I see some comments about feeling relieved that Adam's replacement is Joe Starr. I know nothing about this guy but it appears his only experience is as a stand up comic and writer of comedy sketches. I don't see how this qualifies him for that position. Maybe I missed something in his background but this seems like a huge mistake to me and I am deeply concerned about the direction of the company.
I see some comments about feeling relieved that Adam's replacement is Joe Starr. I know nothing about this guy but it appears his only experience is as a stand up comic and writer of comedy sketches. I don't see how this qualifies him for that position. Maybe I missed something in his background but this seems like a huge mistake to me and I am deeply concerned about the direction of the company.
Joe is to be Director of Content: this was/is not Adam's position. My impression from yesterday's video is that they are somewhat restructuring some of the positions at the top. Note: they did not say this, I am inferring it from what was said, and I could very well be wrong. It sounded to me like much of what Joe will be doing will be what Todd was doing, plus handling the Developer's update or whatever takes its place. Joe was the producer for the Hamilton spoof special developer update last year, and he has done some live streams and other creative work for Fandom (including honest trailers). All that is to say that while he may be taking over some of Adam's tasks as a public face for DDB, I didn't hear anything yesterday that indicated that Joe would be taking over the rest of Adam's portfolio; what I heard indicated to me that his work will cover much of what Todd was doing.
I see some comments about feeling relieved that Adam's replacement is Joe Starr. I know nothing about this guy but it appears his only experience is as a stand up comic and writer of comedy sketches. I don't see how this qualifies him for that position. Maybe I missed something in his background but this seems like a huge mistake to me and I am deeply concerned about the direction of the company.
Joe is to be Director of Content: this was/is not Adam's position. My impression from yesterday's video is that they are somewhat restructuring some of the positions at the top. Note: they did not say this, I am inferring it from what was said, and I could very well be wrong. It sounded to me like much of what Joe will be doing will be what Todd was doing, plus handling the Developer's update or whatever takes its place. Joe was the producer for the Hamilton spoof special developer update last year, and he has done some live streams and other creative work for Fandom (including honest trailers). All that is to say that while he may be taking over some of Adam's tasks as a public face for DDB, I didn't hear anything yesterday that indicated that Joe would be taking over the rest of Adam's portfolio; what I heard indicated to me that his work will cover much of what Todd was doing.
So who is leading development then? Wasn't Adam involved in that part of the company? I know he had technical experience as he could speak to the tech. details in the Dev updates.
I see some comments about feeling relieved that Adam's replacement is Joe Starr. I know nothing about this guy but it appears his only experience is as a stand up comic and writer of comedy sketches. I don't see how this qualifies him for that position. Maybe I missed something in his background but this seems like a huge mistake to me and I am deeply concerned about the direction of the company.
According to a wiki ( https://honest-trailers.fandom.com/wiki/Joe_Starr ) he's been a Creative Producer for Fandom since 2019. So it's not "bringing someone in" and is instead just "giving a promotion" to him. Although that would qualify him as replacement for Todd, not so much for Adam. So, I don't know. Maybe there are skills he has and just never showed to public? Or maybe Adam's title didn't match his actual job description? They do seem like very different roles but could be similar for all I really know.
Since there's too much I don't know and what little I do know doesn't match up I can't say this makes me very optimistic. Then again, I don't know this person and for all I know they could be absolutely perfect for the job. Let's just hope for that?
I guess we'll see.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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I see some comments about feeling relieved that Adam's replacement is Joe Starr. I know nothing about this guy but it appears his only experience is as a stand up comic and writer of comedy sketches. I don't see how this qualifies him for that position. Maybe I missed something in his background but this seems like a huge mistake to me and I am deeply concerned about the direction of the company.
Joe is to be Director of Content: this was/is not Adam's position. My impression from yesterday's video is that they are somewhat restructuring some of the positions at the top. Note: they did not say this, I am inferring it from what was said, and I could very well be wrong. It sounded to me like much of what Joe will be doing will be what Todd was doing, plus handling the Developer's update or whatever takes its place. Joe was the producer for the Hamilton spoof special developer update last year, and he has done some live streams and other creative work for Fandom (including honest trailers). All that is to say that while he may be taking over some of Adam's tasks as a public face for DDB, I didn't hear anything yesterday that indicated that Joe would be taking over the rest of Adam's portfolio; what I heard indicated to me that his work will cover much of what Todd was doing.
