Paper-free tournament

[greenday]

I did a small pilot project of a tournament where no paper was used to mark down scores. All the scores were entered live with mobile phones using www.skoorin.com website. I had a laptop in my car that I used to show competitors the standings before the final round and in the end.

You can check out the results here: http://skoorin.com/index.php?u=scorecard&ID=3957&locale=en

I was wondering if this has ever been tried before?

The point is that the competitors and also fans can check out all the scores as they are happening. The down side is of course that technology can fail more easily than pen and paper.

The plus side was beautifully demonstrated when the eventual winner, having finished his final round was checking out the scores in the other pool on his phone knowing that if a guy makes a long putt on the last hole, there will be a play-off for first place (he didn't make the putt).

We are planning to do a bigger paper-free competition in spingtime to test the system more thoroughly, I'll post a link so you can see how it goes on live...

http://skoorin.com/index.php?locale=en is a website designed in Estonia for live dic golf scoring. I encourage you to try it!

 

[joshmo65]

That is a cool idea. Unfortunately, I have played at too many courses that don't get reception

 

[zgmc]

Good point. And not everyone has a smartphone.

 

[BogeyNoMore]

I like my phones dumb, but it's just a matter of time before I break down and get a pocket computer.

 

[DavidSauls]

I'm not a fan of the concept....

On the other hand, I've spent hours compiling the kind of hole-by-hole course statistics you've constructed instantly.

Ironically, I've done it on a course where reception is sketchy.

 

[saaber]

I'm not sure how that would work out for you...

"Entry fee is XX dollars and make sure to bring a charged smartphone!"

Not to mention the fact that some people, myself included, don't like to pull out their phones every hole.

 

[DavidSauls]

Not to mention the fact that some people, myself included, don't like to pull out their phones every hole.

Particularly in the rain.

 

[ru4por]

Don't own a cell phone, never will. I can't play?

 

[DirtyMeathook]

^^ correct

i think this is an amazing idea, even if only used as an optional addition to pen and paper scoring. it would be a lot of fun for competitors to know where they stand relative to the field in real time, and certainly would make for a significantly improved spectator experience.

 

[Bamm]

What is the overall goal? Making it a tech-savvy, instant update kinda thing or being an environmentally friendly approach? I am all for reducing what we use, as well as reusing or re-purposing things to keep them out of landfills and such. I am very involved with recycling projects at the University I work at and oversee all of the paper products that flow through it. IMO "paperless" seems to be a huge overkill. What needs to happen is people thinking about how they use paper products and how they could manage them in a wiser fashion.
Now let's look at a disc golf tournament and the amount of paper used for it. Scorecards are the first thing most think of, let's base this on a tourney with 200 entrants. I recently produced scorecards for a tourney and I was able to get 4 scorecards out of one sheet of paper. Even if we give every participant a scorecard instead of the usual one per group of 4, we still only end up with 50 sheets of paper. How much have you really saved? Also look at the competitor's end, I have firsthand seen a smartphone dropped in a puddle (wasn't even raining) while someone was trying to keep score for a group, It took 20 minutes for us to go back through trying to figure out who scored what on which hole and enter it into another guys phone since we had no paper scorecards. That was fun, not to mention the guy who volunteered to keep score at first who is only hoping his new iphone will be okay after a few days in a bag of rice.
There are plenty of avenues to go down for recycling and managing the resources we have wisely, I don't see how making a tourney "paperless" is that big of a deal if the only purpose is being environmentally friendly. If all of your guys are fine with it and don't mind using there smartphones in this way then more power to you, just my thoughts.......

 

[greenday]

Good point. And not everyone has a smartphone.

Excactly. In the first round it's easy to put smartphone owners in different poolt but in later rounds it's difficult when you want to change the pools according to results.

 

[greenday]

I'm not sure how that would work out for you...

"Entry fee is XX dollars and make sure to bring a charged smartphone!"

Not to mention the fact that some people, myself included, don't like to pull out their phones every hole.

http://skoorin.com/?u=scorecard&ID=4275 in this competition we tried it like this: 3 people in a pool wrote scores on paper and 1 person uses a smartphone. I was the one using the smartphone (in a huge snow blizzard) and I can tell you it was much faster and simpler than pen and paper. But I did make a mistake and didn't enter the scores for one hole so I had to correct all the following holes later from the paper score card. So I guess this 3 to 1 scoring system is something to look in to. It gives you the added bonuses of live scoring yet maintaining the foolproofness of pen and paper.

