Scottish "6" Days start times

[IanD]

I am all for innovation / improvement / cheaper / less work for organisers etc. but this mechanism still has some way to go .....

The S6D organisation was hoping to cut down the amount of needed for entry officials (who are unpaid volunteers) to deal with start time requests. The idea was to develop a system that would allow the entrants to set the start times themselves. Why they chose to get a new system built rather than use one of the existing systems (Fabian, SI Entries, Racesignup....), I have no idea.

Anyway, I'm sure they bitterly regret their choice, as it looks like the new system isn't working, and they're abandoning it for this year at least. All that volunteer effort is still going to be needed, only in a much shorter timescale. I'm told there will be an announcement today or tomorrow (1 July).

Please be nice to the harassed and overworked entry people, it's not their fault.

[King Penguin]

Email just received - back to square 1.
Frustrating for us as our party has childcare constraints including elites and we had been able to select start times which would work for all of us and for childcare cover.
I understand why the decision has been taken to go back to the old way, and I really feel for the organisers who now have a mammoth task on their hands in less time than previously.

[Snail]

I'm not sure it was ever going to work the way they set it up.

As soon as (a few) people had access, the slots taken were predominantly at the start or end of blocks . While others had not even received the email, so would eventually have had far fewer choices.

S6D would have ended up with a mix of peak periods with someone starting every minute on almost every course, interspersed with periods with almost no-one starting. Which might aid the entries team but puts unnecessary stress on start teams, overloads controls for minutes at a time and is less fair on competitors.

As for hassle from competitors wanting to change times, they could just decide not to allow it. For split starts, give one parent an open start time, and then everyone else has to accept their allocated time. In Europe, events often group age classes on a course into blocks, so that even clubmates or partners you travel with can start some hours apart.

[Snail]

What might have worked better would have been to let people select a start time for just (any) one day. With times on other days then following automatically.

So that people could select either say a later slot in their block on Day 1, or an earlier one on Day 5, or something that fitted better for other activities on one particular day. But selecting a last slot in your block on that day would be balanced by then having a first slot on another day etc.