"Informal Events" Results Display

[Ken Gullins]

It would be nice to have a more convenient method of displaying results for Informal Events.

Background: O clubs websites are very good at displaying results and standings, leaderboards, for Formal or Organized Events but with the growing frequency of what I'm calling Informal Events (Trail O, personal home-made Checksites, QuickStart events, etc) not so much. To see new updated results, the onus is on you to remember to click on each individual event in the Events list periodically. This is inconvenient and a pain. It's not that I'm competitive about my time - just curious about who else is doing the events.

Alternatives?: It would be nice to have some more convenient kind of notification
- perhaps email for events you've indicated you are interested in (such as what's available now in this Forum)
- or a "feed" for people or events you are following a la Strava)
- or ...??? (not Facebook, please. I don't do social media)

Any ideas? suggestions? I know this is drifting further from Orienteering's roots. But is this a natural consequence and a worthwhile path of evolution?

And, assuming there is some interest in this, what priority and resources are available? I would submit that this is a higher priority than all the current activity on the Garmin connection. But mebbe that's just because I don't have a Garmin and, being a firm believer in KISS, can't really see the benefit in tethering one sometimes-flaky device to another!

[Peter Effeney]

Ken,

Thanks for the suggestion... always good to hear views on the way MapRun can evolve over time.

I'll be interested in others views on this, and in that, it's probably worth separating "published events" from others.

Just to frame the discussion, following is how we currently have the system configured.

Published Events - These are published by a MapRun Administrator and appear in the "Select Events" folders of MapRun. These events can cover any discipline, Orienteering, Rogaine, Fell Running, TrailO, StreetO, and they can range from very informal to tightly controlled and competitive. Administrators have tools to  manage events, results, mailing lists etc. An important point is that these events typically have the options set so that everyone who participates does so on the same basis.. eg same punch tolerance, can see their position or not, same time limit etc etc.

CheckSites - Was initially conceived to allow people to check/experiment with events and options/settings... often then leading to publishing an event in its final form.  CheckSites event codes can be shared so multiple people could use an event, but there is no guarantee that they all used the same format/settings for their participation. But, this is fine for people just wanting to experiment... but results are not published (at least there is no RouteGadget for tracks to be displayed). CheckSites events have a sunset date, after which they are removed.

QuickStart - A QuickStart event only exists on the originator's phone (unless they convert it to a CheckSites event). The originator can use it multiple times, but maybe with different settings and like CheckSites, no attempt at publishing coherent results is attempted.

My guidance would be, if you have an Event that you think is useful to others and you are interested in checking in on results... arrange to get it published (no matter how informal the "competition" is).

If you are interested in checking in on other people's runs in an event that you have run in, you can open your own result in MapRunF and then tap the "All Results" button to see other's results. (Or go to the Leader Board QuickLink at www.maprunners.com.au)

Also you may have seen information on this Forum about how to get a link to results for individual events. These links could saved in a document on your device (or a website) as your favourites list.

We don't currently have "notifications" or a "feed" that allows people to subscribe to a list of events to be alerted when a new result is posted.

Peter

[MichaelRaz]

I'm not convinced that there would be much value in this - and, sorry Ken, but find the MapRunG implementation far more useful from a resources perspective (although it is a shame that other watch brands do not have the ability to do something similar).  Given the purpose of the CheckSites and Quick Start formats, a notification system would not really make sense.  For published events, I agree with Peter that the onus for any additional results publication is up to the Club to decide if and how to do this.  All our MapRunF events to date are not considered competitive (and, in fact, under the current situation we are not allowed to consider them this - legal/insurance issues - don't ask).  If we run a more formal event with MapRunF (set time limits etc) I suspect we will pull the data and present it through our website as we would for our full events.  With the semi-permanent events, there might be some interest in a notification of new runs but I really don't suspect there would be much, and certainly not worthy of using limited development resources - however this is just my opinion.  
Regarding my club, I do see the value in putting a more direct link to each event results in our web page that provides the list and links for the events available - I'll make that happen shortly.  

[Ken Gullins]

OK, thanks Michael for a very elegant solution:
You simply added an extra column for "Results" on the members-only maps table of the various MapRun events on the club's website. Didn't think of that.

And as an added bonus - if you click on an individual's name in any event you see All their events and results, including their Check Site events!