Chris,
I was wondering what you thought about offering complete online purchasing (ecommerce) for entry fees and advertising for that nats. Would people even use it or would they opt to mail in checks like usual. I am asking you because I heard somewhere that you work for some type of internet company and you also seem to be involved with the web development and posting of information for the nats lately. Thank you in advance for your input.
For the 2004 Nats we were able to take entires 100% online with an application that I was in the middle of writing with a developer that would facilitate a person being able to basically set up a profile of what sanctioning bodies they are members of to include boats, cars, etc., what classes they run within each sanctioning body on what frequency, etc. We also set it up for a contest director to create the existence of a race, where it is, what classes are offered. You would then see a list of the available races regardless of sanctioning body and choose to enter a race. It would then match up your profile to the event profile to show what of your classes are offered and you can just select the classes you want to run and move on. We wrote an interface and allowed those entries to be imported into Ron Byrd's Race Manager program that is being used at the Nats this year for building heats and keeping score. We left off at taking those results and posting them back to the site for display. We brought on the 04 Nats in the middle of development so we had some bugs to contend with but in the end it was a huge lift. I do have experience with setting up eCommerce sites and payment gateways and intended to offer that as well but to make is easier all fees for setting up and entering a race would have to run through one account and we would have to send the net entry proceeds to the contest director. I just not too certain how many contest directors would be interested in a solution like this.
Actually I'm and exec with a company that builds application solutions for managing defaulted debt and repossessed assets, mostly in the mortgage servicing world. All of those solutions are delivered via the internet. Let's just say, though, that my travel schedule makes keeping on top of my boats a challenge but I do get many free flights on American Airlines and hotel stays at Marriott.