So who is leading development then? Wasn't Adam involved in that part of the company? I know he had technical experience as he could speak to the tech. details in the Dev updates.
Oh, so I guess Joe really was Todd's replacement not Adam's?
That makes more sense but like Optimus I now wonder who is replacing Adam? I mean isn't that the more important role when discussing the future stability of a company that heavily relies on development?
This shit's confusing. We shouldn't be confused at this stage. O.o
D&D Beyond's just becoming more and more of a mess recently. *sigh*
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
I see some comments about feeling relieved that Adam's replacement is Joe Starr. I know nothing about this guy but it appears his only experience is as a stand up comic and writer of comedy sketches. I don't see how this qualifies him for that position. Maybe I missed something in his background but this seems like a huge mistake to me and I am deeply concerned about the direction of the company.
Joe is to be Director of Content: this was/is not Adam's position. My impression from yesterday's video is that they are somewhat restructuring some of the positions at the top. Note: they did not say this, I am inferring it from what was said, and I could very well be wrong. It sounded to me like much of what Joe will be doing will be what Todd was doing, plus handling the Developer's update or whatever takes its place. Joe was the producer for the Hamilton spoof special developer update last year, and he has done some live streams and other creative work for Fandom (including honest trailers). All that is to say that while he may be taking over some of Adam's tasks as a public face for DDB, I didn't hear anything yesterday that indicated that Joe would be taking over the rest of Adam's portfolio; what I heard indicated to me that his work will cover much of what Todd was doing.
So who is leading development then? Wasn't Adam involved in that part of the company? I know he had technical experience as he could speak to the tech. details in the Dev updates.
Oh, so I guess Joe really was Todd's replacement not Adam's?
That makes more sense but like Optimus I now wonder who is replacing Adam? I mean isn't that the more important role when discussing the future stability of a company that heavily relies on development?
This shit's confusing. We shouldn't be confused at this stage. O.o
D&D Beyond's just becoming more and more of a mess recently. *sigh*
Yeah maybe they are still working on an internal replacement for Adam on the development side? I honestly do not know what the structure is currently.
I would like to know who is in charge of development if we can. Since Adam would routinely discuss the development side of things he had a knack for simplifying it and making it easy to understand. I think that is because he had programmer experience.
As long as people keep paying to dance here, the company will continue to exist. The DJ started playing tunes that don’t skip, so people seem to have stopped talking about not dancing here. And, knowing how things tend to happen, whoever inherits Adam’s chair will also inherit Adams plans for developing this site which have been going on for a while and likely have a ways to go yet. Therefore, unless that person decides to do something abysmally foolish like flush all of that and start over with a new plan on day one, then I think things will be fine. At least, everything will likely be fine until the stuff already planned starts getting crossed off to the degree where the new persons plans start to become implemented, and then it will be a matter of how good their ideas will be then. But again, unless that person makes some ridiculous decisions, which I doubt, everything should still be fine.
I got the impression from the last video that these moves have been in the works for a bit longer than we've known about them, which makes sense. Adam's more direct replacement has probably already been selected, but my guess is they're wanting to roll out the announcements one at a time so everyone can get more of a focused introduction. He said more of these announcements would be coming throughout the next couple of weeks, so I think it's fair to give them some degree of the benefit of the doubt for now. Since Joe seems to be filling the roles that Todd and James held to a large degree, it makes sense to do his introduction first now that they're both already gone.
One of two things is true. Things will either be the same if not better, or things will not. Knowing which of those things it will be right now does not give me, the consumer, any advantage over waiting to know two weeks from now. If you need to purchase a new book right now for your game that starts in two weeks, I can understand being a bit anxious about whether or not you want to continue to invest in this platform, but after seeing that video, I have plenty of confidence that the integrity of the site isn't going to see any detrimental change. That's just my opinion though. I just think that if Adam weren't as community-facing as he has been, he could have probably stepped away with no one even noticing.
I like that Joe Starr is taking over content, he's a good guy, funny, and fits right into the host role. I also wouldn't be surprised if we don't see Adam's replacement on the dev side of the house. Some people are better at development than they are at publicly speaking in front of thousands of people.
