Discussion: Invitation/ OUSA Web Committee Planning Call/ December 7th @ 8pm Eastern time

All,

As discussed in the AGM the web committee relaunched our website continuing to add functionality. Since then we have been working on a new database management system, event registration and rankings.

As we continue to work on and wrap up these projects, we want to take a moment and ask "What's next?"

The web committee invites you to a conference call on Wednesday, December 7th at 8pm eastern time. All are welcome but the focus of this call is "future projects and how they should be prioritized."

If you would like to participate in this call we would love to have you. Just send me an email at gjs@orienteeringusa.org and I will give you instructions on how to join.

Please note that we use Free Conference.com. In this service you are responsible for your minutes.

Have a good weekend.

Glen Schorr
Web Committee Chair (among other jobs)

This phone conference has been rescheduled to Wednesday, December 21st at 8 PM EST.

Please let Glen know (see e-mail above) if you would like to be included on the call, so he can send you the call-in information.

Is participating in the conference simply a matter of using a phone number to call in? Or is an internet connection needed?

Just a dial in. You do pay for your own minutes.

Not if one uses a landline -- unless it is not a toll-free number. :-)

(I pay a flat monthly rate for mine)

It isn't a toll-free number.

From Glen:

In preparation for tomorow nights town hall, the web committee
brainstormed a variety of projects moving foward. I would ask all of
you to give some consideration about what are

+ Must do in the next 90 days
+ Must do in 2012
+ Nice to do in 2012

Note that items marked with an asterisk are in progress

+ Conversion to new database*
+ Rankings
+ Calendar
+ Event Registration - B and C meets*
+ Results depositor - Current
+ Results depositor - Historic
+ E commerce
+ Event Registration/ Database integration
+ 3rd party supporter
+ Giant contact database
+ Forum
+ On line training/ webinar, ask an expert
+ Analytics*
+ Downloadable training materials
+ Members only section
+ Blog
+ Media center
+ Portal to videos, photos,
+ Profiles/ Social Media/ Community
+ Results and rankings over time
+ live chats
+ Meet director resource guide
+ Permanent coursg datbase
+ ONA library w/ searchable PDF's*
+ Conversion to Drupal 7

Note that the conversion to a new OUSA membership database is in progress. If anyone is interested in interfacing with that database (software developers, third party operators who want to use their own registration system) via, say a REST API, the meeting tomorrow would be a good place to speak up.

Yes! REST API! Please. I'm not sure why I would speak up—I have said several times what it is that I want, and the Committee seems to know that.

I don't know how carefully the decision makers on the committee read everything on attackpoint, so hopefully you have contacted them by other means as well. Just to clarify - I'm not on the committee myself anymore (and am thus not privy to their planning), but am potentially interested in an API and am looking for more to speak up and support it, as my potential use case is a year or two off which wouldn't be enough to sway any opinions.

Do I have to sit through a meeting that mostly does not concern my item of interest, or can I just email someone the two links above?

(** edit **) I emailed Glen.

I will try and call in to echo what Vlad is saying. Any API to at least query OUSA member numbers would be great. A really good API that tied together all the OUSA datasources (membership, ranking, etc) would be awesome. I will also continue to point to the IOF rankings API as an example of how such a system can help registrars.

Start small and keep going... otherwise it'll never get done.

"REST API" = ??

Thanks guys.

Let me ask the questions a devil's advocate would, so Vlad needn't unnecessarily waste his time on the phone with the REST of us ... why it would be in OUSA's interest to spend precious time/$ helping companies/registrars who have decided not to use the OUSA-supported EventReg system for event registrations? Is the lack of a publicly available API going to limit the growth of orienteering in some way and if so, how?

When EventReg is able to handle teams, please let us know!

Ah - so that should be added to the "must do in 2012" list preferably ...

It'll be much easier to implement the REST API than to implement team logic correctly. With teams, your state space explodes. Given that it took about a decade to get a simple individual-based system up for general access, I'd see about twice as long for teams, which represent a fraction of your customers.

If your motivation is keeping all data in house, just say so. We are very much interested in having our data in our database, so switching to EventReg would be a definite no-go.

So your last comment makes it pretty clear that you won't be using EventReg whether or not team-reg capabilities are added.

I'd say the goal of the OUSA effort is to make EventReg as useful as possible to the orienteering community, including clubs and 3rd party operators and for all levels (A-, B-, C-) of meets, to help grow the sport and to reduce the workload on all the registrars (and volunteers) involved in organizing events.

Before this gets much further, here's a list of things EventReg does not do and our system does, or is about to do shortly. I'm sure Ed and others can fill up a screen with requests, all of which are specific and unique enough that, when taken separately, make little sense for OUSA to implement.