Also in Estonian wintertime there is very little sunlight and sice the TD had to type in all the scores anyway to this system before the final round, it was made easier for him when some of the pools had already entered the results.

 

[greenday]

Don't own a cell phone, never will. I can't play?

Yea you can Just one of four players needs a cell phone. I bet you'd still be checking out all your scores from the website later and comparing them to your friends....

 

[greenday]

What is the overall goal? Making it a tech-savvy, instant update kinda thing or being an environmentally friendly approach? I am all for reducing what we use, as well as reusing or re-purposing things to keep them out of landfills and such. I am very involved with recycling projects at the University I work at and oversee all of the paper products that flow through it. IMO "paperless" seems to be a huge overkill. What needs to happen is people thinking about how they use paper products and how they could manage them in a wiser fashion.
Now let's look at a disc golf tournament and the amount of paper used for it. Scorecards are the first thing most think of, let's base this on a tourney with 200 entrants. I recently produced scorecards for a tourney and I was able to get 4 scorecards out of one sheet of paper. Even if we give every participant a scorecard instead of the usual one per group of 4, we still only end up with 50 sheets of paper. How much have you really saved? Also look at the competitor's end, I have firsthand seen a smartphone dropped in a puddle (wasn't even raining) while someone was trying to keep score for a group, It took 20 minutes for us to go back through trying to figure out who scored what on which hole and enter it into another guys phone since we had no paper scorecards. That was fun, not to mention the guy who volunteered to keep score at first who is only hoping his new iphone will be okay after a few days in a bag of rice.
There are plenty of avenues to go down for recycling and managing the resources we have wisely, I don't see how making a tourney "paperless" is that big of a deal if the only purpose is being environmentally friendly. If all of your guys are fine with it and don't mind using there smartphones in this way then more power to you, just my thoughts.......

Acually the environmental par wasn't my objective for this - I'm not even sure if charging a cellphone fully is less of an ecological footprint than a piece of paper...

The point is a lot of added bonuses for players and fans:

1. Live scoring - in this competition http://skoorin.com/?u=scorecard&ID=4275 there were around 50 players actually playing and aroud 300 views of the website that day, so the interest is obvious.

2. Seeing where you stand after (or during) every round. The main reason why I started doing this is being frustrated when playing in a competition and not finding out what place I got 3 days later when the final protocol is published. I want to know after every round if I'm my friends.

3. Being able to see your scores anytime hole by hole, compare them to how others did. Did you do well on a certain hole compared to others etc...

4. Statistics - how many birdies were thrown on a real difficult hole etc

5. Your girlfriend who has to stay home with a baby can check out how you're doing live and root for you

6. Instantly being able to see, if you made it anywhere near the course record like this - http://skoorin.com/?u=course&ID=24 plus the overall statistics of the course.

7. Choosing your tactics when you know how your rival is doing in the other end of the park.

 

[Bamm]

I understand, good deal if you can get everybody onboard.....

 

[ru4por]

Thinking this might be defeating my purpose for playing in the first place. Setting aside my luddite tendencies. A park full of cell phone toting, blue faced drones. Do we encourage live tweeting of the tournament experience to our thousands of "friends". More satisfaction to the instant gratification needs of those with a short attention span. :\ Players worried more about what other are scoring than their own game, distracted players in constant need of reminding they are out...you would have to likely develop an entire set of cell courtesy rules, to be called on one another. I see how well most people abide by common courtesty with phones now, not sure I want it encouraged in my outdoor, get back to nature time. And all you dang kids get off my lawn.

 

[Bamm]

I understand what he is trying to accomplish and quite frankly, I love it. That's more players that are worried about what someone else is doing, constantly watching their cell phone and not focusing on throwing their best shot every time. Higher scores for them most likely and a few more people I can finish ahead of....... =-)

 

[Raiaramis]

Seems it is easy to accomplish in small techfriendly country like Estonia, where reception is good and most people own smartphones. Still, there is no need for reception at all, inserting scores is possible offline also and like greenday mentioned only 25% of players must insert scores.

 

[Steve West]

Acually the environmental par wasn't my objective for this...

Uh, oh. Now there will be a thread on "What is Environmental Par?"

 

[DavidSauls]

Murphy's Law states that if 80% of the players have sufficiently-charged smart phones, 4 of the ones that don't will end up on the same card. (If you've ever TD'd, you know that Murphy is always on the registration list, whether you notice his name or not).

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I'm curious as to what point, if any, the scores are locked. Can a mischievous or disgruntled player sneak in and change them, at any point?

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Obviously there are some advantages to be gained from such technology. The question will be, whether they offset the drawbacks.