One of the things I did a long time ago, that I also
included in the Tournament Director’s Toolkit, is a manual for tabroom.com. This was before there was any
built-in help. Theoretically I could delete it now, but even though it’s a bit
outdated, given that the program is regularly (albeit secretly) updated every
eleven minutes or so, and the built-in help is more than adequate, I think
there are some people who might appreciate having something that they
can print out and keep handy. Yes, I realize that this is an old-fashioned
concept—Oh, boy! A printout!—but the world I live in (i.e., the DJ, which is
probably one beat behind a state-of-the-art media corporation) still includes
people who don’t do everything on their device of choice. Or more to the point,
it includes people whose device of choice is paper. Don’t kill me when you hear
this: I’m only the messenger.
I didn’t update the manual for the NDCA presentation, and I
probably never will. It served its purpose, and one moves on. It's just there for those just getting started. It can't hurt.
Another thing I did a while ago was a guide to setting up
physical registration for tournaments using tabroom. I have given this to a
number of people, and I’ve noted that when I have, they have religiously avoided
following its advice. Everyone always seems to know better. My favorite thing
that they all know better is not to use tabroom for monitoring payments and
printing receipts. People find it much easier to create a whole new way of
monitoring payments and printing receipts (when they do either), which
inevitably leads to confusion over payments and receipts. I can appreciate
folks wanting to put their own spin on the ball, but this one has to be the
dumbest of the personal spins. Here, take this system that does everything one
hundred percent perfectly well, and introduce a whole bunch of factors that
will require copying over data and a bunch of other opportunities to almost
guarantee errors. I have noticed, in my many years of computing (I bought my first
Apple II in 1981) that computers have this amazing ability to do addition and
subtraction. In fact, they do it better than most people. Yet most people don’t
believe it. Go fig, as they say.
I do add one thing in my blurb about the registration
instructions, that at least at high school tournaments, an adult should be in
charge of the payments. Yes, it is lovely to invest that responsibility in your
top students, but I have watched JV do it all by himself (which inspired me to
do it all by myself in subsequent years), and compared it to when students—any students at any
school—have done it, and the difference is amazing. No confusion. Money in,
duly accounted, end of story, versus 17-year-olds all competing to enter the
data wrong, twice, or not at all. Maybe it’s better advice just to have all
tournaments have JV handle their payments. Couldn't hurt.
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