Hey Poochie, It Looks Like You've Got Something to Say

Yup, I certainly do.

I promise this letter from the editor won't end like the one on Deadspin a couple days ago, well...unless they make me an offer (haymang@yahoo.com).

This weekend we held the 1st ever BertFlex Summer Conference over at The Good Face's house (thanks to TGF, and especially Lady Good Face, for allowing us on the premises). Somehow, with a bunch of our staff and friends of the site on hand, nothing was burned or broken, and no one lost an eye. The first phase of the party had some BBQ, chips, cupcakes, booze, and wiffleball. That led to a bunch of sweaty guys piling in TGF's basement to watch Anchorman. After a short break, I grabbed my gavel, and we got down to business.

For the past couple months, a few of us have been talking about ways to expand the BertFlex brand. This includes readership (which I'm confident enough to say we are in the teens now...the days of us having 6 or 7 readers are gone), along with the beginning of a serious journalism blog focusing on baseball. Also, we've been talking about new features and ideas for this beautiful little site you're looking at right now. We've had some email discussions together, but I felt like we needed to set aside one big night to talk about the future of our website and where we are heading with this thing. So TGF organized the event over at his house, I threw together an agenda, and we were ready to talk turkey, brother.

I won't go into a ton of details because 1) we are still in the research/development stage of the stuff we talked about and 2) we like to be lazy and some of our ideas may never pan out - ha! Oh crap, I said that out loud. But here are some examples of things to look forward to over the next few months:

-The return of Maltliquorman (I'm putting myself out on a limb here, but I have faith)
-More tournaments - the last one went over really well
-The development of Seeing Eye Strikeout, the new baseball blog featuring interviews, analysis, research, and comedy. And no damn cursing??!!
-Cardinal Blogger Appreciation Month (BAM!)
-The BertFlex MySpace page (we'll let you know when it's up)
-Joining BallHype's Network...if they like our site
-Some form of site redesign
-Lots of BertFlex-sponsored events where we'll take pictures of us looking like idiots.

Like I said, there are some other things in motion, but when the time is right we'll unleash the fury on you.

That's where we stand for now. It was a highly productive meeting and I'm glad everyone on staff is on the same page. We have appreciated your support since the re-birth back in January, including the new people we've met along the way, and of course the hardcore 6 or 7 people who have followed our journey since November '05.