1. The ability to apply arbitrary discounts. This is key to us. Trail runs around here tailor prices individually. Yield management and loyalty programs work.

2. The ability to bill for arbitrary extra items, such as multiple meals, bus passes, parking passes, park passes, shirts, hoodies, baggies, socks, and igneous rocks.
Note that these can come in an innumerable array of sizes, shapes, and combinations.

3. The ability to register for multiple events and check out in a single transaction.

Trail runs out here handle all of these.

Given 10 or so years that it got OUSA to get the basics done, and that EventReg wasn't available to us as of the time of the last OUSA sanctioned A meet, how long would this take to implement? Who do I talk to who'll do the coding?

It just seems that a REST API would be far quicker to do.

reduce the workload on all the registrars (and volunteers) involved in organizing events

Well, that's almost exactly what is being asked for with the API. Except the impact is more on the user-usability side, but also it's less work for me to manually check the eligibility.

+ metamorphic and sedimentary?

Before I attempt to REST my case, proof that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, even for simple cases, should come from the fact that there are at least two dozen competing run/race/ride registration system on the market right now, more are coming online just about every month, and there's no sign of the market leader pulling away any time soon. Our leading trail run company uses an in-house system because of yield management and loyalty pricing; the other leader teamed up with a bunch of other operators to support yet another solution, which is not widely used outside of trail running.

It is hard to predict the future. An API can be a way to help future-proof your system and allow users (registars, clubs, and participants) to use it in ways that you haven't thought about yet. I understand probably more than anyone how overburdened and under-resourced the web committee is right now, so I'm not going to argue that this should be a priority, but hopefully the committee can plan a system in such a way to allow for the possibility.

Here is a simple example of where an API may be useful. A growing number of clubs are developing their own online membership databases. When a member updates their address info in an OUSA online registration event, how can we most easily get that change back into the club's local membership database? Currently with Kent's system, a club would have to export the data in a spreadsheet and then somehow search that spreadsheet to look for addresses that don't match those in the club's local database.

Here's another example. A club has nice forms to enter event, course, class, and fee information into its website. The information has to be there because that is where participants will look for it. That same information will also have to be on OUSA's online registration system. Currently, all the information must be re-entered on Kent's system. There is no import functionality.

A third. A club wants to send emails to its membership encouraging them to join OUSA. It only wants to send emails to those who aren't already members.

A fourth. Kent steps down in two years, deciding that he is no longer interested in further development or improvement in his registration system.

A fifth. A club has its own registration system for A-meets (like CAOC's for instance). The club has promised not to share the data with any other entity but needs a way to validate OUSA membership during its registration process.

I'm not going to try and enumerate everything that eventreg doesn't do that I want to do, as that is not my biggest reason for not wanting to use it for an event I run. I want the ability to not have the data in someone else's database, but to have it in my own database so I can write all kinds of tools and reports to interface with it. I want to have radio controls that interface with the results database that is integrated with my registration database etc.

Planning for nice APIs to transfer data in and out of whatever systems OUSA writes should be a priority. Either a nice REST api, or even basic IOF xml I/O.

Another good example of where an API for data access would be helpful is in maintaining a single OUSA club list, accessible via an IOF xml clublist file that builds the data from whatever backend OUSA wants to run. Then the clublist is one less thing a registrar has to maintain, and can be imported directly into OE, or any other results/registration software.

Trying to mandate that everyone use EventReg, or your not worth our time is stupid. OUSA should be working on the things that span clubs, like unified data management, and providing some form of basic registration, but don't try and block out anyone else who has the time and energy and wants to innovate!

Indeed we are working right now on integrating registration with the results... when implemented, each rogaine and Street Scramble checkpoint visited is just another entry in the same database as the registration system, updated real-time via our cellphone scoring method. Would O USA like to develop and maintain this functionality for us? If yes, I'll gladly contribute $50, contingent on delivery by end of 2012.

EventReg can be configured to do T/D's 1 & 2 using user-defined custom fields.

Oh, yeah, what does "API" mean? (I'm guessing the "I' is for "Interface")

Admittedly, the first Google result is the American Petroleum Institute web site but the second is the Wikipedia page for Application Programming Interface - channeling Dan Savage, Google still exists.

From Pat Dunlavey, the database will use CiviCRM, which has *drum roll* a REST API. Thanks Pat and web committee. CiviCRM has good integration with Drupal and anything that's not in the CiviCRM REST API can probably be exposed through the Drupal services module. In other words, this is probably one of the best solutions possible for those interested in a REST API.

