We gearing up for the mass text messaging for Black River Stages! We've ironed out the few little sign up hiccups we had in the past, and also added the ability to send yourself a test text any time to make sure things are working properly. Checking the archive from Rally Tennessee, we did about 50-60 updates over two days. (The one I remember most was when Team USUK got an update mid-transit about the coolant puddle they left at the last control and that's how they knew they had a leak!)
I just checked and we have a number of folks signed up already, but if you haven't yet, you can log in here to the database (same one for volunteers and racers too):
http://blackriverstages.com/2010/text-login.php
Remember, there are two channels, General and Scoring. All the "Stage 3 started" and "Car 7 rolled" and "Regroup shortened" type stuff go in General, and Scoring has just numbers... an overload of numbers if you're not super into that. If you sign for both, they're all just mixed in together.
I'm also thinking about doing something like "Cloud Computing", that is, virtual outsourcing. In particular, finding a volunteer who can't make it to the rally, to help write texts based on phone in/text in reports from competitors. So the racers would have your number, call/text in interesting stuff ("I lost a wheel" or "Replaced transmission") and you would log in to the texting database and blast it out to everyone. This kind of reporting, in this day and age, doesn't need to be done by someone at the rally. You wouldn't even need to be in the same time zone, really! Since we have night stages, somewhere west might be even better!
Always looking for neat ways to make it more interesting for the volunteers. (Which is an interesting discussion itself... what other tasks could you outsource? Could the scoring team be spread across the nation? If you're calling in scores and posting to the web anyway...)
If you're interested in the volunteer spot... I guess there should be some auditions of 140 character update messages.
Cheers,
Anders
I just checked and we have a number of folks signed up already, but if you haven't yet, you can log in here to the database (same one for volunteers and racers too):
http://blackriverstages.com/2010/text-login.php
Remember, there are two channels, General and Scoring. All the "Stage 3 started" and "Car 7 rolled" and "Regroup shortened" type stuff go in General, and Scoring has just numbers... an overload of numbers if you're not super into that. If you sign for both, they're all just mixed in together.
I'm also thinking about doing something like "Cloud Computing", that is, virtual outsourcing. In particular, finding a volunteer who can't make it to the rally, to help write texts based on phone in/text in reports from competitors. So the racers would have your number, call/text in interesting stuff ("I lost a wheel" or "Replaced transmission") and you would log in to the texting database and blast it out to everyone. This kind of reporting, in this day and age, doesn't need to be done by someone at the rally. You wouldn't even need to be in the same time zone, really! Since we have night stages, somewhere west might be even better!
Always looking for neat ways to make it more interesting for the volunteers. (Which is an interesting discussion itself... what other tasks could you outsource? Could the scoring team be spread across the nation? If you're calling in scores and posting to the web anyway...)
If you're interested in the volunteer spot... I guess there should be some auditions of 140 character update messages.
Cheers,
Anders