I like technology what about you

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Originally Posted by Greg Phillips

With all due respect Walter, I am sure we do not know what is going on behind the scenes and know what is needed or wanted. But with a system that is "correctly" built and put in place it shouldn't add any steps in terms of back-end registration and honestly should make back and front end administration twice as easy.
I am willing to bet that if this system was in place and you left mail/fax/email registration you would see that more than 20% of your members would use it. Thinking that only 20% would use it I think is a bit off. I am also open to hear in what ways in the back-end (because I honestly don't know what is going on) that this would add any additional steps. I find it hard to believe that Nancy enjoys printing out all those forms, organizing them and dealing with all that leading up to a race weekend.

And in regards to well I think if the members KNEW what was needed and how they could help you would possibly get more help and offers than if they didn't know.

Some examples off the top of my head:
Nancy's back end work load:
With a system that won't allow for incomplete or invalid forms that should reduce A LOT of her time in that department.
The need to bring all those paper forms to each and every race, gone. Yes you can get signatures w/o paper for forms.
Organizing all the printed/emailed forms on Nancy's behalf before the race day, gone. It will all be organized and structured in the system.
Someone can submit a form at 4am the day before they show up and guess what they are in the system. No need for the cut-off times before traveling to the events because it has to be printed.
Grid print out, Press a single button done

@Josh, I don't see how much project management it would take. I deal with project management and application development daily, if the PM has to spend that much time then whoever is doing the work either isnt getting full specs or the developer is ****. Here Josh I built this system for you , go check it out and let me know what you think based on the specs you gave me? If in a year you are telling me you don't have time to do that then I don't know what to say. It should take lets say a week of time here and there tops to create a specs document for a system like this and then its handed off and he can get back to the things that are keeping him busy.

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Greg, I want to thank you for your offer to "try" and come up with an online registration system. FYI I also thanked the 4 other people that actually "did try" before they lost interest in racing and faded away. With that in mind forgive me if I don't start throwing rose pedals at the feet of every well meaning member that steps up with a better way to do things. Ted has spent much more of his very limited personal time working on this than you or anyone else for that matter will ever know. The result of that work is something that is light years further along than what his predecessors produced. So let me take a moment to thank Ted for what he "has done" so far. Now, I appreciate the bullet points on how the system that you should've, could've, or would've built would revolutionize the way we do registration. It actually does sound pretty easy, but it also sounds familiar. It's easy to look at a process from one perspective and be certain that there's a better way to perform that process. Lets get rid of this step and that step and boom the process is faster. The thing is all those steps have a specific purpose. This is what the 4 other people ran into. All of them in one way or another wanted us to change everything else we do to fit their ideas rather than build something that would work with what we had. Didn't make a lot of sense then or now.

I want to tell you a few things about myself. I'm a smart guy. I believe I'm a good manager and a very good problem solver. I also have a tremendous amount of experience in my field. Racing is my full time job specifically motorcycle racing but I have experience and connections in other forms of motorsports as well. I make it a point to stay on top of what is happening in my field. I try to stay on top of and understand industry standards. I also make it a point to not spout off statistics unless I know that they are correct. With these things in mind I would suggest that you not so easily discount my statement that likely only 20% of our members would use online registration. Does this mean that I don't want us to have it? Of course not, it simply means that we'll have it when we have it.

Finally, I wasn't inviting a discussion in my previous post I was simply giving our final answer.

Walter,
No rose pedals are needed, I am not asking for any type of praise of any kind because I wouldn't even know what I would have to done to deserve it. The reason for my "try" is because without the help from the people who know how the back end works I would be limited in what I could do to try and help get something made. While I can completely understand and know from trying to work with him that Ted has put in a fair amount of time and work so I am not discrediting that in any way. No one is coming in and trying to reinvent the wheel with this process, but based on what you are saying 4 others tried to come in and change the way you do things internally rather than build on what you had. I think from my end at least that is what I have tried to approach this situation in the past with. I went through Linz to try and get a hold of the people who know the process to try and understand how things worked and how a system could be built to make life easier from both sides. I just have my opinion from the outside and as I have said before I do not know all the internal workings and what is going on behind the scenes. But if this option was something that was wanted to be looked into further I don't see why the process of how things work wouldn't be made more transparent so maybe others from the outside can help formulate a solution that doesn't break the current flow of things.

I have no doubt you are a smart guy and good at what you do, if I implied other wise my apologies. But even other greats who are smart in their fields and areas of expertise sometimes need an outside eye or opinion to see things from another p.o.v. I know you are very well connected and known in the motorcycle world and keep up with technology and standards. Let me preface this by saying again I do not know the inner workings of everything , but WERA launched their online registration in 2010, and from my research there weren't many complain about modernizing the system. I believe from some of your former post you are tied in with AMA as well, they use online registration for riders and teams as well. I am not discrediting your 20% , but at the same time I am interested in what the results would be on this forum alone if polled if they would rather use an online system vs the current process.