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC4...

can be configured

For 1 this is false. What I need is the reg system to apply discounts based on who the user is. There's not even remotely this level of sophistication in EventReg. For 2 this may be true, however as soon as the logic gets anywhere complicated (charge $10 per meal or $25 for day's worth of meals), it's another fail (or else I have to enter all possible permutations of items—I'd rather write a single set of rules).

Guy, your computer is infected. I just got three pieces of spam it sent to various lists.

What is spam?

But I don't like SPAM!!!

I don't think that unified event registration is the biggest or best thing that OUSA can offer its member clubs or at large membership (as it is a bit of a commodity and not nearly as central or unique to the sport as, say, orienteering maps) but it does satisfy some of my requirements/desires.

I am all for innovation and stuff, but, to put this a bit delicately--how much innovation is required when we are talking about events with 300 people or so? Doesn't Excel suffice?

Expending our human resources on reinventing the wheel numerous times is fine, but it seems a bit self indulgent. So, from where I sit, let OUSA provide a solution that works for 80% of what we need, and use the talent vested elsewhere to innovate in ways that move the sport forward. Or is registration just so broken and such an impediment that it is holding the sport back in ways I don't appreciate?

Trail runs around here have their 450 attendees or so, and Excel clearly doesn't suffice for them. The Excel approach fails as soon as you start to want to leverage your registration system to keep in touch with the attendees to inform them of upcoming events. The flat pricing fails when you try to entice people to try new things, and to reward them for helping at your events. Lack of central membership verification fails when you are dragged into an eligibility dispute that you'd rather stay well clear of...

But which way does the causality run? Do the orienteering events have anywhere close to 450 people? If not, is it because the registration system can't scale?

Would the orienteering events have 450 people if the registration system offered those bells and whistles? To be honest, we can't say.

If, however, we had considerably less than 450 people, couldn't we do some simple experiments--proofs of concept--layering on those bells and whistles, while holding certain key characteristics constant (i.e., deliver an orienteering event rather than a trail run) and see if it makes a difference? And deliver those through a bootstrap version, i.e., in a 4GL or something even lighter (Excel) and see if it moves the needle?

The quality/power of the registration system perhaps affects the organizer more than the participants, in that an Excel file is not a pleasure to work with and is indeed a real turn off. I've been a registrar, with a primitive system I spent time dealing with stuff that should have gone to the orienteering-specific preparation. With a powerful and comprehensive registration system an organization has more man-hours to go towards more useful things, it's easier to recruit someone to handle the registrations, plus the issues T/D outlined.

"With a powerful and comprehensive registration system an organization has more (person) hours"

And by that rationale paying a little more to a third party organization that does online registration provides even
more person hours to focus on the orienteering aspects of the sport

Yes. And yes, person-hours. :-)

So, why don't we see if what OUSA is producing is sufficiently powerful and comprehensive to enable our talent to provide more person hours to focus on the orienteering aspects of the sport?

I would have thought ex ante that it would, but it also seems like it may motivate redoubled efforts to come up with alternative solutions. Which is innovation of sorts, but so was Betamax and HD DVD etc...

I guess I need to put up or shut up and volunteer to be a registrar to really understand where the frustrations and choke points lie in current solutions and methodologies, as my ignorance of the registration process is probably painfully obvious.

It's not sufficiently powerful nor comprehensive, nor should it be such. If anything, I'm happy with O USA stopping at the 80% of functionality that fits the needs of 80% of the clubs/promoters. To ask O USA to develop the remaining 20%, which will take ~3x the time of the first 80%, is really stupid. What Dan and Ed and I are asking for is means to expose some of its data so that people who really-really need some fraction of the non-implemented 20%, like us for example with teams, can have an easier time.

Expending our human resources on reinventing the wheel numerous times ... use the talent vested elsewhere to innovate in ways that move the sport forward.

Just to be clear, exactly what human resources are you referring to here and in what capacity would you re-deploy those resources?

I'll second Dan from yet another, slightly different angle. An advanced registration system is a part of customer relations management. Although it's clear we would all rather pay most of our attention to the technical aspects of the sport, it's exactly because of this preference that the sport is all but dead. Successful event organizers spend the bulk of their time on other stuff, things they don't necessarily love doing but without which there's no moving forward: promotion first and foremost, of which CRM is a necessary component.

If Orienteering USA's solution is going to free up the organizers' time at the expense of cutting them out of CRM, well, that's not a win.

Or to look at it another way, instead of having people who are best suited to technical tasks doing a poor job of CRM, if OUSA can provide tools that allow the skilled human relations people in the club to do their job well and efficiently, that may allow everyone to use their time effectively. But if the organizing group wants to have their technical forest crew using their talents to implement some alternative custom computer system, that option is (or should be) available as well.

