Some people have recently been asking me how my archery application is going and what it does. For that reason I thought that it might be time to produce a couple of videos showing what I have been up to. Please note that this is a project that I am still working on and the solution is not yet complete and still has a fair number of bugs to iron out.
However, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Day to Day Admin side of the system – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPvKsSQuby4
Archery Tournament Manager – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3dGAtBzGbo
Looks useful – but what are the implications of the Data Protection Act?
Clubs should be registered with the DPA but most clubs are collating membership details with contact details, etc. in various systems (Excel spreadsheets, small databases, etc.) so they should be registered already.
Wow, Martyn, this is an extremely professional presentation which gives a very clear indication of what ACM is all about. I did find it a bit tiring on the eyes trying to read the text on the sample page layouts, as it was a bit out of focus. But your narrative was sufficiently clear that I found I could actually stop trying to read everything on the screen. Who will eventually be able to access/use ACM at AoR e.g. to access emergency info while on site at Raunds Manor? I’ll now head off to check out the Tournaments module! Mick
To comply with the DPA we need to justify the reason for the data collected and to maintain control over the data. At the moment I’m keeping our data under my control (chairman) but I’m looking at other techniques to build into the system so that different levels of permission allow or disallow access to certain data. However, that is a little advanced for me at the moment. I’m also looking at encryption and more now that I’m beginning to populating the system with our club’s data properly.
This video has promoted some interesting communications this evening. It will be up to other club’s management to make decisions for their clubs. It is surprising how many clubs (archery and otherwise) who maintain data sets similar to the one I will be building but who are not DPA registered and who do not control their data, often held in spreadsheets.
It is even more surprising how many clubs do not even hold this sort of information. For example, in the archery world we need to know about medical conditions that might affect someone’s ability to shoot. Imagine someone having an epileptic attack or fainting on the shooting line whilst at full draw, or someone with a joint condition causing themselves injury drawing a bow. What do you do if someone has an accident, who in their family would they like you to call? This was a serious conversation that we had with a legal guy at my level one coaching course and everything that he said made sense and was food for thought .
Ideally this information needs to be in the cloud and available to key members of the club if i am not at the club, but this is not going to happen as it introduces a whole new level of complexity and security.
For now, I have controls for this information during the beginners course (I’ll not elaborate online) but hopefully this posting will get club leaders thinking about the data that they need to be collecting and how it is controlled.
M.
Hi my club is looking for a quick way to record attendance by using a barcode / qr code to be scanned by webcam per session (or phone app) to keep track of members and allowing our club sectary to be able to shoot and not speed time name checking. do you have or in the future will have this as a possible addition to your program?
thanks
Jon
Hi Jon, Thanks for your comment. Working with bar codes is a little out of my skillset but far from impossible. I had not considered tracking attendance in this manner, mainly because that would involve having to have a computer at the field for every session and this is not something that we have at AoR. We use a simply book to log people who attend the club (archers and spectators). This is also used to check out and check back in each arrow taken to the field.
If I ever including something like this in the application, I’ll be sure to blog about it.
M.