I understand that may be the final answer this is your organization not mine, but I am just using the messages boards to have a discussion that is all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Greg Phillips

Walter,
No rose pedals are needed, I am not asking for any type of praise of any kind because I wouldn't even know what I would have to done to deserve it. The reason for my "try" is because without the help from the people who know how the back end works I would be limited in what I could do to try and help get something made. While I can completely understand and know from trying to work with him that Ted has put in a fair amount of time and work so I am not discrediting that in any way. No one is coming in and trying to reinvent the wheel with this process, but based on what you are saying 4 others tried to come in and change the way you do things internally rather than build on what you had. I think from my end at least that is what I have tried to approach this situation in the past with. I went through Linz to try and get a hold of the people who know the process to try and understand how things worked and how a system could be built to make life easier from both sides. I just have my opinion from the outside and as I have said before I do not know all the internal workings and what is going on behind the scenes. But if this option was something that was wanted to be looked into further I don't see why the process of how things work wouldn't be made more transparent so maybe others from the outside can help formulate a solution that doesn't break the current flow of things.

I have no doubt you are a smart guy and good at what you do, if I implied other wise my apologies. But even other greats who are smart in their fields and areas of expertise sometimes need an outside eye or opinion to see things from another p.o.v. I know you are very well connected and known in the motorcycle world and keep up with technology and standards. Let me preface this by saying again I do not know the inner workings of everything , but WERA launched their online registration in 2010, and from my research there weren't many complain about modernizing the system. I believe from some of your former post you are tied in with AMA as well, they use online registration for riders and teams as well. I am not discrediting your 20% , but at the same time I am interested in what the results would be on this forum alone if polled if they would rather use an online system vs the current process.

I understand that may be the final answer this is your organization not mine, but I am just using the messages boards to have a discussion that is all.

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Totally missed the point.

If the point was you will get to it when its right for the club I got that. If it was something else then whoops

Ted is an excellent board member who is an outstanding contributor in every aspect of the word. He's available and communicates effectively here in this forum, he 100% involved and active in every topic discussed on Board of Directors forum and he actively contributed his time and energy to improved the way things work about this message board (among many other things) for the benefit of the few who are responsible for keeping things running through thick and thin.

Our collective approach has been to focus on the areas that provide the most benefit for the right level of investment. Ted is the active driver of the majority of improvements that largely benefit Walter and Nancy's work behind the scenes - that is a high priority.

Any reasonable organization is going to have controls in place for managing change. Oversight and control of our clubs most visible tool isn't something to be taken lightly or turned over to relatively unknown entities. We've insisted that anything and everything be coordinated through a single point of contact to ensure continuity.

btw - this thread is a perfect example of why the work and effort of the highest contributors in the CMRA are often referred to as a "thankless job'.

[QUOTE=Greg Phillips;

"Ted has put in a fair amount of time and work"...uuhm, that would be the mother of all understatements.


" this is your organization not mine" no, this is yours, mine, ted's, walter's and everyones.

[QUOTE=mark niemi;288154][QUOTE=Greg Phillips;

"Ted has put in a fair amount of time and work"...uuhm, that would be the mother of all understatements.


" this is your organization not mine" no, this is yours, mine, ted's, walter's and everyones.[/QUOTE]

Like I said, totally missed the point.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Walter Walker

The bottom line is this, WE WILL GET TO IT WHEN WE GET TO IT AND WE WILL USE THE PEOPLE THAT WE CHOSE TO USE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

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There's your answer, Greg. Ridiculous, I know.

I like Ted and there is no doubt he has put in countless hours of volunteer work for the club but online registration, if I'm not mistaken, is the platform he ran on several years ago and the sole reason he got my vote. Kind of reminds me of that whole "Read my lips, no new taxes!" thing. Except Ted was reelected. :)

Sorry I didn't have time to finish typing everything up last night. If there was a simple solution it would be in place. If you care to dig up my original platform from whatever year my first election was you could see many key ideas are now in place. In this most recent election I focused on online registration because I wanted to get reelected on the simple premise to finish that job above all others.


If all I had on my plate was online registration it would be in place within 2 weeks (assuming several other key people also had nothing on their plate and also had a free 2 weeks). My significant other, my day job, my BOD responsibilities, and other priorities soak up 99.9% of my time. It's not that progress isn't being made, it's that progress is painstakingly slow.

More details to come later.

"No good deed goes unpunished."