Howdy,
On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Jerry Mouton wrote:
> How many entrants run at a typical event in your local
> region, Mark?
4.
:-)
Ok, seriously... Around 100. But we run registration and the event a
little differently. Registration opens at 8am and closes at 10am, so
we're pumping 100 people through in 2 hours. With the longer time that
you folks have registration open, I think you'd have a similar # of
registerents per hour. Again, the computer entry portion doesn't seem to
be the longest thing you do during registration, so it doesn't add any
real time to the registration process for the event (of course, it does
add 30 seconds to each individual's time, but since it happens in parallel
to the rest, it doesn't affect throughput).
> Again, who would do all this in SFR? Is registration data entry a signup
> work assignment? Or is there someone who is there at every event
> early in the morning, dedicated to make this work?
In our case, I think there's a chief of the computer type guy who does it.
However, its not like data entry can't be taught. No reason it couldn't
be a work assignment.
> Who would you see handling the merge of databases? Is your
> experience of database merge that it typically just runs, no problem?
Sure! You mean that database merging is ever an issue? :-) (I work as an
MIS-type during the day...)
I really think you could do it on one system. If you couldn't, two would
easily be enough. With only two databases, the merge is relatively easy.
You'd obviously need to have a couple things to make it work well. #1
would be a t&s program that could either handle doing a merge (unlikely)
or that talks to a database that can facilitate doing a merge (pretty
likely). #2 would be someone to setup a merge program that would toss out
duplicates for manual intervention and/or someone to run the merge.
Given where you guys run, I find it pretty hard to believe that you
wouldn't have geeks jump all over each other for the easy work assignment
:-)
> the several. Of course, SFR might have an easier time, but again, we'd
> be under extreme time pressure, and the event would depend on
> completion of the merge in the 10 minutes between start of the
> drivers' meeting and beginning of run group 1 -- without failure.
There's no reason you can't close registration for the morning run groups
a half hour before the driver's meeting, but what you're saying makes
perfect sense. Certainly at the beginning of something like this, you'd
need to run a paper system like you do now as a backup at an absolute
minimum.
> And, online database update continuously during the day as new people
> showed up and registered.
This would be more "interesting" :-)
My recommendation would be to use one computer, close registration for
morning run groups, hand that database over, then capture afternoon run
groups to a different database. I.e. each database sees "registration"
and then "timing" in that order. If you wanna complicate my life and
allow either group to register in the morning, keep seperate database
starting at the beginning.
> Sounds a lot tougher to me than it does to you!
My post was only to indicate that plenty of people do it, not that you
should. SFR should decide what makes sense to them and then run with it.
As you folks are fond of saying, you're the biggest region in the country
and sometimes need to work a little differently than everyone else.
It does seem like computerizing earlier would make getting data back to
the web a fair amount easier, calculating pax classes on the fly, etc.
Not trying to stir up trouble. Just pointing out what I've seen other
folks do.
Mark
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