Post by The Chubbster™ on Jan 13, 2013 22:38:16 GMT
Hi everyone,
I thought I would create this separate thread to sum up my thoughts and explain why I did what I did this weekend.
Well for those that don’t know, on Saturday I attempted to provide Live(ish) coverage of a Bar Billiards tournament using this forum, pictures (importantly pictures of the score sheets on the day) and video using Youtube that was taken and uploaded from the location itself. I also created a twitter account that, for those that use twitter, would update everyone each time a tournament update was meant, which theoretically gives people information and directs them too it when it’s available, rather than them having to look it up for themselves if that makes any sense?
For Sunday, I paid for and downloaded an iOS app called Brackelope ( brackelope.com and I did all of this late sat, early sun morning, so very last minute) which allowed me to set up the tournament before hand and update things from my phone onto a dedicated websitesite which hosts the tournament brackets, results etc and is live for the entire world to see. For those of you that missed it, here is the link.
live.brackelope.com/t/mjv5q#bracket
What I found was that using this forum gets a little tricky, as it’s more geared towards discussion over anything else. That said…. people do like to get a “feel” for what’s going on, rather than just results. The video was a bad idea, and we are not quite there yet in being able to “easily” get decent video from the location in real time, although taking High Quality video and getting it on the net is a piece of cake as long as you don’t need it done right that minute. The pictures however were I feel a bad idea. They did there job, but it’s not very professional and this forum can not sustain that kind of bandwidth and web space requirements in the long run.
What I was very impressed with was the dedicated Proboards app which is extremely efficient (available for all iOS devices), at least for posting (but not so much for viewing) and indeed the use of twitter. Why have someone look something up when you can alert them on any device the moment you have something for them to see?
But by far the best thing overall was Brackelope (the app) that allowed me to continually update the tournament brackets and results list. I found more often than not that I was able to get the results uploaded and “live” on the internet using only my iphone before the winners had even finished handing in there results to the admin desk. Given how excellently well run today’s event was, that’s quite a feat for a simple iphone app. I can think of no better example of how modern mobile technology can benefit us.
Think about that for a moment……..
The app is fairy new, and although not really geared towards our game, will hopefully improve over time, the big drawback at the moment is that it does not use scores. You literally just pick the winner for each match and it does everything else for you. But it’s great to use and extremely efficient. Each posting to the internet took less than a second to get live, and the app is really well designed and takes hardly any time at all out of your day. This if you ask me was defiantly a way to go. Integrate that efficiently with a live “blog stream” and you would have yourself a very versatile, easy yet efficient way to inform the world of our tournaments and events as they happen.
I’d like to sum up with some thoughts and reasons why I did all this. Weather we like it or not, times have changed and the way things are done have changed. Just think now of the benefits of using a laptop to help run a tournament over the days before computers existed? When I set up this forum, it was old technology back then, yet to the majority of users brand new and quite revolutionary. Its benefits are far too numerous to mention all over again. But although the speed of technology moves faster than people can keep up with (coupled with the fact that this forum was old hat when I set it up) I was very surprised to come back after all these years to see that hardly anything had been done to take advantage of “new” technologies for the benefit of our games. Sure we have a better forum these days, and better websites and lines of communication (and we should applaud always those that make this possible, they cannot possibly be asked to do any more) But we’re using what we already have and enhancing it, not as I believe we should be doing which is taking advantage of “new” technology, technology that as I learnt today, is really very, very simple to set up and use for anyone that can use a mobile phone. It would be a task for some new people, but one I believe is well worth it and as I hope you can see will only help our cause.
Although there are many nay sayers and those that don’t like to move with the times, I hope that this weekends demonstration goes some way to showing what “can” be done with some effort and next to no costs (that app is mine to use forever now for a mere £10). Just as this forum helped keep our game alive and improved so many things, so do I believe can be the same for Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Applications, and mobile technology. For as we all know, whether we like it or not, that is the way the world is going…. period. It’s my view we either move with the times or settle for what we have and enjoy it before it slowly “fades away”. I think we all know that’s the way we are going. How long we delay that is up to us. But if we are a little more brave, I really do think we can expand the game rather than just cling to what we have for dear life, and as I said before I hope this weekends demonstrations go some way to proving that.
That’s it from me guys. For many reasons I’ll be attempting to once again take a back seat from now on with regards to Bar Billiards and related matters. I want to take this moment to thank all those people who in any capacity contribute to the running of our game….. you have my heart felt thanks and respect.