I'm rewatching the replay on YouTube (which they just uploaded about 10-minutes ago). I'll come back and update once I find it, but I remember Adam mentioning the name Dave Hartless as it pertains to development.
I just did a quick Google search on the name and found his LinkedIn profile, where he started with Curse as a Software Engineering Manager in February of 2012, or nine years ago, and has been the Vice President of Engineering at Fandom for the past four months. I didn't place the name initially, but I do remember seeing him last year on one of the Dev Updates:
"There's not going to be one person coming in to replace Adam, there's going to be a Joe stepping in to really take control of content. There are going to be other people that you're going to learn more about in the coming weeks who are working with Product and Vision. And, of course you know, everyone's met Dave Hartless before, who's now the VP of engineering here at Fandom for tabletop."
Adam continues for about two minutes, then gives way to Joe at the 23:38 mark, who shares that "more change is coming." Including "bringing in some new hosts," and "trying some new things."
The real meat of the stream really begins at that 21:21 mark. Anyone who missed the stream yesterday, or didn't stick around for the whole thing, would really benefit from watching those last six minutes or so.
Another point to consider, and forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn here, but Adam started DDB out of his love for D&D. Just because he won't be working at Fandom any longer probably doesn't mean he won't be playing D&D anymore. Which means he'll probably still be a DDB user.
I can't speak for him, but I know that if I were to start a successful platform meant to streamline my favorite hobby, and then I were to eventually go on to do other things, you can bet I'd still be interested in the progress and development of the thing that I started and still use on a regular basis. And having intimate knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes, I'd be particularly upset if my user experience were to decline. Admittedly, there wouldn't be anything I could do at that point to directly fix it, but I'd imagine I'd still have friends there and that my perspective would still hold some degree of value. But that's just me making pure speculation about a hypothetical situation I'll probably never actually be in, but I think it makes sense.
Oh, yeah, we did hear that Dave was taking over Adam's position. I wonder if the format will be the same for the dev update videos, or if it will be a new way to present the content entirely. I'm excited either way.
Dave is the original architect of D&D Beyond and there is nobody I would trust more with the technical direction. ❤️
Like most businesses, Fandom has people join, people leave, people promoted and occasionally has to make structure changes.
As Adam has talked about a few times, the original D&D Beyond team was only a handful of people plus some volunteer moderators.
The team has grown massively since then, both in terms of success and number of people. All that involves some pretty massive changes in structure and process. You just can't manage an entity with 50 people the way you'd manage a team of 5. The global pandemic has made that even more obvious.
As such, whilst Adam has always been the face of D&D Beyond, the visible visionary and the leader, his role too had changed over the years. I'm sure Adam can answer for himself about that, but I can definitely confirm that he's not (nor has he been) a developer for D&D Beyond - he's "just" a really smart, talented guy who isn't afraid to get stuck in to make sure things get done.
My personal belief is that claims D&D Beyond will fail without him are doing Adam a massive injustice - he's spent years of his life on something he passionately believes in and is ensuring we're setup for success after he leaves.
Hope that helps. I'm gonna go make chicken nuggets and fries for dinner. Remember to wash your hands and stay hydrated. 😉
Can we have an org chart of the software team with a break down on current sprint goals for each group and planned features to be implemented for the upcoming quarter?
Can we have an org chart of the software team with a break down on current sprint goals for each group and planned features to be implemented for the upcoming quarter?
;)
Ha!
You can't ask about sprint goals in one phrase, and then ask for "planned features for the upcoming quarter" in another phrase!
I see some comments about feeling relieved that Adam's replacement is Joe Starr. I know nothing about this guy but it appears his only experience is as a stand up comic and writer of comedy sketches. I don't see how this qualifies him for that position. Maybe I missed something in his background but this seems like a huge mistake to me and I am deeply concerned about the direction of the company.
Learn to google better - Firstly Joe is coming in to manage content (not development) so he's very qualified for the position, and secondly, while he's most well known as a Screen Junkies host/writer, he's a ttrpg fan who has been on Parcels & Parsecs and DM'd He Left It Dead. As far as original content goes, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone more suited.
