Updated detail reports use less paper February 9, 2010
Thanks to some feedback from the SCCA National Convention and some prompting by Robert Baizer from PCA San Diego, we took another look at our detailed “one-pager” reports. Organizers have been noting that, depending upon their particular event, the report was instead a “two-pager” and it was wasting paper.
The problem lay in how our print style sheet was translated to PDF, the most common output format. It wasn’t until we created a document in Word with line of Times New Roman sized 6 to 12 points and printed it that we recognized the 10pt font sizes we specified was more like giant kindergarten 14pt1. It’s no surprise that things were spilling over into multiple pages with the extra size and line spacing.
We experimented with actual printed copies and drove the sizes down to match the 9 and 10pt samples we printed from Word2, orange boxes. In addition, we have also reformatted event questions to display in two columns and span the width of the page3, purple boxes. This gives the assignments at the bottom a much better chance of displaying on the same page and should reduce the amount of paper and ink used. It’s also easier to scan now that most items reside on single lines without so much wrapping. We’ll be pushing this change live tonight so let us know how it looks next time you print!
Craigslist Marketing February 8, 2010
These popped up on our radar in the last month or so – more of our customers are using Craigslist to troll for additional participants and cast their net wider. I think this is a great move because the majority of auto enthusiasts still aren’t aware that they can compete in an autocross or drive their car on a racetrack. Those thrilling experiences are what turn car lovers into lifelong car club members, participants and (just maybe) volunteers.
One word of advice: use language that complete neophytes will understand. E.g., “Come to a solo event!” means nothing to the general public but “Race your street car against the clock at Qualcomm Stadium!” is a lot more engaging and understandable to the uninitiated.
RSS, Atom and iCal support added to REST API January 11, 2010
To ease integration with a variety of third-party software packages, we’ve introduced new formats for certain resources of our REST API. Calendar and event listings can now be returned in RSS, Atom and iCalendar formats. This will facilitate easy consumption by software such as vBulletin for automatic content population eliminating human intervention to post event listings on your own website. Thanks to Steven Schlossman from BMW CCA National Capital chapter for the kick in the butt to get this done.
Awhile back we also added the ability to get a list of the entries for an event or for a segment of an event. If you want to list your entries on your own site or grab them for some kind of automated processing, you will want to check out the two resources:
/rest/events/{event_id}/assignments
/rest/events/{event_id}/segments/{segment_id}/assignments
Thanks to Mike Malsed at Formula RallyX who asked us for this one.
SCCA National Convention ‘10 December 23, 2009
For the third year in a row we’ll be representing MotorsportReg.com at the SCCA National Convention. Workers and leaders from all corners of the country (plus Guam and Puerto Rico!) will descend on the South Point Casino in Las Vegas for three days of meetings and socializing. We look forward to this event all year long – it’s a great opportunity to meet the people who keep the wheels of the SCCA rolling. We’ll have our booth as well as a few surprises that you won’t want to miss whether you’re a customer or not.
A tip for those who have yet to make hotel reservations – you can get a better deal than the SCCA convention rate by using Booking.com. We just made our reservations and saved an extra 20% like last year.
Watch for the return of the candy bowl but in a new, larger size!
97% disappointed without MotorsportReg.com November 6, 2009
We ran a customer survey in June of this year and I have spent a few minutes looking over the results again this morning. There is one particular response that I am especially proud of:
96.8% of our customers, whether on our free or paid plans, would be disappointed if they couldn’t use MotorsportReg.com. This means we’re delivering on our promise to make volunteers even more awesome at their jobs by making it easier and more fun to organize and attend events.
We don’t take this as carte blanche to put down the keyboard and ride off into the sunset though. In fact, since June we’ve rolled out a bevy of big-iron features like post-event registration editing, membership validation and surveys/elections. But we do take this as a compliment. And for that, we just want to say, we love you too. 