| March 2002 Newsletter |
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New Software for Track Results
A new results program tailored to the FLRC indoor track meets may not be taking seconds off anyone's time, but it sure makes organizing and publishing results a breeze. I've helped with results for the past three indoor track meets, and the new software has eliminated a lot of the usual stress associated with entering athlete data, race times, and then printing results. At the end of each meet (and without staying late), I was able to leave with electronic results customized for our website, so that it took only a few minutes of work to get nice-looking results online.
The inside story on this amazing development is that last summer Tim Ingall asked Lorrie Marnell if she knew of a simple,'user friendly' program that he might use at the indoor track meets. She said she remembered a program that Mark Schneider developed some years earlier when he was here. Tim contacted him at his new location near Syracuse, but unfortunately Mark had long-since deleted his program. However, he very graciously volunteered to re-do the program for us. He probably put far more time into it than he really wanted to and handed it over just before the December meet, as promised.
Track meet director Tim Ingall was impressed with Mark's program and decided to give the program its first trial at the December indoor track meet, where Lorrie Marnell and I agreed to test it under the conditions of a real track meet, without a backup plan. With only a few problems and a very short learning curve (I'd never seen the program until that day), we had some results ready by the end of the meet, and a final version ready that same evening.
I was immediately impressed with the program's straight-forward design and its convenient point-and-click interface. Lorrie and I identified a few problems that had slowed down or complicated the use of the new software, but I was already excited by the program's potential. Tim Ingall contacted FileMaker expert Ethan MacCormick to add some needed and very nice improvements in time for the next meet. Ethan kindly also put far more time into the project than he billed us for!
The new package is a complete FileMaker program for managing results for a track meet. It handles athlete registration data, multiple events in a single meet, and preparation and presentation of final results. FileMaker is a commercial database package that also includes a programming environment for designing scripts to add, edit, and sort data, and even format it for presentation. Running on a laptop with a printer attached, it can produce sorted results within a few minutes of the delivery of the timers' sheets.
In January, registration and results went smoothly, and we had printouts up for all events by the middle of the final relay, even though the meet had more than 100 athletes, most of them new.
Afterwards, Tim managed to get even more improvements made to the results program, and the February meet was even easier, and I was able to still take time out to run the 5K. The only hitch was a lack of a printer, but results were up on the web only a few minutes after I got home to my own computer.
Using the program is easy. Simply by typing an athlete's last name, you can access their registration information if it's in the FileMaker database. Tim initially primed the database with the long list of trail runners, and this indoor track season has allowed us to add in most of the track regulars. If the athlete is already in the database, you simply need to enter the bib number for the current meet, and that's it! It only take a few seconds to enter a new athlete, and of course they are then also added to the permanent database for future meets. Entering results is also easy: a bib number and a time is all that's needed. A few mouse clicks send the results for a particular event or the entire meet to the printer or a file for posting to the web. And at any point, even when entering results, one can go back to the athlete database and edit the information. This is invaluable for people like me who can't read or type, and are often plagued by typos or other mis-transcriptions.
A special and heartfelt thank you to Mark Schneider for developing this wonderful new software that greatly simplifies the chore of preparing results. And an equal if not bigger thanks to hard-working Tim Ingall who had the courage to not only try out the new software at the first meet of the season, but then had the tenacity to push for several rounds of revisions so that we now have a very nice piece of software. Their hard work has really made the results job easy; now it's almost fun!
Tim adds, "With every meet, the software has advanced some more. I should note that this program is capable of even more, it is simple and if I can run it, anyone can! It has certainly been produced on a shoestring budget, but if the club thinks it is worth further investment it could be made into a great item that the club could benefit from for many years. Filemaker is a fabulous program with virtually limitless possibilities. Mark Schneider made it all possible, he should be made a lifetime member, and it's now up to the club where we go with it from here."
-- Tom Meyer
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