How did we post results so quickly?

We just wrapped up hosting the 2007 Laser Nationals and have received a great deal of positive feedback regarding the live updates and how quickly we were able to post accurate results.  Here is a little insight into how we were able to post provisional results on the Internet within a half hour after the last boat in an 80+ boat fleet finished.

The key is having good people on the finish boats.  All the technology in the world does not matter if you don't have accurate finish orders to post.

We had two finish boats, one at each end of the line.  The primary boat was anchored at the starboard end of the finish line.  The secondary finish boat anchored just beyond the pin end of the line so that they could sight the line back towards the primary finish boat. 

Each boat was set up with a person sighting the line, two people recording results, a person videotaping the finish, an extra person to track down sail numbers of boats that were obstructed as they crossed the line, and a driver.  The primary finish boat also had a race communications person on it (more on this later). 

The person sighting the line called out the last four digits of each sail number as the boat finished.  If a sail number was blocked as it finished, she called ‘boat’ so that the people recording numbers knew to leave a space. One of the two number recorders would never look at the finish while numbers were being called. The second number recorder acted as a secondary backup for any missed boat numbers.

As soon as the last boat finished, the two written lists on each boat were consolidated into a single list.  It’s important to note that 1) the finish team “practiced” calling and recording numbers  2) there were no discussions that could distract the person calling numbers or the people recording the numbers, 3) the person sighting the line and calling the numbers removed herself from the final resolution of  provisional list and 4) all agreed that we would do our own jobs and not “help” another unless asked specifically.

 If there were questions, the resolved list from the secondary finish boat was checked.  Finishes that needed to be checked on the video were marked.  The name of the communications person was written on the top of the list with the provisional finish order, which denoted that this was the list to be published to the web.

The communications person’s responsibilities were to make sure the finish line was in the right place, handle radio traffic with the Race Committee, and post web updates and scores.  Having the separate communications person allowed the finish team to concentrate solely on recording accurate finish orders.  After each start, the Race committee would call with the list of OCS boats for that start.  If they needed to verify the OCS boats on video, a note that no OCS boats were included was added to the provisional results.  The communications person also watched and recorded the first fifteen finishers of each race so that a provisional top five could be posted immediately.

The primary finish boat was set up with an IBM laptop (actually a pretty old ThinkPad) with Sailwave and FrontPage loaded on to it.   Sailwave (www.sailwave.com <http://www.sailwave.com>) was used to score the regatta.  All the competitors were entered into the software during registration.  FrontPage was used to update the website.  We used a Verizon Broadband wireless card that provided high-speed access to the Internet at all times.

All live updates were done to the main page of the event web site.  That page was always open in FrontPage so that all the communications person had to do was type in the update and hit save to publish it.  Doing all the updates to the main page simplified updating and also gave our sponsors maximum exposure.

Once there was a provisional finish list for the race, the communications person would enter the results into Sailwave, publish the results to HTML files (a couple of mouse clicks in Sailwave), and then copy them to the website.

We also had two designated press people who wrote the press releases, created the videos, and posted pictures.  The releases were sent to the communications person, who then published them to the web site and sent them to the media.

There was also a great deal of work done behind the scenes to ensure that the web site remained available during the event.  We made a complete backup of the web site the day before the event.  We removed all edit access from the website except for a single User Id and password.  We alerted the company that hosts our web site that we would be seeing at least 100 times more traffic at our site during the event.  The web site remained available for the entire event and was not hacked.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.