Viper Site Calendar, some suggestions

[Olaf Bleck]

Jay!  Mr. Jay! and whomever else has time to work on this stuff,

It'd be great to have a more comprehensive calendar.

I'm not sure what the criteria are for listings on the events section, but a few things would be great:

- list any and all Viper-worthy regattas that seem like they would draw any boats.  For the regular races, have the regional people maintain the info.

- have and informal thing where boat  owners can "rsvp", and make that visible so others can see who's thinking about it.  Maybe it could be graduated, with no, maybe, probably, yes.  Also some comments.  Sort of like an evite page.

- include direct links to the regatta sites and NOR's

- display it in calendar format

- link each event into a form thread if there is one.

Also, what happened to the google regatta map? Wasn't there one or does my memory not serve me?  That was pretty cool.

FWIW

[Jay Harrell]

Well for the Southeast it's me, Jay.  For the Northeast it's Dan.  For the West it's Drew.  For the midwest and Texas, it's whoever catches it.  If you have specific events, with dates, that aren't listed yet, bug the appropriate person for your area.  Any thing as Olaf says, that "Viper worthy" can be listed, as long as we're confident that at least a Viper or two will show up.  Basically, someone needs to be a Viper-sparkplug for each event and write up the copy, find the links, and so forth, then we'll get it posted.

There is some RSVP thing built into the Joomla module, but it has seemed overkill and redundant with regatta registrations so we haven't used it.

As for the regatta map - the maintainer sold his Viper, the map got horribly out of date, and so we removed it.  Sad, but true.

[Jeff Jones]

Hmm, did Olaf just volunteer for something?

[Olaf Bleck]

Hmm, did Olaf just volunteer for something?

Hey man, if you want me to hack some code, can do...  LOL

[Drew Harper]

Olaf...I'm sure we can get you a login on the site for calendar stuff....eh Jay?

Olaf, you must make sure to follow the protocol for the software though...otherwise the whole site can get broken....not a good thing.

[Craig Wilusz]

Would something like this work for the Viper Class?  Being used in some mulit hull classes that D and I are in.  Real easy, you add yourself in, add a regatta, or set your dates in.  I don't know anything about computers, but this seems easy as it is on google.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tVvemBJkMOMhCJ_mxZldisg&hl=en#gid=1

[Peter Beardsley]

Alternately, if you don't want to overthink it or spend weeks putting something slick together, you can just go simple Excel spreadsheet that gets posted HTML on your site like we've done in the Vanguard 15 class.  http://www.v15.org/schedule10/index.html

Elegant?  No.  But there's never any question for us about where our old results are, what regattas are upcoming months in advance (though I know, we've yet to post the 2011 calendar -- that's on me) or what the links are to the regatta -- those can of course be linked to the regatta's official registration site.  I don't need to see a separate Viper640.org listing of who says they're coming -- worst case scenario, it confuses people who think because they've signed up on the class site that they don't need to send in registration to the regatta organizers.   Willing to put up money that this happens at least once if we implement that system. 

Most important things that this calendar should do is have the entire year's racing on it, as well as results in an easy-to-locate format.  It doesn't look good for class publicity when you have to scour the site to figure out who actually races these things or how many boats we've been getting to events.  Since both bits of news are positive, we should make it accessible instead of hiding it.

My two cents as a newbie to the class/very frequent web user/organizer in other one design classes.

PB

[Jay Harrell]

Folks, the calendar trickles out because the calendar info trickles in.  Slowly.  Over time.  It's like pulling teeth.   Clubs often don't have their NORs until rather late in the game.  Online registrations aren't up.  Logistics aren't finalized. 

It's all very frustrating for people who need to travel to sail, but it's reality.

We post things on the class site as soon as we get them.  Anyone can post to the forums, and I recommend making sure ALL of your regional regattas have a thread in your regional sub-forum.  It's easier to keep track of all of them there.  Look at the Southeast forum - that's what I've done there.  Make sure your posting has links to the NOR and online registration if at all possible.  Afterward, post a link to the results.    If it's just a piece of paper on the club board, at least tell us who showed up and who won.  Cross-posting to the big Events forum is fine, but things do get lost in there.