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I am going to start an amicable disscussion of improving SCCA events Here
.
Note that the SCCA Solo Board Meets this Wednesday at La Casa in Grapevine.
Send me your comments/suggestions/gripes or come yourself to the board meeting.
I have tried to capture some of the comments from the locked thread on the last event
john
[email protected]
Here's one gripe: why in hell does it take three weeks to get the results posted? That's ridiculous.
- Why not cap entries at some reasonable number so participants are guaranteed their 4 runs. This will keep away the last minute walk-ups (novices) and reduce the chance of problems. Before I p*ss off any nooB's (we were all one once...hell, I still am) anyone can pre-register to an SCCA event. Once the bugs get worked out (I realize there will always be a chance for delay) increase the cap.
- Another thing is worker assignment. If you skip/miss/walk away from your work assignment you're banished for the year. Period.
- Make sure the corner worker with the radio and flag are experienced and know what they are doing.
Most of these "improvements" are centered around a driver cap and pre-registration. These are easy to implement and will lead to consitency. Although smaller in numbers, similiar in # of runs, our club has had great success with the following.
-Cap future events to 175 drivers.
-Allow 4 runs at each event. The 175 driver cap will with this. This year only 1 event has allowed for 4 runs. 3 is just criminal!
-Require Pre-Registration via DLBRacing or some other agreed upon means. Believe me, they will do it. Eliminating registration on-site will solve a lot of issues and early morning juggling. It will also reduce the long check-in lines. You can download the Axware registration list straight from DLBRacing which takes about 2 minutes. Forget lines for two hours in the morning.
-Reduce worker assignment issues. Requiring preregistration will help with this as well. Axware allows you to very easily pre-assign work and balance heats before the day of the event. If you pay for the year then you get to pick your assignment for the year…easy. Otherwise you get what we give you.
-Balance the heats. No need for first heat to take 2 hours and the 3rd 30 minutes. Yet another item you can better manage once you require preregistration. Axware has a feature to to help you balance heats by class that takes about 5 minutes to setup.
-Reduce T/S issues. Only assign knowledgeable Axware folks to the computer. By pre-assigning the worker assignments you can ensure that you have a good computer operators throughout the event.
-Reduce corner working issues. Only allow experienced folks to work the radios on course. Again, pre-assigning worker assignments will allow you to pick the best people for the job.
-Operations manual. I don't know if this is something that SCCA already has but it may help by making sure the same mistakes don't happen over and over again.
JStankus you need to go to an S2K AX! Clovis and his S2K group have it down, you walk up to the table in the AM and your name is on the list, your work assignment has been pre assigned! And that's it no fuss no muss! Isn't technology grand! 8)
I’m not a fan of capping events, since I historically run ever event for my chosen groups. I’d hate to get bumped because of a cap. But I guess yearly prepay would eliminate that issue for me.
I still figure the negative vibes from this seasons SCCA events will lessen the amount of participants for 2005. But I worry ER may be slammed as the "new" alternative to SCCA events.I'd be interested in hearing what those suggestions are since the locked thread took on a life of it's own near the end of it's run. And several of us seemed to have our words twisted to suit the needs of others....Quote:
Originally Posted by JStankus
I second the cap idea... and the pre-registration. The huge numbers of autox'ers / low number of runs are the main reason I avoid the SCCA events.
biggest gripes to SCCA... Few runs.
I do think the cap woudl accomplish this, but at the same time, I'm afraid that you'll be loosing a ton of participants because of this.
SCCA, and particularly SoloII has always been the pretty much the "starting point" for people to get into performance driving/racing. I'm not thinking that the event cap (esp at 175) is going to be looked on too favorably..
Unfortunately, I don't have a better sugestion other than to work out all of the bugs and delays with how the enevnts are run 1st, and then implement a cap if we still have issues with length or number of runs...
Heck even the Houston SCCA (http://www.houscca.com/solo2/solo2.aspx) is doing on-line registration!Quote:
Originally Posted by Clovis
They charge a little extra is you want to sign up the day of the event! But I'd bet they get quite a few to sign up early & on line to save $5.00 I know most of us Cheap Bastards would! :idea:Quote:
On-line Registered SCCA Members
Each Day: $20 (must show membership card)
On-line Registered Non-SCCA Members
Each Day: $25 Day of event Registration costs an additional $5.00
Here's my wish list:
Require pre-registration (no walk-ups) and cap at 180 +/-
SCCA members and Annual pre-pays would have priority
"Guarantee" 4 runs (weather permitting)
Keep the run-group order in place
Ban John Garcia (JUST KIDDING!)
I'll have to agree that I'd like to see an event cap as well, although I don't think this is going to happen unless there is a lot of support for it at tomorrow night's meeting (BIG HINT).
I've argued this before at the last meeting, and on the TXR mailing list. The general response seemd to be that "you only get three runs per day at a Tour/Divisional/Nationals, so if you can't get it done in three runs Regionally, you're SOL". To which I respond - Regional events should be about having fun and enjoying the sport. Show me one person who wouldn't want more seat time for their money - and their entire day.
I'd like to see an entry cap around 175 participants, with a guarantee of four runs. As for hurting participation - I don't see it. If you care enough to really want to be there, you'll care enough to pre-register online, knowing that if you don't there is a chance you won't get to run. If you didn't care enough to pre-register and secure your spot, then you probably aren't going to care that much if you can't run.
