Focus on Competition
Technically Speaking ...
Greg Hahn Technical Director [email protected]
Online Event Listing
This will attempt to be a short tutorial on using and navigating the new event listing on the AMA website. To quickly clear up one of the most asked questions: the old calendar and the new event listing do not work together.
When we were tasked with creating the online sanction portal, the first item we had to come up with was a searchable event listing to coordinate with the sanctioning process. The old calendar software was extremely dated and the company was out of business, so there was no chance to get upgrades. The old calendar and the new listing operate with their own databases, so obviously they won’t play together.
The reason for the event listing having the look it does was to keep it looking as close as possible to what is printed in the magazine, hopefully making it familiar to all users. When you run a search, the listing you get will have the feel of the magazine listing without the small columns. The font is larger and should be much easier to read without a magnifying glass.
One of the huge benefits of the new listing is that it is updated every 24 hours. So when you search for an event, you are getting the most accurate and timely listing possible.
Always keep in mind that the accuracy of the search is completely dependent on the information you put in the blanks. The fewer blanks you fill, the larger your response will be. The only required fields are "Flying"/"Nonflying" and the start and end date. You may spread the date across only 12 calendar months.
We have removed the asterisk from "City" because it was causing problems with users thinking it was a required field. Putting a city in the search often narrowed the search so much that the event you were looking for didn’t come up. The obvious point: if you knew where the event was, you wouldn’t be searching for it in the first place.
We didn’t include a "district" drop-down because we felt that the sizes of the districts were too large for most users. As time will tell, it might be something we include at a later date.
Once your search is complete, simply push the print button if you wish to print a copy of your listings. As time goes on we will continually look at the system and make updates and small changes as the need arises.
Key points:
- The old calendar and the new listing use separate databases and do not integrate.
- The listing is updated every 24 hours for timeliness.
- Required fields: "Flying"/"Nonflying" and start/end dates (up to 12 months).
- "City" is not required; a city search may overly narrow results.
- No "district" drop-down initially; may be added later.
- You can print search results; the system will be refined over time.
As always, your comments are welcome and we’re here to help. AMA
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