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I Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription January 12th 2023 because of "OGL" 1.1 - Resubscribed 28th of Jan, now the SRD is in CC-BY-4.0
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I see some comments about feeling relieved that Adam's replacement is Joe Starr. I know nothing about this guy but it appears his only experience is as a stand up comic and writer of comedy sketches. I don't see how this qualifies him for that position. Maybe I missed something in his background but this seems like a huge mistake to me and I am deeply concerned about the direction of the company.
Joe is to be Director of Content: this was/is not Adam's position. My impression from yesterday's video is that they are somewhat restructuring some of the positions at the top. Note: they did not say this, I am inferring it from what was said, and I could very well be wrong. It sounded to me like much of what Joe will be doing will be what Todd was doing, plus handling the Developer's update or whatever takes its place. Joe was the producer for the Hamilton spoof special developer update last year, and he has done some live streams and other creative work for Fandom (including honest trailers). All that is to say that while he may be taking over some of Adam's tasks as a public face for DDB, I didn't hear anything yesterday that indicated that Joe would be taking over the rest of Adam's portfolio; what I heard indicated to me that his work will cover much of what Todd was doing.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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So who is leading development then? Wasn't Adam involved in that part of the company? I know he had technical experience as he could speak to the tech. details in the Dev updates.
According to a wiki ( https://honest-trailers.fandom.com/wiki/Joe_Starr ) he's been a Creative Producer for Fandom since 2019. So it's not "bringing someone in" and is instead just "giving a promotion" to him. Although that would qualify him as replacement for Todd, not so much for Adam. So, I don't know. Maybe there are skills he has and just never showed to public? Or maybe Adam's title didn't match his actual job description? They do seem like very different roles but could be similar for all I really know.
Since there's too much I don't know and what little I do know doesn't match up I can't say this makes me very optimistic. Then again, I don't know this person and for all I know they could be absolutely perfect for the job. Let's just hope for that?
I guess we'll see.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Oh, so I guess Joe really was Todd's replacement not Adam's?
That makes more sense but like Optimus I now wonder who is replacing Adam? I mean isn't that the more important role when discussing the future stability of a company that heavily relies on development?
This shit's confusing. We shouldn't be confused at this stage. O.o
D&D Beyond's just becoming more and more of a mess recently. *sigh*
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Yeah maybe they are still working on an internal replacement for Adam on the development side? I honestly do not know what the structure is currently.
I would like to know who is in charge of development if we can. Since Adam would routinely discuss the development side of things he had a knack for simplifying it and making it easy to understand. I think that is because he had programmer experience.
As long as people keep paying to dance here, the company will continue to exist. The DJ started playing tunes that don’t skip, so people seem to have stopped talking about not dancing here. And, knowing how things tend to happen, whoever inherits Adam’s chair will also inherit Adams plans for developing this site which have been going on for a while and likely have a ways to go yet. Therefore, unless that person decides to do something abysmally foolish like flush all of that and start over with a new plan on day one, then I think things will be fine. At least, everything will likely be fine until the stuff already planned starts getting crossed off to the degree where the new persons plans start to become implemented, and then it will be a matter of how good their ideas will be then. But again, unless that person makes some ridiculous decisions, which I doubt, everything should still be fine.
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I got the impression from the last video that these moves have been in the works for a bit longer than we've known about them, which makes sense. Adam's more direct replacement has probably already been selected, but my guess is they're wanting to roll out the announcements one at a time so everyone can get more of a focused introduction. He said more of these announcements would be coming throughout the next couple of weeks, so I think it's fair to give them some degree of the benefit of the doubt for now. Since Joe seems to be filling the roles that Todd and James held to a large degree, it makes sense to do his introduction first now that they're both already gone.
One of two things is true. Things will either be the same if not better, or things will not. Knowing which of those things it will be right now does not give me, the consumer, any advantage over waiting to know two weeks from now. If you need to purchase a new book right now for your game that starts in two weeks, I can understand being a bit anxious about whether or not you want to continue to invest in this platform, but after seeing that video, I have plenty of confidence that the integrity of the site isn't going to see any detrimental change. That's just my opinion though. I just think that if Adam weren't as community-facing as he has been, he could have probably stepped away with no one even noticing.
