Discussion: Local meet pre-registration

I realize some clubs are using similar web form solutions to work to pre-register runners for local meets but I thought I would share our solution that can be easily modified or modeled after for your club. As it is only intended to be a temporary solution the best that can be said about it is the it is free and functional.

You can find a demo site of the system used by ROC  [HERE] and links to an explanation and documentation of how to use and save a copy of the google docs form.

We have been using this for about half our season and have gotten to a bit over half the total entrants pre-registered for the event. Hopefully as it becomes more of a habit that number grows just a bit but even first timers have been able to use the system no problem. Even with just 50% pre-entered anyone who has to enter the runner in the system is quite happy with half the job already done before the meet begins. Questions or comments are best directed here.

I used google docs to preregister a score-o here in DVOA land recently, and it is certainly easy and effective (not to mention cheap). The main issue was losing the normal epunch information regarding missing runners. With a mass start, it's even worse as there is no start box to read if necessary. But even in a typical local meet, we assume that people that register at the start actually do start. With pre-registration, you never know who doesn't show. I suppose if everyone still had to report to the epunch table and check-in, even if they are pre-registered, you could mark them as present without having to type names, etc.. But, we're up to a point in ecard ownership level now that most club members that attend local meets have their own ecard in the archive, which makes epunch registration a one-click operation anyway.
For newcomers and non-club members, getting pre-registration info is much more useful--but probably also harder to get a high participation rate.
That's all epunch stuff. The non-epunch registration, like paying, signing waivers, and providing vehicle information (for those times people leave without telling anyone) seems to be harder to move completely online.

Can't you check people off when you issue them a map? Or are they just taking maps from a pile?

One thing I found peculiar about the ROC system is that it asks for age rather than year-of-birth.

Paying should be a breeze, with Paypal/Google Checkout (prepayment) and Square (onsite).

For all preregistered, we suggest a stack of waivers with pre-filled names. When they show up, have them sign it; the waiver then serves as the tracking piece of paper. If the waiver is in the signed box, assume they showed up and are on the course, and launch a search party if they are not back. If it's not signed by the time registration closes, destroy it and don't worry.

JJ--just taking from a pile of maps--often self-service...
I hadn't heard of Square, but it was only a matter of time with everything in the world becoming an "app". Collecting cash doesn't seem to be a labor problem, but there are a couple times I recall forgetting to check my wallet for cash and showing up at a local meet with only my credit card.
As for the tracking of runners, one ought to consider the type of meet. I assumed the ROC system was aimed at local meets like those that are held weekly in these parts. Anything that reduces workload of volunteers is a good thing, which might include pre-registration under certain conditions. Without pre-registration now, keeping track of runners in the woods is as simple as bringing up the "missing runners" report in OE2010/2003. Something like pre-printing waivers the night before the event, then using them to track who showed up sounds like more work than the labor saved through pre-registration (again, assuming epunch is used).
One possible solution might be to better use the reading of check, clear, or start boxes. For some reason, it has always been an unreliable and painful thing to do with our equipment, so we try to avoid it if we can. But if it were easy/reliable, and everyone (including pre-registrants) all used the same Check box which was periodically read into the event, we could track runners with no extra steps required by the runners, less crowding around the registration table, and only a bit more/different work by the epunch crew.

I can't imagine the 20 minutes I spend on printing pre-registered waivers is more work than a typical registration crew spends entering data from hand-written, illegible forms into SI.

Agree 100% with T/D. I recently developed a mostly-automated process that uses RMOC's pre-registration database to pre-print start-cards* and generate an Entries import file for OE2003. I'd say about 90% of our participants do pre-register, so the e-punch crew has to do manual data entry for only a small number of runners. RMOC's usual e-punch volunteers report that this has been a huge time-saver.

*Participants pick up their pre-printed start-cards at the registration table when they pay and sign our waiver. Anyone who didn't pre-register fills out a start-card by hand. Anyone who wants to make a change to their pre-printed start-card can do that by hand (changing from Red to Green or whatever). Each runner hands over their card to the starter when they get their map, as proof that they paid and signed the waiver. Also, the starter writes the approximate start time on each card, as a backup. The starter periodically hands over a stack of cards to the e-punch crew, in case they need to do any manual data-entry or course changes. At the end of the start window, any pre-printed start cards that are unclaimed at the registration table get marked as "DNS" in OE2003's Evaluate Chips screen, so that those people aren't shown to be still out on the course if they actually never started after all.

This has been working pretty well for RMOC's local meets so far this year. Our online pre-registration form is something I hacked together on my own, and I still need to add options for online payment and printable waiver...

The current DVOA system certainly has some ways it could be improved, but for a while now we've been entirely paperless for epunch purposes. For the non-epunch registration, there is a printed "express registration list" for club members that just requires a signature for legal purposes. Non-club members fill out a few extra fields on a form that doesn't go to epunch. Most of the runners either have their own epunch or are in the archive, which in either case eliminates typing any names. For the newcomers, we just have them say (in some cases spell) their names. The handwriting on start cards was often so bad, we had to do that anyway, so we just dropped the card part to save a tree. (Though, obviously, pre-registration would largely solve that part of the problem)
It would clearly depend on the relative ratios of club members to non members, but in our case I don't think those 20 minutes of printing start cards would result in a net savings of time. And for other reasons, I would like to see us remain as paperless as possible.
But I think this is a good discussion to see what other club's best practices are. It's always a topic of discussion around here and we frequently experiment with alternatives.