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Greetings Everone …
It has been a few years since I posted anything on this forum. It sure feels good to be back in the groove again. I am living in southern Indiana now but not far away from car shows. I belong to the Crusin Classics Car Club of Bloomington, Indiana. We sponsor two shows every year and our big one will be coming up in the middle of May. Of course, you are all invited. Just send me an email and I will send back a show flier … just as soon as we make one up!
I am wondering if any of you who have had responsibility for organizing a car show or a cruise in would know of any Computer Software what would allow us to combing the record keeping for all of the show functions into one. I am thinking that there must be some club somewhere that has thought that registration, judging, awards, mailings and who knows what all uses the same basic data over and over. To do this by hand is getting out of control for us as we regularly have over 200 cars in each show. What do the folks do at the Holtz Chevy 4th of July Show with the 500 or 600 cars that they get every year? I’ll bet that Solid Gold doesn’t do all the paperwork by hand. How could they?
We would not mind buying some software if it meant that we could cut a bunch of members wives loose to enjoy the day with the family instead of adding up rows of numbers so we can award trophies … not to mention addressing envelopes and everything that goes with that.
So, anyone ever heard of such a thing? If so, please post your reply here but copy me at “John@Washbush.Com”.
And to all my wonderful friends in Wisconsin, I not only miss you but I miss Wisconsin also. The Car Community in Wisconsin is among the best in the world, I think. We have a long way to go down here …
Remember, you are invited to our May Show, held at the Monroe County Airport on May 16. Who knows? You might even see some vintage aircraft out there too!
Thanks for your help.
John Washbush
Supervisor of Loose Ends
Crusin’ Classics Car Club
Bloomington, Indiana
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How ya doin’ John? I think those two shows just have been in place for so long that people just show up because they have been doing it for years. Holtz does have entry procedures when you go and pre register as well. Solid Gold doesn’t, you just show up. Do not know of any programs used. You might wanna ask on http://www.wednesdaynightclassics.com as well.
Hello John,
Have you thought about using Excel to do this? In the post “I want to have a car show, where do I start?” http://www.wiscollectorcar.com/forum.html?func=view&catid=45&id=33209
I have a link to an Excel spreadsheet that will allow you to capture, name, address, city, state, zip.
You can then use this to easily print off labels for mailings. Also it captures their email address, what class they are in and then you can set it up to easily capture Class and Judging information.
It can automatically add up the Judges scores, and then you can sort for the class using the filters (it looks like a drop down button). Select a class, and then select the total score column to sort it from highest to lowest. Then you can copy and paste the top 3 (or whatever you like) into the second tab in the Excel file. That way you have all the details you need for announcing the winners.
You can find the file at: https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/rendres/web/carshowform.xls
Take a look at it and I would be happy to customize it to fit your needs, and I can write up a “How to” with screen shots if you like too.
-Ryan
Nice to hear from you John. I will second your thoughts on the Wisconsin car community. For a State with poor car weather for much of the year it has a very strong collector car community and interest.
Sounds like Ryan has given you an option as far as making things easier and faster. I don’t know of any software specifically written for car show applications but maybe this topic will bring some to light.
Good luck with the shows.
Hi John good to hear from you! I think Ryan’s suggestion above is a good way to go. That would be portable and give you the expandability required.
If you’re looking for another option, something I’d recommend is the Community Builder plugin for Joomla. This would work well if you wanted to enter everything on a database on a site. Community Builder lets you add each entry for your show and record all of that person’s information – name, address, car, etc etc etc. This is all then stored in a database and you can then sort through the database and retrieve entries later. Moreover, for those people who have email addresses, you can mass email all of them about the show. The only caveat of this is you have to have an internet connection to access it. Also Community Builder and Joomla are both free.
Hey John,
Ryan added instructions to his excellent excel solution.
Spam tastes good….
I’ve developed a custom solution for car show registration/judging/management over the last 8 years handling registration for the Texas Volkswagen Classic and I am thinking of making it available to the public.
It of course began with an Excel spreadsheet, then grew to an Access database, and now lives on a LAMP stack on hosted servers.
Some of the features of the system:
-Online registration system including PayPal integration
-Registration booth control panel allows for staff to quickly find pre-registrations or create new registrations
-Verification of car classification based on year/model etc…
-Automatic generation of car Entry# based on class
-Instant printing of window-card containg entry#, owner name, car description etc…
-Random selection of classes for entrant to judge
-Instant printing of custom judges ballot for each entrant
-Ballot tabulation counts votes quickly by simply keying in the 4-digit entry#’s exactly as they appear on ballots
-Distributable system allows for using several computers to register entrants and/or count ballots
-Calculation of winners of each class based on direct vote count or points system
-Instant generation of PowerPoint presentation of winners including owner name, car description, and car photo if available
-Instant posting of winners-list and complete entry-list on website, including photos and descriptionsUsing this system a single computer and laser printer easily handled 340+ registrations over a weekend, averaging about 30 seconds per pre-registered user and about 90 seconds for a new registration.
Vote tabulation was handled by 6 people using 3 laptops and we we’re able to tabulate over 500 ballots containing over 2,000 individual votes (4-digit entry numbers) in about 45 minutes, including setup time.
I’m still trying to guage interest, so if this sounds like something you would be interested in using please drop me a line at tyler@texasvwclassic.com and let me know!
Thanks!
-Tyler Chamberlain
Texas VW Classic
http://www.texasvwclassic.com
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