[65Mark]

How many of you put on car shows?
Do you do participant only voting?
Do you do popular voting?
Do you have judges for Judged voting?
Or do you have a combination of the above? If so which?
The reason I am asking is I'm developing a software program just for car shows. The only one out there is good, but it lacks a few things. Also it is easy for someone that isn't real familiar with it to break it. I know what we need for our club, but if I'm going to do this I want to make it universal so it would fit more than just what we need.

Thanks for any input you can share!

[65Mark]

Is this in the wrong place, or is it that no one does car shows?

[dm_fan]

What kind of info do you want to know?

For the PY/Pypes Openhouse, we do 3 popular vote car shows all at the same time. A Mustang show (Top 25), Musclecar Show (Top 25), and an All Pontiac show (1-2-3 in 25 classes).
We've done this show 3 times now and used a different tally process each time. Each way was successful but they each had their own quirks/drawbacks.
One of the big issues is that we have to stop accepting ballets at 2:00pm so we have time to enter/tally them, before the awards at 4:00pm. You feel awful when someone hands you a ballet at 3:00pm and you have to tell them you won't be able to include it. Manual ballet entry is so time consuming.

Steve

[65Mark]

Thanks for replying. How do you tally the votes? Software, by hand on paper? On our ballot sheets we have printed that the ballots have to be in at 1 pm and we try to have awards at 2:30 - 3:00pm. I am trying to streamline the process to get the time down. I want to make this software universal to an extent, so any input into needs would be great. If you use software may I ask which software you use now? How many people does the tallying take for each show? Also how many votes per show have to be tallied, that would give me a comparison.

Thanks a bunch!

[dm_fan]

We've used different software all 3 years.

The first year we had a trial version of character recognition software and the expensive page feed scanner recommended by the software maker. If I recall correctly, the scanning software converted each scanned ballet into a line on a spreadsheet. Once all of the ballots were scanned, you had to sort the spreadsheet and manually make your list of winners. The full version of the software and the scanner were too expensive to make it feasible to continue using. Plus the ballets had to be full 8.5"x11" sheets of white paper printed with certain areas printed in color. Any folds, creases or smudges on a ballot caused the software to ask you to manually verify it's character recognition (which took time). It was a good idea but not as time saving as it should have been.

The second year I think a friend or relative of the guy in charge of the vote tallies wrote a database program specifically for us. You imported the registration info and manually entered the ballots and it did the tallies for you. I think it's biggest draw back was that it wasn't flexable at all. Any changes had to be made by the programmer, which could take a few days each to make. I don't know what the expense was on this one.

This past year, we used 69geeto's ballot software:
http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...d.php?t=528042
It took a little while to get the hang of but worked well. I think it was more complex than we needed in some respects and had some ther quirks. The final report should have handled ties better. But it's reasonably priced and works well. I think they may continue to use it in the future.

In year 2 & 3, each show had the software setup on it's own computer and each show had 1 person doing manual ballot entry. I don't have the totals in front of me but I think it was around 280 Pontiacs, 150 Musclecars and 70 Mustangs at this year's show. Although not all of the registered cars submitted their ballot, it gives you an idea of the volume.

I hope that helps

Steve

[dm_fan]

Ever since the first year of our event, I've had an idea for voting software that uses a web-based database (I've gotten comfortable with mysql) and web pages for ballot entry and results. My thinking was that ballot entry could happen anywhere that had an internet connection and all at the same time. So at an event with 500 cars, you could have 5 people entering ballots at the same time and be finished in 45 minutes. Maybe even allow the attendees to cast their vote from smart phones if they have that option.

I know enough to setup the database and some basic web pages to handle ballot entry and results for our specific needs. But I don't have the experience to write a flexable environment that would allow others to set variables that would work for their event's specific requirements. So anything I came up with wouldn't be good for any show other than ours.

Steve

[65Mark]

Thanks.We used 69geeto's software this year. Worked good, but I have some ideas that will make it easier. The "quirks" as you say are one thing I want to not have.

Thanks for the feedback!

[65Mark]

I had thought about web based, but having a connection is usually not an option at the venues I've been at. I'm looking at the multiple data entry option as that would be nice.

[pontiaclady]

We do judged show, use 2 judges that judge full class. tally judge total and avg per car. That way all in that class have same judge. We use an access data base I built for tallying. The tables are a participant table, class table, tally table. Keep track of participant info so can get in touch with them later, info on the car, club affiliation etc. have reports built to award by class, see who not judged yet, club participation, etc. been uing for 10+ yrs. biggest issue is only 1 can nter at a time. Be nice if could have judges put on a phone entry form that would feed the program

[65Mark]

Yes I think multiple entry is going to be the hard part. We have 31 classes and 5 special categories, including best paint, best interior, best engine, club participation, and long haul. so we get a lot of vote entries. We do participant voting because we've been to too many shows where the popular vote was stacked by the guy with the most friends at the show, and judged events where the judges voted for their friends. Participant voting is only done by the participants and they only get one ballot per entry. That way no one can say the deck was loaded.

Thanks for the replies! keep them coming

[Old Blue 66]

I guess we are lucky. For the popular vote at The Indian Uprising (with only two classes), we were lucky enough to get a retired state voting machine. It has a reprogrammable brain too. It reads the little dots that people fill in and we can have voting results in minutes. If someone casts too many votes (because the brain is programed to only read 40 per page), it spits it out and doesn't count that page. We can have our results back in minutes.

