TD Tuesdays Feedback
We received overwhelmingly positive feedback when we ran our survey in November. Here is what we learned from people who responded:
- Almost everyone thinks the quality/insightfulness of the content is great
- People really like how specific and focused each article is
- I need to improve my copy-editing skills a bit (I hope I've been doing better since the survey)
- The posts are slightly on the long side
- There are a lot more topics that people want covered
Slowing down the post rate
The original goal with this series was to post 10-15 articles. Thanks to you, we've already reached that mark, compiling 11 articles by 11 TDs so far. After receiving so much positive feedback, I'd like to push this forward and continue the series for as long as possible. Publishing an article every week seems to be putting quite a bit of strain on our small community of TDs, so I think we would be better off if we slowed down the series to two posts per month. Starting this month, TD Tuesday articles will be posted every 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month. I hope this change gives you all more time to write your articles and keeps this series rolling at a more sustainable rate.
Topics that need authors
Several of you suggested topics you would like to see. In no particular order, here is a compiled list:
- Do's and Don'ts of any good tourney
- Info on delegation of duties
- Software that people use to make the job easier
- How these jobs transition into the real world
- How to use this on a resume
- How taxes work for large events
- When to file for a business and how to do it
- How to manage volunteers
- Options for acquiring insurance
- How to network and get donations/vendors/merchandisers
- Some comparison between tournaments in different parts of the world, for example between Europe and the US
- Starting a new/small tournament
- Player gift and merchandising
- Organizing a HAT tournament
- Running a tournament party
- Putting together a group of tournament admins
- Checklist for tournament setup
- Getting spectators and publicity for your event
It is okay for topics to have multiple authors. For a great example of this, see how Ryan Thompson and Benji Heywood's scheduling articles complement each other.
It is also okay for authors to write about more than one topic. Some of you have suggested a desire to do this, and I can't thank you enough!
We have three articles presently scheduled which will keep this series alive at least through February. Email mark@leaguevine.com if you would like to take one of the topics, and lets see how long we can keep this going!
Quick Leaguevine update
We spent a lot of time in 2011 working on getting real-time mobile score updates working well. Our original goal was simply to make it easy for TDs to collect scores, but we are happy to see that participants enjoy the experience as well. The main response we have been getting is that players like knowing what is happening on other fields in real time. Over the last few months, we've made it much easier to create pools/brackets/swiss formats, as well as making the Leaguevine Mobile experience simpler and more intuitive.
On top of these continuous incremental improvements, we are currently building an API. If you are a software developer, you will be able to extend our functionality however you like. This API is not yet released, but there are people working on or planning on working on a stats app and a scoreboard app, both of which are open source and built on this API. To join in on this fun before the official release, just email mark@leaguevine.com.
By March, our development crew will be up to two full-time core developers and 5+ part-time open-source developers, so we are excited that this is moving beyond a one-man project to become more of a community effort.
A few of you used Leaguevine to power your tournaments in 2011, and we really appreciate your confidence in our software so far. We know a larger number of you are already planning on using us to bring real-time updates to your 2012 events, and we're committed to giving you all the tools you need. Thanks for all your support so far, and have a great start to the new year!
