmation library hitting the service? When will Ruby Spears Superman fly under our banner? So many tasty tidbits of tantalizing intellectual inquiries!

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Love that you guys will be doing this. Going to have to make sure I come up with a REAL good question now.

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Great idea! Kudos to whomever thought of it!

goes off to think of some questions

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@merpbert Okay, you GOTTA tell me about the office Halloween costumes last year.

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Ok I will get my 5 questions together.

@Rob

I read in the forum how the various platforms has different functionalities. It seems some platforms can’t see links as links. And Browser can do things not available in the app.

Many of the platforms are UNIX based. XBOX is not.

Is there an attempt to have one main version which has some stubs which are changed for each platform, which you copy and then remove or add functionality?

Or are there versions for each platform?

What software development tools does your team use?

@SiegeHey

As for the collections lead, are you considering being video comics collections as well?
All the episodes across multiple series where Zatanna or Green Arrow is a main character, for example.

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@DC_Joe
Since the original “Who’s Who and What’s What” is in the service, any chance of including those characters and there encyclopedic information in their entries? Seems a good way to flesh out ang grow the library quickly.

Also, for the next Meta Madhouse, can you make sure all the characters in the brackets are in the encyclopedia before it begins? (Hoppy The Marvel Bunny got hosed last year. It was very difficult to find info on him prior to his bracket matchups.)

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For Applejack…you left the last Office Hours in a cliffhanger…HOW DID THE PENNYWISE PRANK GO? Can we see pics?

For @DC_Joe,

For the past year I’ve been submitting article drafts to you, and they later end up in the news section. I’m curious, is there an assembly line process that happens between me hitting the “send” button and you hitting the “publish” button? Does anything interesting happen to my drafts after I send them?

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DCU team! Say One nice thing to everyone else on your team! And if you want list one anecdote about a memory with that person.

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@DC_Hal
Congratulations on Year One! It’s been a great year!
What are some of the biggest moments/accomplishments you and your team are celebrating as you look back on Year One?

@Rob
Hello! From a technical perspective, what was the most challenging part of the DCU platform to develop or enhance?

@DCU_Joe
I love all of the news articles and the Encyclopedia! What is the best way to request a new entry for the Encyclopedia?

@TBD Username/Robin
Hello! Which event or announcement had the most news/notifications/coordination? For example, was it the Meta Madhouse? Young Justice? Swamp Thing? Sweepstakes? etc.

@TBD Username/Halo
I love the newsletters. Your job sounds really fun! What’s the most fun part of your job?

@SiegeHey
I love the collections and we love you DC Santa!!! Thanks for making so many people happy with the Community Heroes packages!
What was the most time-consuming collection to pull together?

@merpbert
I think you’re doing a fantastic job because the art on this site stunning!

  1. Did you have an office Halloween costume contest last year? If you did, what was the winning costume?
  2. Are you having a Halloween costume contest this year?

@Applejack
Thanks for coordinating this very special Office Hours!

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@DC_Hal
Where do you see DCU in five years?
What responsibility, if any do you see DCU as the source and gatekeeper for DC’s history and legacy?
Will you be curating more content? (The Titans “Binge” was fantastic.)
With the interest in the Shazam spotlight. Is more of this type of original content coming our way?
Your thoughts on repackaging DC Daily interviews with various creators, such as all the Marv Wolfman & George Perez interviews in a single “doco”/Spotlight, for example?

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How soon will we be hearing about what you folks have planned for New York City Comic Con?

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Heads up, everyone! We will also be joined by @BooBooKitty, one of the most lovely graphic designers you’ll ever meet! She arguably has one of the best decorated desks, to boot :heart_eyes_cat:

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@SiegeHey - Thank you for all the hard work you do, without question the collections section is my most used and most favorite part of the entire experience. What story lines can we expect in the future? How often would you questimate you’ll be adding new ones? Will there be a new way to search story lines in a future update?

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@DCU Joe

There is a great series of articles

Where to Start Reading
By Joshua Lapin-Bertone

Often new members ask for the best intro to a character and I would like to have a way of getting them to the article quickly and easily

Six of the articles are already up in Browse Get to Know

Dick Grayson
Supergirl
Superman
The Flash
The Teen Titans
Wonder Woman

Could the other Start Reading articles be added the same way.

Until recently News was not indexed. Even now it appears only recent News shows up in Search. Could all Start Reading Articles be indexed as well?

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