If you want to see 4-run events next season, I implore you to come out to tomorrow night's board meeting and make your voice be heard. Right now, the majoirty of the board seems to be blissfully unaware of (or consciously choosing to ignore) this problem. Until and unless more of the members speak up and complain, nothing is going to change.
post deleted by a calmer onething
I do encourage all that are interested to attend the board meeting tomorrow. There are some good ideas that y'all have out there. Come and give your point of view. Just complaining here (even though I will try to relay your concerns) is not as effective as participating in the board meeting. disclaimer I am not implying that no-one here has participated in the board meetings in the past(several have). Since some of y'all have gotten annoyed at me for asking for your input and participation in the past
I think there will be some push back on an event cap, but we do have quite a bit of opportunity for improvements in efficiency. (if you disagree come to the meeting and be heard) It is a quite a bit easier to put a 50 person (S2000) or 100 person (ER) event together, so I can see the pull from your guys view of putting a cap on it. But there are a lot of other big regions that successfully pull off large events.
I do like the idea of putting more REAL preregistrations in. Pay ahead and confirmations and all that.
I have thought about putting together an operations manual for quite some time (even going back to when I was on the Spokes board years ago) If some folks would like to help me put that together that would be great.
Regards
John
[email protected]
Just as a suggestion regarding balancing of heats.......
Using one consistent way to balance the heats is easy for the organization, but rough on the participants who perpetually end up running / working at the end of the day.
So, I suggest developing TWO ways to balance the heats so that the order is somehow inverted....... You work a long day this event, but the next event is your short day........ Catch my drift?
If this type of event requires three ways to balance the heats so that everybody gets a long day / short day cycle, then so be it.
And a question...... 175 entries, or 175 drivers?
Current heat balancing theory is to make the early heats longer since everyone would prefer to work those and the later heats shorter (less time in the hot afternoon sun). This is an attempt to even out the desirablity of working the different heats. Problem here is getting an accurate count of who will be in running in which class. Some of the proposed fixes to registration should help that.
John
Well that depends if the "bigwigs" have to hold themselves to the sam erules as everyone else or not...Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTRACE
Apparantly a 200 person cap doesn't really count for some.. I know BSP grew to twice it's size (2 cars to 4) the day of the race compared with who was preregistered ;)
All 4 drivers were on my entry list and worker sheets printed out the night before. One of the drivers was originally in TSS and moved to BSP.Quote:
Originally Posted by rx7gslse
If you are going to complain, please get your facts straight. Thank you. :wink:
Better organization of the board meeting will be a big start. I've been to many - two this year - and they never seemed to have any organization. At the last event I attended, we spent the first hour arguing about something that was not on the agenda and could not be fixed at that meeting.Quote:
Originally Posted by JStankus
I'm just going by the 200 drivers listed on DLBracing.com When the 200 cap was hit there were only 2 in BSP. Unless it was a change from another class or the night before the event, they weren't listed online.Quote:
Originally Posted by JStankus
thats was my statement. I don't know what supercool list you've got. ;)
Just the Official registration list with the annuals and the online as well as the waiting list merged in.Quote:
Originally Posted by rx7gslse
Just a question, I noticed in the last SCCA Newsletter that they were hoping to increase participation in Solo by 5%, can this be done with a cap??
I’d also love to hear Mr. Osborne’s take on our local SCCA situation, since I know he has been playing AX a touch longer than some of us here and is actively involved with the SCCA.
Well I suppose that would be the supercool list now wouldn't it ;) As I said, all I could go by was the DLB list.Quote:
Originally Posted by JStankus
Anyway....
Do did the annual guys etc not count to the 200 event cap, or was that a 200+ annuals?
That would make the 175 number more reasonable..
I'm not trying to be negative here.. Just trying to figure out how the "no more than 200 at the next event so we get 4 runs" becomes, "well we've got too many people, so you only get 3 runs"
Anyway... Sorry for beating that into the ground...
Has anyone thought about running the DFW events like the houston group does with 2 entirely separate run groups? I've only spectated their events, so I'm not a great judge, but has that option been discussed? Is it worth considering?
It was supposed to be 190 + annuals. Some issues with DLB ended being 200+annuals. I did get pretty good feedback on folks who emailed me back when I asked for folks who knew they weren't going to be there.
John
I'd be all for it... except that we've proven this year that we can't even effectively run an all day event with segregated run groups. Trying to run a split day event with segregated run groups isn't going to happen until we can get the first part right, and I've seen no evidence yet that we can. :?Quote:
Originally Posted by rx7gslse
Suggestion # XXXVIII
Ask Marty Smith what to do.
We did not have a problem when he was Asst. R.E.--Solo
You know if it hadn't been specified as an amicable discussion this would be a great place for this guy....-> :nutkick:Quote:
Originally Posted by SOLO2M3
So anyone care to share what happened at the meeting???
Meeting :?: Nobody called my house :!: What meeting :?:Quote:
Originally Posted by POS Racing
Quote:
Originally Posted by onething
Hahahahahah! Good one!
The obscure reference about a phone call is from this post.Quote:
Originally Posted by Treibenschnell
So anyone who went to want to share what happened at the SCCA meeting last week?
Yeah, we actually did accomplish a few things.
- I'm been drafted to be Chief of Tech next season, replacing JG.
- Next year, all events will be primarily pre-registration/pre-pay (through paypal or by mailing a check) only, with a pre-reg cutoff of Thursday night prior to the event. Walkups will be allowed, but they will be charged an additional $15 over the regular price.
- Notice the pre-payment part above - you can either prepay annually (9 events for the price of 7), or prepay per event (regular price depending on member/non-member), or walkup and pay and get bent over to the tune of around $45 per event.
The intention is to effectively eliminate walkup registration, thereby streamlining the lines at events (money should only be changing hands for those few idiots who don't prepay), and giving the Worker Chief the opportunity to have heat and work assignments effectively done before the event even starts.