Almost all of our IT is/has been done by people who didn't go into the forest/city, and wouldn't have because of injury/illness or not physically being in the area.

Just to be clear, exactly what human resources are you referring to here and in what capacity would you re-deploy those resources?

Basically, the human capital (within the sport) that knows what orienteering is, how to run an orienteering event, or communicate to others how to do orienteering.

Rather than re-engineer event registration software (when the governing body has taken that on), results software, or heaven forbid CRM software (in each case good to excellent alternatives exist) this human capital can publicize orienteering and/or facilitate opportunities to do it, both of which (awareness and access), IMO, are first order challenges to the viability of the sport.

Well, for teams, there is no good alternative. Point me to a system that can allow editing of/substitution in an existing, registered team, with an add-collect if the edit is past a deadline, and I'll be ready to throw what I got out the window and swear to spend the rest of my time actually running events.

Zone4.ca

A valid point, but I you are devising new models of the sport that in some respects might not and should not be regarded as orienteering. (Do you call it orienteering?) And I applaud that sort of innovation.

However, the model of the sport that OUSA exists to support and facilitate is different. For better or worse, teams are not part of that. I am not sure whether rogaines are officially part of that or not. In any case, my point is that the OUSA service offering for its clubs or third party event organizers has to focus on the core functionality that supports the sport that OUSA is about. If others want to present derivative versions of the sport, that is great, but the tail shouldn't wag the dog.

But, even in your case, T/D, I do think your efforts are truly best spent running events (rather than, for instance, running epunch results, or devising new software to support an idiosyncrasy of the way you want people to be able to participate in your events.) You only have so much bandwidth.

I'm not devising squat. I'm using existing models that are proven to generate attendance, visibility, and publicity that core membership has chosen to ignore because they don't quite fit its idea of fun. (With the obvious exception of the Sprints we just held, which were a flop.)

FYI Orienteering USA is a dues-paying member of the International Rogaining Federation. And for umpteenth time, I'm not asking OUSA to support my development efforts, just to give me access to its data. I can't agree more with the core-functionality part. What I disagree with is the desire to tell me how to run my operation. Get your own operation together and run it whichever way you find appropriate; more events for everyone—what's not to like?

Well, all that sounds great to me. Although I can imagine some reasons why OUSA would not want to give out access to its data (that have nothing to do with technical limitations or software development priorities.) Are those good reasons? Not sure, but they may be intractable.

Hey, it's not like REST is a one-way API. There'd be a button for all my users that would sync up with O USA database. And I'm not proposing to share any spammable info—just cross-reference the SI number, first/last name, and gender, and pull O USA membership and eligibility status.

There aren't that many SI-wielding folks who are O USA members who would only be entering rogaines, so that O USA wouldn't have a way to capture their stuff through EventReg, but thanks to this year's Henry Coe there are at least some, and I hope the pattern continues.

These are the kinds of conversations that steer people away from working or volunteering for certain organizations - those organizations with the mentality that they know what is best and how things should be done. My most successful and enjoyable volunteering has been for organizations that have given me the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them, to be self-directed, to branch out in different directions without repeatedly being second-guessed or chided (re-inventing Betamax). I recently walked away from an attractive opportunity to direct the online presence of one of the larger orienteering clubs in the country, in part because the more conversations I had with their leadership, the more warning bells started going off that this wouldn't be the kind of position I would enjoy. For better or worse, volunteers aren't fungible, nor can you arbitrarily re-deploy them to meet whatever priorities your organization may currently have - they have too many alternatives in how they can spend their free time.

That is the eternal tension, and I'm not sure how to resolve it. People want to volunteer for things because it gives them an outlet that allows them to use their skills outside of work. But, once you have some scale and structure, and multiple stakeholders, inevitably there becomes a need for some sort of prioritization. And that is bound to detract from the unfettered enjoyment of volunteers.

I have little idea about what goes on on the technology committee of OUSA, but it seems to be a shame if good talent is working outside of it. There is only so much of that to go around.

Well said j-man.

When I discovered "strategic planning" I thought what a great structure to hang our ideas on, plan actions, measure progess. I held consultations, wrote plans, measured progress etc etc. Guess what. It made no difference. Employed people spend half their time planning and measuring. Volunteers do what volunteers like doing. Great athletes rise to the top regardless.

I admire what T/D is doing. Team orienteering is a natural fit for lots of people. I'm working in that area too. I don't expect any help, the participation I can generate for each hour's work is a reward for me.