So this would normally be posted under the VEX Event Partners forums, but I thought I’d post it here for the rest of you that go to VEX Events have a great day competing and don’t think for 30 seconds about the software that runs the event.
I’m a VEX Event producer, and I’m just back from the 1st Annual Haverford Stampede VEX competition. Once again I’m hugely impressed with the event software, ease of pulling registrations from the web, check-in, seeding the teams, match schedules, results, the new signs that show the team name and the ranks, etc.
Nice job Dave, thanks for making our event easy to run!
We run lots of low cost events, held in gyms and cafeterias, 100% volunteers. You can have 1 laptop and an external monitor and run a good event. Or you can have a few laptops, an external monitor at each field, and a projector and BAZINGA, a world class event. But at the center is the field control software written by Dave Flowerday and his co-coders. It ran all day without any field errors.
We ran a vex qualifying event last weekend (which is also the first one we’ve entered teams into, as this is our first year in VRC), and it was awesome.
I talked to some people at school’s IT and media center, and got three really old laptops (1.4ghz Centrino, 1gb RAM) to run the field, and two projectors. We ran the field with no issues at all (even running Audience, Backend, TM, and Webserver on one machine). I taught one of the volunteer teachers how to run TM, and there were no issues.
I was talking to the DJ (a friend of mine and a FRC guy), and he told me “I’ve got a whole playlist of line-dancing songs for when the field breaks down, but I can’t play them because the field never breaks down”. That sums up the whole Tournament Manager and vex control system.
From the team side and from someone who has spent time on the event side, no doubt that tournament manager software is the finest of its kind (and I do know about the mgt system of “other” competitions ;)). Thanks for your volunteer work. And…on a semi-related note, is there a way to get match data from the event (match listings and scores?)
Thanks guys. It’s nice to hear that people enjoy using the software. Of course, we’re always happy to hear any constructive feedback you have as well.
Also, I’ll point out that there’s a team of 3 of us that work on TM. Mike and Dave (the other Dave) don’t post as much on these forums as I do but they’re just as involved in making TM happen as I am.
You’re in luck Rich, your event used vexscores.com to post the event information. Take a look at VEX via .
Rich, if you want all the detailed results from an event on your own computer you will need access to the machine that ran the TM server. Just open the tournament database, click on “File” and then “Export - Export all data to .xlsx” to send all the tournament results to a spreadsheet. You can also export the .db file, but the xlsx will probably more useful for post-event analysis.
So I recently had the honor of being an emcee at a FLL (FIRST LEGO League) competition. Turns out there wasn’t a timer for the fields, so we ended up using the VEX Competition program timer, since it is designed to be shown on a screen.
For people like me, I don’t really care whether you do VEX or FIRST or some other program. It was just funny to see the VEX logo at a FIRST competition.
Major kudos to Dave and everyone. It’s a very robust and well-rounded program that works no matter what you throw at it.
My team runs an event every year, and we just finished our third one (just this weekend) and each year, the software is always a pleasure to use. This year, Mr. Folea was able to walk us through a really neat way to do Alliance Selections and a couple of the team parents were absolutely amazed at how they could run the software after just 2 short minutes of watching our mentor run it.
I know I’m only saying things which have already been said, but a truly beautiful piece of software.
[FONT=Verdana]I too have been impressed by the capabilities of the software, particularly the huge leap it took over this past year incorporating inspection, team check-in, posting online scores, pit admin, posting announcements, webserver, etc. Even something as mundane as making pit signs for all the teams at your event can automatically be handled by the software.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Verdana]Moreover, the individuals putting their expertise into the development and continuing improvements to the software is more impressive. Recently I pointed out some difficulty in importing a data file from a previous tournament and was stunned when a little over a week later a new version of TM was out that addressed the problem.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Verdana]Way to go guys!!![/FONT]
This is my third year of running a tournament in central Florida and every year my principal, superintendent, and staff are impressed by all the displays we use with tournament manager. I would like to see a printable receipt added to tournament manager I can give to teams that bring checks to the events. most schools require a receipt to bring back to their book keeper, A printable receipt would look more professional than a hand written receipt.
