Ok, so in reality - it's not terribly new - we've been doing this for three years now as a pilot program to get entrants their scoresheets back as quickly as possible.
What happens? Well, the day of the competition our interpid Fletch takes the giant mound of scoresheets produced by the judges hauls them off to a "document center" machine that scans and converts everything into pdf files. Those files get emailed to me for some additional processing and organizing and we post them on the web for entrants to retrieve. This year for the Mayfaire's 300+ entries we had the scoresheets back to the entrants within 24 hours. (For this year's slightly less intimidating DKM, we had the sheets back in ~6 hours. What can I say - I had a few beers and a nap after judging the Mayfaire. Don't judge me!)
So why do this? Well, it's not to save on our time. The process is still fairly manual at the moment and takes a number of more man hours than sorting the score sheets by entrant and stuffing them in an envelope. Even when you factor in the Post Office time, mailing is less work for us.
But it saves us postage and really pushes those score sheets out faster. In previous years we would hold onto the scoresheets until the Mayfaire Festival to hand out to the entrants there. Probably fine if you're a Falcon, but it would suck if you're not and didn't feel like hanging out with a bunch of us!
What do you think? Would you be satisified with a scanned scoresheet returned to you in 24 hours? Do you miss the feel of paper? Give us a comment below.
I've attached a copy of a scanned scoresheet that someone received. Look at it and give us your feedback. (and yeah, ignore the weird scaling issue on the second page. That was me during the blackout phase)
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 SampleScoresheet.pdf | 3.19 MB |
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Comments
I personally prefer the electronic versions. Too many competitions take WAY too long to get scoresheets back.
Im very happy that it is how we are doing it, saves me from scanning them myself, I end up throwing out paper ones anyways after scanning. Also being green is always a plus. Biggest thing is the speed, very much appreciate getting the results that fast, 3 weeks for 1rst round of nationals is too damn long.
I like the scanned scoresheets - quicker turnaround in getting the scoresheets out, saves on mailing time & cost, and saves on paper. And, if I ever get nostalgic for the feeling of paper, I can just print me a copy and voila!
Of course I like the immediate feedback. It must require a lot of work to scan all the scoresheets. From a club member's point of view; it is nice to save a little money in postage and take a little bit of burden off the VP who is exhausted at this time. As an insider, I feel this Mayfaire ended up running fairly smoothly after a few hickups. The electronic scoresheets lend a bit of professionalism to the whole contest.
Great job on getting the scoresheets and the results posted so quickly. It is much appreciated to the entrants to get their scores in a timely manner. Thanks Drew and Kent!
Another benefit of the PDF scan is that it won't fade. Pencil tends to do that over the years, and some brewers keep score sheets for quite a while. Well, the good ones, anyway! :)