Thomas, thanks for the introduction. One of the things that continue to strike me when developing this concept further is the rich variation in the background and motivation of lifters who sign up for our meets. When I originally set out on this journey, I had a much more limited view of what kind of people would be interested in virtual meets. I have come to realize that the main, and most important, challenge is to open my eyes and ears to learn what the different types of participants come here to get and what they wish they would be able to do here. It's not always easy, but to facilitate this I have decided to switch development from "my vision" to
user stories.
Team registration is actually something I have thought a lot about since I was first faced with a usage scenario I had not seen coming, i.e. a coach hosting large-scale meets for his students in an area where most of the students are not very active online. The current model is heavily oriented towards individual lifters signing up individually and competing individually. This produces major headache in a situation like this. My proposed solution is to allow coaches to register their teams which could then be joined by individual members. The team could then do things like bulk sign-up lifters to reduce the hassle of every lifter having to do so individually etc. But I also see teams as an opportunity to create personal spaces where the teams might be able to do things like keep a team message board and to post team training time schedules, team records and what not to the extent that they wish to do so. The inspiration is real-world teams, but any lifters could also decide to form a virtual team to support each other and to exchange training ideas. For example, people with the same motivation and training style could find something like this very valuable. The teams could then compete for team points in addition to each member competing individually. Were you thinking about something along these lines?
There are some more low-level tasks that need to be done first, such as creating a better meet handling system and further localization, but teams are currently very high on my personal wish list... especially now that it is becoming increasingly clear that coaches want to be able to mirror and manage their team on the virtual platform as well. In this case, I see a "As a coach, I want my team to be able to compete for team points to give our lifters a common goal" kind of story forming.
Sorry for rambling, but you get the idea. Keep the feedback coming guys and gals! Over the next months, I will also be sure to do some direct asking to shed some light on whether my own ideas match the wishes of this growing community. Our resources are currently not very large, but rest assured that I for one will continue to devote what spare time I have to push this site forward.
