Roger Bradshaw created The Race Director, one of the two leading products (along with RunScore) used by timers to score races. It is used by about 30% of the timers in the US to score literally hundreds of races each weekend, and last year scored over 8,000,000 participants. But it was first released 29 year ago, and in spite of yearly updates (actually continuous updates all year long), we are bringing out a replacement – RaceDay Scoring in December, 2018.
Roger has been looking forward to this day since Joining RunSignup in 2015. As he said back then, “I know all the mistakes I made years ago and am kind of stuck with now.” Here are Roger’s favorite things about RaceDay Scoring:
No Internet Required – RaceDay Scoring runs as a native Window or Mac app. Everything runs locally, so you are not at the mercy of your Internet connection.
Auto-Sync – If you are connected with the Internet, RaceDay Scoring syncs with the Cloud completely dynamically. Participant changes and additions, Bib Assignments, Event Changes, Result posting, TXT notifications all sync bi-directionally and quickly as a native part of RaceDay Scoring since it was built for local use, but in the Internet era. No more fusing with configurations or pressing buttons to sync like in The Race Director.
Dashboard – The customizable, real-time Dashboard gives you one place to get a good view of everything. This simply was not possible to see in one place in The Race Director. As raw reads come in, you see them right on the dashboard.
Custom Reporting – For many years, Roger had to build custom reports for each different set of needs. RaceDay Scoring has not only simple one-click types of reports, but has powerful report building capabilities such as the ones shown below, which include:
- Drag and drop column placement
- Custom Column Header
- Participant Data filters
Real-Time, Fast Reports – All reports get auto-calculated in real time as scored reads come in. And report generation is FAST.
Easier Configuration – For example set which fields are important for viewing and editing participant information.
Client/Server – This will not be available until November in Beta, but this will allow a network of local PC’s to work together. One PC will be the Master, but other PC’s and Tablets will be able to connect to run leaderboards, do check-in, act as result kiosks, etc.
Easy Backup – Just like The Race Director, it is easy to save the entire race configuration – as well as the reads – to share with others. This enables RunSignup to do quality support that helps resolve issues quickly. It also enables large scale timers to manage multiple teams in the field, where the Master timer can take a quick backup to see what is wrong in a particular race, or edit the team scoring to fix the results in one of the races they are monitoring.
Modern – Supporting a 29 year old code base and technical infrastructure (Foxpro!) is difficult. Modern technology offers a lot of efficiencies in terms of code, performance and networking capabilities.