We’re Beta! April 18, 2008
After many months of Brian coding his fingers down to nubbins, the next major evolution of the MotorsportReg.com Eventmaster360 motorsports management platform has gone Beta. We are very excited about this release as it both fulfills some major feature requests by competitive event organizations (such as a Permanent Number Manager and Order Form Dependencies) and also brings many, many smaller enhancements that will improve the experience for everyone who uses it.
We are particularly proud of the flexibility of the Permanent Number Manager, which allows organizers to enforce number uniqueness on a class, event, year, etc basis. It will even allow sharing of number pools across organizations in support of cross-regional or cross-divisional events.
The new order form has been streamlined both for the organizer as well as for the attendee, leveraging a lot of Javascript to make it as interactive and seamless as possible. Organizers can now set requirements such as “if you order Package A, you must also order Package B”, which should go a long way toward eliminating incorrect orders and after-the-fact package editing, as well as associate questions and actions with packages directly instead of just placing them generically at the top of the page.
Our newly revamped Who’s Attending feature can now optionally list car make/model, class, and sponsor and can be made publicly visible so potential attendees can scope out the competition before they sign up. We’ve also updated the Email Blaster with a much slicker UI that makes communicating with your members and attendees easier than ever.
This release includes some new technologies under the hood, too, which will speed development of new features. Once the Beta period is over and we are live with the new code, we’ll be starting in on Round 2 of our To Do List. Next up is Deferred Payment Processing, which will allow organizers to collect payment information at the time of registration but not actually process the dollars until some arbitrary later date. Defered Payment Processing will be an industry-first in motorsports!
And wait until you see what we’ve got tee’d up after that!
We are in the home stretch of a process that began in mid-2007, so please bear with us as we finish up the last bit of bug hunting and code polishing. Look for MotorsportReg.com to gain some fantastic new features in a matter of days.
BMW CCA Conference Presentation April 15, 2008
Things have been so crazy around here I haven’t had a chance to post a note but two weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at the BMW CCA Webmaster and Newsletter Editor conference in Salt Lake City. Every three years, the communication teams from chapters around the country come to share ideas, best practices and learn something new. This year was something of an initiation by fire as the club has a new Executive Director in the form of Frank Patek. The team from the National office including Linda Axelson did a great job of putting together materials, speakers and location for a worthwhile trip to Utah.
My presentation, “State of the (Tech) Union”, was a review of three key topics central to car clubs: content management, e-commerce and email. These are three technology cornerstones of nearly any member organization and car clubs are no different. Much like we preach with MotorsportReg.com, my emphasis was to focus limited resources to execute better on fewer things. There are so many great off-the-shelf tools today that are either free or very low-cost that webmasters should avoid reinventing the wheel and instead focus on driving value and functionality from existing community-supported software. My Gartner-style chart here depicts the difficult of custom software built on a part-time basis: the 80/20 rule can be relatively easy to achieve but there is a big gap before you reach professional, robust, complete software. It’s not an easy chasm to cross even with a full-time team and resources, let alone on a nights-and-weekends approach. The good news is with the tools available today, you rarely need to built much yourself.
You can download the slides here for anyone interested. Feedback is welcome!
Meeting The SCCA In San Antonio March 2, 2008
As many of you know, we’ve got some pretty amazing new features coming soon that will really benefit competitive organizations who use MotorsportReg.com. Things like Deferred Payment Processing (to prevent refunds), Order Form Dependencies (to account for required compliance fees, etc), and a Permanent Number Manager will bring a new level of efficiency to competitive event administration.
With these features solidly under development, we here at Pukka Software headed out to the SCCA National Conference in San Antonio Texas in early February to demonstrate MotorsportReg.com to SCCA Region administrators from across the country. The response from these hard-working volunteers was fantastic and we truly enjoyed getting to know SCCA people from other parts of USA. Our SCCA customers here on the West Coast, San Francisco Region and Oregon Region, had nice things to say about us in their Inter-Region Cooperation session and we very much appreciate their support and encouragement.
One thing that struck both Brian and me was the incredible dedication to the club that SCCA members and volunteers exhibit. The sense of community was overwhelming and it was a particular privilege to be in attendance at the awards ceremony on the last night at which a variety of volunteers were honored. Several SCCA luminuaries including Kjell Qvalle were inducted into the SCCA Hall of Fame and Kjell was kind enough to share some memories of his many decades in motorsports. A truly amazing experience all the way around. We would particularly like to thank the SCCA Events team headed by Melissa Flesher for taking such good care of all the vendors - you guys made us feel very welcome. Brian and I are both proud to be SCCA members and we look forward to serving the club for many years.
Speaking of serving, we are happy to welcome a few new SCCA regions to MotorsportReg.com. SCCA South Bend Region has come aboard, as have Central Kentucky Region, Kansas City Region, Mississippi Region, and Southern Indiana Region.
Outside of the Sports Car Club of America, the Badger Chapter of the Audi Club of North America has begun using MotorsportReg.com, as have Adare Motorsports and Cascade Sports Car Club up in the Pacific Northwest.
Thanks to everyone for their support. We look forward to serving you through 2008 and beyond!
Pass on Paypal January 18, 2008
People ask us all the time if we accept Paypal. We don’t. Of course the next question is, “why not?” This article from the Wall Street Journal contains the reason:
You’ll Get Weaker Protections. Security is frequently touted as one of the upsides to alternate-payment programs. After all, there is no credit-card number to steal. “But that means you won’t have the same protections as if you were paying with a credit card,” said Consumer Federation’s Ms. Grant. “[Fraud] coverage is extremely limited, and whatever protections the service does give you are voluntary.”
I’m not singling out Paypal here; it’s simply the most popular example of an unregulated financial institution. They are not bound by the same laws as banks and consumers do not enjoy the protection of FDIC insurance or credit card liability limitations. While the risk is low, it would be a critical condition if you’re an event organizer with $10,000 of invoices and a frozen Paypal account.
Here at MotorsportReg.com, we’ll continue to accept good old fashioned, guaranteed payment so organizers don’t have to worry about their bank account going dry. We pay out every two weeks via direct deposit whether you’re due $1 or $100,000. Like clockwork!
Update Jan 24th: Paypal freezes Ron Paul donations. Yikes!
Growth And Changes January 17, 2008
Given that I’ve been a part of Pukka Software for well over a year now, it’s probably time to introduce myself to those of you that I’ve not spoken with yet. My name is Mark Dadgar and I’m a motorsports junkie. As a long time user of MotorsportReg.com and an even longer-time eventmaster, I joined Brian to help bring these fantastic tools to the widest array of clubs and organizations possible. I’m primarily responsible for customer support, sales, and marketing, but given the can-do attitude here at Pukka Software, I’m happy to pitch in wherever my skills are needed.
Since we’re talking about recent additions to the MotorsportReg.com family, we’d like to welcome some new organizations to the fold. Audi Club North America has come onboard with their National-office sponsored Steamboat Winter Driving school plus ACNA Florida brings their driving events program as well. Two large and well-respected Porsche Club of America regions, North Country and Northern New Jersey, bring their active and enthusiastic members to the MotorsportReg.com community and they are joined by SCCA Las Vegas, too. Up in the Pacific Northwest, BMW CCA Puget Sound chapter and the Northwest Alfa Romeo Club have adopted our tools to streamline their programs. Independent organizations Touring Car Racing Association and ProAutoSports also recognized the benefits we provide and signed on with us early in 2008, joined by Northeast SHO Club over on the Right Coast as well.
To all our new clients, thank you for the trust you put in us and Welcome Aboard! It’s going to be a great year!