HBT 2012 Competition - assistance needed

ohiobrewtus · 06-17-2011, 05:54 PM

Overall, this year's competition went pretty well. There are certainly some ways to improve and streamline the process, though.

If we're going to do this again in 2012 and in future years, we're going to need an online system developed for handling registrations, entrant information, judge information. Yooper indicated that she previously tried using HCCP, but found it a bit cumbersome.

We don't need to try and reinvent the wheel though. If you know of something out there that we can use, then that's great. Reply here with a link and I'll check them out.

If you are interested in doing all kinds of coding work for free to develop this system and/or have space to host, or have ideas to streamline the registration process, then please post that too.

Hopefully we can lighten the number of hours that Yooper and the lead judges at each region had to put into this year's competition. If not, it may not happen in 2012.

**Yooper** · 06-17-2011, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ohiobrewtus

Overall, this year's competition went pretty well. There are certainly some ways to improve and streamline the process, though.

If we're going to do this again in 2012 and in future years, we're going to need an online system developed for handling registrations, entrant information, judge information. Yooper indicated that she previously tried using HCCP, but found it a bit cumbersome.

We don't need to try and reinvent the wheel though. If you know of something out there that we can use, then that's great. Reply here with a link and I'll check them out.

If you are interested in doing all kinds of coding work for free to develop this system and/or have space to host, or have ideas to streamline the registration process, then please post that too.

Hopefully we can lighten the number of hours that Yooper and the lead judges at each region had to put into this year's competition. If not, it may not happen in 2012.

I think HCCP is ok, but there were a couple of issues. One was simply doing two comps at the same time- the software didn't have that ability. Overall, it's good software but not for multiple sites or for someone not on site on the same computer. Data entry on it went fairly fast, though, so it really isn't "bad" just not what we need for our multi-site comp.

One thing that would be a requirement would have to be online registration, and paying via paypal automatically. We'd need to have registration, labels, style information, etc. all in one place.

Another thing that would make it less cumbersome would be having it online for all. That way, each site could print label, judge information, etc with the information entered once.

**Homercidal** · 06-20-2011, 11:54 AM

I bowed out of this year's competition, somewhat because of the drama that went on, but mostly because I had not prepared any beer worthy of submitting. I vote to continue the competition. Difficulties bring opportunity for improvement.

I would think that Paypal should be able to be tied into a web page collecting registration. I can check out that HCCP software and see what it looks like. I'm no programming genius, but if it can help keep the competition going, I'm all for seeing what I can do.

wildwest450 · 06-20-2011, 04:16 PM

I don't like the way the judging is setup.

We need a tongue in cheek smiley.

I could have swore I read a never again post from someone.

_

**weirdboy** · 06-20-2011, 04:22 PM

Can we contact the NHC folks and find out what they used to organize the competition? Obviously they have something that works if they managed to keep track of entries from so many regions, etc.

**remilard** · 06-20-2011, 06:32 PM

NHC uses Jamil's software as does UMMO. If you can get it from Jamil and are competent with I believe PHP and SQL, I understand it isn't that bad to set up. I do believe that the multi site and multi round stuff is still somewhat manual.

I would use BCOE. In the past it has just been an online registration system and you use HCCP for the day of competition stuff but the guy that does it is about to release the next version which does everything. Dozens of comps use it, and it handles online payment. You can install it on your own server, it is free (in both senses). They guy who writes it will host it for you for I believe $30 per year. That is what we did.

All of the data is in flat files. I think it would be straightforward to have two installations for the regional sites (this would be $60 in hosting obviously if you go that route), then after the first round manipulate the flat files and upload them to one of the installations which you then use for the second round.

I believe the manual part would be a small number of hours of work, at most.

As for the online registration and payment, it works great and that takes about 10 minutes to set up (if you go with the hosted option).

http://www.brewcompetition.com/

ETA: Looks like the version with the management functionality is available for Beta test. I haven't looked at it but expect it to be pretty good as I emailed the developer with a laundry list of stuff I wanted (including stuff not in HCCP) and almost all of it he had already planned to put in.

salad 419 · 06-22-2011, 02:28 PM

OB, all you had to do was ask me......I told you I had it under control

I can host the BCOE software.

**weirdboy** · 01-26-2012, 07:20 PM

So, uh...whatever happened to this?

**Homercidal** · 01-27-2012, 01:05 PM

I think if this is going to happen we need to have some VERY dedicated volunteers! It takes a HUGE amount of work to put on a competition this large. People will have to be willing to spend many hours doing paperwork, collecting prizes from sponsors, and of course with that much beer, finding qualified judges to help with the tasting.

And I'm SURE I'm missing several other important things.

**Darwin18** · 03-25-2012, 01:18 PM

Is there going to be a 2012 competition?