See you all soon.
I thought I would create this separate thread to sum up my thoughts and explain why I did what I did this weekend.
Well for those that don’t know, on Saturday I attempted to provide Live(ish) coverage of a Bar Billiards tournament using this forum, pictures (importantly pictures of the score sheets on the day) and video using Youtube that was taken and uploaded from the location itself. I also created a twitter account that, for those that use twitter, would update everyone each time a tournament update was meant, which theoretically gives people information and directs them too it when it’s available, rather than them having to look it up for themselves if that makes any sense?
For Sunday, I paid for and downloaded an iOS app called Brackelope ( brackelope.com and I did all of this late sat, early sun morning, so very last minute) which allowed me to set up the tournament before hand and update things from my phone onto a dedicated websitesite which hosts the tournament brackets, results etc and is live for the entire world to see. For those of you that missed it, here is the link.
live.brackelope.com/t/mjv5q#bracket
What I found was that using this forum gets a little tricky, as it’s more geared towards discussion over anything else. That said…. people do like to get a “feel” for what’s going on, rather than just results. The video was a bad idea, and we are not quite there yet in being able to “easily” get decent video from the location in real time, although taking High Quality video and getting it on the net is a piece of cake as long as you don’t need it done right that minute. The pictures however were I feel a bad idea. They did there job, but it’s not very professional and this forum can not sustain that kind of bandwidth and web space requirements in the long run.
What I was very impressed with was the dedicated Proboards app which is extremely efficient (available for all iOS devices), at least for posting (but not so much for viewing) and indeed the use of twitter. Why have someone look something up when you can alert them on any device the moment you have something for them to see?
But by far the best thing overall was Brackelope (the app) that allowed me to continually update the tournament brackets and results list. I found more often than not that I was able to get the results uploaded and “live” on the internet using only my iphone before the winners had even finished handing in there results to the admin desk. Given how excellently well run today’s event was, that’s quite a feat for a simple iphone app. I can think of no better example of how modern mobile technology can benefit us.
Think about that for a moment……..
The app is fairy new, and although not really geared towards our game, will hopefully improve over time, the big drawback at the moment is that it does not use scores. You literally just pick the winner for each match and it does everything else for you. But it’s great to use and extremely efficient. Each posting to the internet took less than a second to get live, and the app is really well designed and takes hardly any time at all out of your day. This if you ask me was defiantly a way to go. Integrate that efficiently with a live “blog stream” and you would have yourself a very versatile, easy yet efficient way to inform the world of our tournaments and events as they happen.
I’d like to sum up with some thoughts and reasons why I did all this. Weather we like it or not, times have changed and the way things are done have changed. Just think now of the benefits of using a laptop to help run a tournament over the days before computers existed? When I set up this forum, it was old technology back then, yet to the majority of users brand new and quite revolutionary. Its benefits are far too numerous to mention all over again. But although the speed of technology moves faster than people can keep up with (coupled with the fact that this forum was old hat when I set it up) I was very surprised to come back after all these years to see that hardly anything had been done to take advantage of “new” technologies for the benefit of our games. Sure we have a better forum these days, and better websites and lines of communication (and we should applaud always those that make this possible, they cannot possibly be asked to do any more) But we’re using what we already have and enhancing it, not as I believe we should be doing which is taking advantage of “new” technology, technology that as I learnt today, is really very, very simple to set up and use for anyone that can use a mobile phone. It would be a task for some new people, but one I believe is well worth it and as I hope you can see will only help our cause.
Although there are many nay sayers and those that don’t like to move with the times, I hope that this weekends demonstration goes some way to showing what “can” be done with some effort and next to no costs (that app is mine to use forever now for a mere £10). Just as this forum helped keep our game alive and improved so many things, so do I believe can be the same for Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Applications, and mobile technology. For as we all know, whether we like it or not, that is the way the world is going…. period. It’s my view we either move with the times or settle for what we have and enjoy it before it slowly “fades away”. I think we all know that’s the way we are going. How long we delay that is up to us. But if we are a little more brave, I really do think we can expand the game rather than just cling to what we have for dear life, and as I said before I hope this weekends demonstrations go some way to proving that.
That’s it from me guys. For many reasons I’ll be attempting to once again take a back seat from now on with regards to Bar Billiards and related matters. I want to take this moment to thank all those people who in any capacity contribute to the running of our game….. you have my heart felt thanks and respect.
See you all soon.
