Good mornin' Peda' Pushers! Ol ' Curly is up and ready to go this mornin'. He's had 4 solid hours of takin' a sleep and now it's time to get serious about race promotin'.
As you can see... the final design for this year's Des Moines crit t-shirt is off to print. The fine folks at JAMS Screenprinting in Chattanooga, TN are gonna get to printin' for us after they finish up at the Waffle House.
I thought I spend some time talking about Race Promotin' this week and the lack of REAL resources for new promoters to learn the craft.
There is a lack of resources for new promoters to learn how to put on a bike race properly... there ya go...
Anywho... Hope you had a good weekend... Remember, July 2nd I will reveal some shocking news and by July 13th I'll show you the new creative project Curly has been working on... Here's a shadow of a spoiler tho... just to keep you coming back. There will be t-shirts, new logos, new content and a shocking concept... never been done before that's for sure.
Your trainin': Get ready for the Des Moines Criterium... that finishing straight isn't flat. See if you can spot the enhancement in the address bar... a hint. It should say "www.coachcurly.com"
Monday, June 18, 2007
Couple weeks to go now...
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12 comments:
Will there be an T-shirt option for the 35- crowd? Not sure I can support the race wearing a "Masters" t-shirt since I don't qualify.
you'll always be "old" in my book
The USCFeds don't do too much for promoters, do they? Too busy courtin' juniors and trying to seize credit for any pro who makes it to Europe, at least until they get caught doping.
Do you use an online reg service? Why aren't the feds providing this for free? They already have everyone's personal info and CC numbers, and are responsible for results, so why do we have to pay $2.40/rider to bikereg? That's almost $1500 for a successful event, just for prereg. How much is your total budget to pay the officials? Probably less than that.
Sorry to be using your hallowed blog to serve up my rant, but I'm trying to spread this around the country.
Good luck with your promotion.
That's funny... you did a post about the USCF not too long ago... I'm with you. They can do a better job than charge money and have a website... and give your address away to 3rd parties...
4 letters... OBRA
Hit up Joe Holmes for some tips. He's been doing it for a while and has the same view-point you do.
From a technology perspective, we need to build a portal on WSBA's data and allow for registration, entry of results, digital waivers, etc. Criminale runs the data today - I wonder how many programmers WSBA has in its ranks to make that happen.
zee-ro
WSBA data are not "run" in-house. WSBA provides promoters with a file of all WSBA members. If you could see the poor and inconsistent state of most results submitted to the WSBA, you'd know there's no way WSBA wants to open up that "portal." Make a plan, bring it to the WSBA meeting in November. And be sure to bring along a cadre of dedicated folks who will stay on top of their tasks all year long and not lag when work or family or cycling get in the way. The WSBA sends a rep to a Local Assoc. meeting at USAC in Oct/Nov; articulate needs and wishes and wants so they can be passed along. Email me if you wanna know more.
I don't mean to under-state the effort that goes into managing the results. I think what exists today is a great starting point for what could be a rather impressive system. Just need to research it a little.
Did your district secede? Congrats if you did. Remember about ten years ago when there was talk of a nationwide masters secession? I thought it was crazy then, but now I see the wisdom. We have nothing to do with the programs run from C-Springs.
As for results, like I said, the chief judge is responsible for them, so why not have them get them posted too?
The kinds of things I'd like to see the Feds provide to promoters, besides timing equipment and personnel (why do we have to hire a 3rd party for that?), would be stuff like bar-coded licenses and portable readers like they have at Hertz. Then at registration they just zip you in and you're done, and results have complete info, with license numbers attached. I know it will happen someday, probably when I'm buzzard meat.
No, no, Martaint didn't piss me off...we all wish things could be better. We'll have barcode readers at bike races when we have someone on staff to repair them and get them to races and a guaranteed power source at every race and riders who remember to bring their licenses. Technology is great when it works but a nightmare when it doesn't. "Keep it simple" is still a pretty wise mantra.
Before I go design all this - a couple questions for Curly:
1. Would people really pre-reg? I know it's easier for the promoters, but apart from big stage races or TTs, how much pre-reg is there really?
2. What would the expectation be from a Promoter standpoint for users who sign-up day of race? The system would need to capture that info as well, but short of having a wi-fi laptop at the start line how would you plan to enforce that?
3. How do we handle out of state racers?
4. How do we handle races with different Masters Age designations (30+ vs 35+)?
5. Payment - do we make each promoter sign up to be a Amazon.com seller? Do we have everybody pay WSBA and they cut checks to promoters?
6 (the big one) Would promoters actually use a standard results tool if prescribed to them? It's easy enough to read in a .CSV file or XML, but unless all the promoters use the same tools for scoring the likelihood of that is slim.
Man... you sound like my IT dept. All technical and stuff.
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