I like that Joe Starr is taking over content, he's a good guy, funny, and fits right into the host role. I also wouldn't be surprised if we don't see Adam's replacement on the dev side of the house. Some people are better at development than they are at publicly speaking in front of thousands of people.
I'm rewatching the replay on YouTube (which they just uploaded about 10-minutes ago). I'll come back and update once I find it, but I remember Adam mentioning the name Dave Hartless as it pertains to development.
I just did a quick Google search on the name and found his LinkedIn profile, where he started with Curse as a Software Engineering Manager in February of 2012, or nine years ago, and has been the Vice President of Engineering at Fandom for the past four months. I didn't place the name initially, but I do remember seeing him last year on one of the Dev Updates:
D&D Beyond Dev Update - Tech Talk with Dave Hartless (15:21)
* Note: The "Tech Talk' portion begins at the 5:33 mark.
Found it!
At the 21:21 mark, Adam starts:
Adam continues for about two minutes, then gives way to Joe at the 23:38 mark, who shares that "more change is coming." Including "bringing in some new hosts," and "trying some new things."
The real meat of the stream really begins at that 21:21 mark. Anyone who missed the stream yesterday, or didn't stick around for the whole thing, would really benefit from watching those last six minutes or so.
Another point to consider, and forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn here, but Adam started DDB out of his love for D&D. Just because he won't be working at Fandom any longer probably doesn't mean he won't be playing D&D anymore. Which means he'll probably still be a DDB user.
I can't speak for him, but I know that if I were to start a successful platform meant to streamline my favorite hobby, and then I were to eventually go on to do other things, you can bet I'd still be interested in the progress and development of the thing that I started and still use on a regular basis. And having intimate knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes, I'd be particularly upset if my user experience were to decline. Admittedly, there wouldn't be anything I could do at that point to directly fix it, but I'd imagine I'd still have friends there and that my perspective would still hold some degree of value. But that's just me making pure speculation about a hypothetical situation I'll probably never actually be in, but I think it makes sense.
Oh, yeah, we did hear that Dave was taking over Adam's position. I wonder if the format will be the same for the dev update videos, or if it will be a new way to present the content entirely. I'm excited either way.
I missed the stream so I did not hear that so thats good information. Was Dave on the original team? or was he part of Fandom?
See dmw17’s post above. Dave Hartless has been with DDB from the beginning.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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Oh cool must have missed that part
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D&D Beyond FoundersDave is the original architect of D&D Beyond and there is nobody I would trust more with the technical direction. ❤️
Like most businesses, Fandom has people join, people leave, people promoted and occasionally has to make structure changes.
As Adam has talked about a few times, the original D&D Beyond team was only a handful of people plus some volunteer moderators.
The team has grown massively since then, both in terms of success and number of people. All that involves some pretty massive changes in structure and process. You just can't manage an entity with 50 people the way you'd manage a team of 5. The global pandemic has made that even more obvious.
As such, whilst Adam has always been the face of D&D Beyond, the visible visionary and the leader, his role too had changed over the years. I'm sure Adam can answer for himself about that, but I can definitely confirm that he's not (nor has he been) a developer for D&D Beyond - he's "just" a really smart, talented guy who isn't afraid to get stuck in to make sure things get done.
My personal belief is that claims D&D Beyond will fail without him are doing Adam a massive injustice - he's spent years of his life on something he passionately believes in and is ensuring we're setup for success after he leaves.
Hope that helps. I'm gonna go make chicken nuggets and fries for dinner. Remember to wash your hands and stay hydrated. 😉
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"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Can we have an org chart of the software team with a break down on current sprint goals for each group and planned features to be implemented for the upcoming quarter?
;)
Ha!
You can't ask about sprint goals in one phrase, and then ask for "planned features for the upcoming quarter" in another phrase!
Sure I can, I took the upper management feat.
Learn to google better - Firstly Joe is coming in to manage content (not development) so he's very qualified for the position, and secondly, while he's most well known as a Screen Junkies host/writer, he's a ttrpg fan who has been on Parcels & Parsecs and DM'd He Left It Dead. As far as original content goes, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone more suited.
I Cancelled my Master Tier Subscription January 12th 2023 because of "OGL" 1.1 - Resubscribed 28th of Jan, now the SRD is in CC-BY-4.0