The person voting slide the page into the machine when they are done. I'm not really involved with that end of the show, but I do know it has a couple of flaws.

[Old Blue 66]

Originally Posted by 65Mark

Yes I think multiple entry is going to be the hard part. We have 31 classes and 5 special categories, including best paint, best interior, best engine, club participation, and long haul. so we get a lot of vote entries. We do participant voting because we've been to too many shows where the popular vote was stacked by the guy with the most friends at the show, and judged events where the judges voted for their friends. Participant voting is only done by the participants and they only get one ballot per entry. That way no one can say the deck was loaded.

Thanks for the replies! keep them coming

You wouldnt need software for that.

We do have five best of show cars, but those are picked by a sub committee and not popular vote based. No software needed for that.

[65Mark]

What about registration. Preregistration takes some of the pressure off at the time of the show, but how do you guys handle the registration at the show? What information do you collect? Do you keep this information in a database for mailings of future shows?


Paul,
I agree the Long Haul doesn't need software, you just need the city they are from. Although when it is close we can use GPS to get distance to the show.

[pontiaclady]

We get name, addy, phone, email, club affiliation if any, car year / make / model. We tech in & give them form to fill, they bring to registration desk. We have 17 items that are judged (5 main categories), we have ability to "split classes" easily in Access. Best of awards, judges put input in and we choose. Only use the system to make sure best of makes sense. We can easily find results, most club participation etc. BUT it is a lot of work to enter. A vote machine or multiple choice test form would make tally easier.

[65Mark]

Originally Posted by pontiaclady

We get name, addy, phone, email, club affiliation if any, car year / make / model. We tech in & give them form to fill, they bring to registration desk. We have 17 items that are judged (5 main categories), we have ability to "split classes" easily in Access. Best of awards, judges put input in and we choose. Only use the system to make sure best of makes sense. We can easily find results, most club participation etc. BUT it is a lot of work to enter. A vote machine or multiple choice test form would make tally easier.

May I ask what 17 items are judged? Which are the 5 main categories? I'm assuming that because you said you have judges that you don't have participant voting. How many classes do you have? Our shows are for 1961 and newer American Muscle cars and we have 31 classes. Thanks for your input, everything helps.

[pontiaclady]

We break it down the main categories to separate out the vehicles with a lot of attention to detail and the ones that are 20 footers. For instance a lot of cars have a nice paint job, but the fit, the details, etc are not great. We give 10 points for each except for the display/safety equipment which get 5.
Body & Paint
• Paint finish & detail, fit
• Chrome/stainless, grill/tailpanel
• Glass
• Overall appearance
Engine compartment
• Paint & Detail
• Wiring, belts, hoses
• Overall
Interior
• Seats
• Dash/door panels
• Carpet / headliner
• Overall
Trunk / truck bed
• Mat / jack detail, spare tire
• Paint quality
• Overall
Wheels / Tires
• Tire quality
• Rim/cover quality
Display/safety equipment

We have 39 classes, but several of them are really duplicates of themselves. For instance we have 3 1961-1971 restored class – we put everyone in the same class and depending on how many cars we break them out into sub-classes. Since the same judges judge the entire class, it keeps the entire class judged the same way. Since we are a local show, the turnout can be unpredictable. Some years we have a lot of classics, some years lots of newer cars (2000up). We do that so we can be flexible and give out more awards. One year we may only need 1 class for 1961-1971 if only a few showed up and can use the other 2 trophies for the 1971-1980 class if a bunch showed up there. Goal is to give out as many awards as possible. We do have a popular vote for one class – which is a class of our club members cars – each participant gets a ballot to vote on those. We are mostly all out working anyway and just bringing the cars.

For the show, I have been using Microsoft Access for many years and it has been much easier than doing it by hand. It is flexible, can do reports easily – main drawback is that it is time consuming and if you get more than 150 cars there is no time to eat, go restroom anything but key in entrants, then key in judged sheets. Only one can enter at a time, although we do set up a separate database on a flash drive and copy entrants over to the master database during the registration process. If we could enter into the same database – that would be ideal. Even better would be to use OMR software to print out a form the judges can circle for judging and we just scan back into the database. I have done some checking on OMR software and it is pretty expensive – most clubs are running on fumes.

[pontiaclady]

We give 10 points for each except for the display/safety equipment which get 5.

by that I mean, that the judges can give 1-10 points or 1-5 points on display.

[65Mark]

Gotcha, thanks a lot for your input!

It looks like any program would be hard pressed to be a one size fits all. There are so many ways to do a show that programing would be a nightmare.
Ways to Judge:
Popular vote by all that attend including general public (prone to stacking the vote)
Popular vote by participants (this would be in addition to one of the other methods?)
Participant vote only on all classes (fairest way I feel, no chance for bias)
Assigned judges (could be construed as bias by those that don't win (whiners))

Probably more I can't think of right now.

Thanks again everyone for your input!!!

[65Mark]

So.....
Will 90 possible Classes be enough to handle everyone?

[65Mark]

I have another question. How many places do you have awards for? 3 places, 1st, 2nd, 3rd? Or do you have more? I'm setting up the winner sheet now and want to make sure I allow for enough. I can do any amount but there is no use coding for more than is ever used. I don't think I have heard of any shows the do more than 3 places, but you never know.

Thanks again for your help!