Another theory behind Landover debacle: Hy-Tek complexity
Andy Hecker, risking further USATF Dog Housedom, has written me about the Landover results and timing mess. His take? Blame the software underlying the timing operation, called Hy-Tek. It’s the industry standard, but it’s notoriously glitchy and hard to customize for masters meets. “I want this to be easy,” Andy concludes. “That way the function of meet management is an enjoyable experience, so people will put on more meets, and athletes can show up to have fun, without being bogged down by computer (software) driven restrictions.”
Here is Andy’s note:
How do I reply to the Landover screw-up without seeming like a complete jerk? I wasn’t there, I’m not directly affected by it, but for years I’ve been pushing for my simple paper-based system — which lends itself to last-minute registration and athletes taking part in the sorting process.
Why? Computer geek as I am, the current software can’t do the job. I’ve been working with computerized meet management since it was first devised by Robert Podkaminer back in the early ’80s. Computers do what they are told to do, well. GI-GO (Garbage In, Garbage Out.)
Hy-Tek needs to be called on the carpet for this. Masters age-grouping is not EASY on their system. It is also not common. Most operators, good operators normally, do not know how to do it and it is constantly screwed up. I have had to deal with this, and have looked like an asshole to the operators at many different meets.
Many different operators (you know the places, meets where things were screwed up: Trojan Masters, Club West, Pacific Association — I’ve also had to stick my nose into (Mark) Cleary’s meets and Striders, Pasadena Seniors . . . and do you remember some people in the tent almost coming to blows at San Diego State a few years ago?).
I’ve made too many enemies. They all have the same problems, placing entrants into the wrong age groups, or actually a jumble of age groups in the same race seeded by time first, rather than by age group.
To get things right, and I have done this myself, each has to go through a laborious editing process to reconfigure races. It should be like a word processor, but instead you have to open and close events — you can’t have multiple events open and move things around. It’s tedious.
You’ve also seen me do this: I do a faster and more efficient job of this, sitting on the ground at a start line moving my stickers around (or if I screw up, using a pencil). My biggest technical problem is wind.
The fact that so many different operators get the same results containing the same problems means Hy-Tek software works consistently. Consistently wrong. I’ve written them. Their response suggests it is training that is needed. But that training does not exist on a nationwide basis.
Aside from Sandy, who is a good Hy-Tek operator, and possibly a few other individuals, we don’t have a mass of people who can work the system for Masters-specific meets.
People, well trained from youth, high school and open meets, look like idiots doing our (possibly 16) age groups in two sexes, sometimes on races with the same length but different parameters (hurdle spacing and heights) and different implements.
And heaven forbid mulit-events and conversion tables (which by the way are built in to Hy-Tek, I used them to score the National Masters Decathlon in 1999, Grass Valley — Rex Harvey and Jeff Watry trained me).
Perhaps there are extra modules that need to be purchased (like the multi-event module), or there is a supersecret mode one needs to be operating in. I want that answer, but I still don’t know how to push a button and specifically make Masters sort by our 5-year age groups first and seed time second.
The failure of that simple function is what causes the chaos. The second factor that was obviously missing was redundancy. I don’t have the budget for my little meets, so I can’t complain. But for a BIG meet like the National Championships, with the commensurate budget and expectations, there should be separate, duplicate timing systems.
Mt. SAC had three cameras on the finish line. If one goes down, you’ve got another option. If an athlete blocks another athlete in a close finish, you’ve go another angle to see what happened. There is no redundancy in Hy-Tek or any other computer system, until you hit the print button.
If you have ever accidentally deleted something or lost a hard drive on a computer, you are screwed. I had a 2 Tb Maxtor go down last month and lost two months worth of video work. You can do an entire meet off of a flash drive, its not that much data, but it is hours of work–vulnerable.
Those hours of work ARE THE REASON people are afraid of athlete friendly concepts like same-day registration.
Back to the comparison to the paper system, it can also get screwed up if paper is lost, but you have something tangible to fall back on. And the technology to make a backup becomes a copy machine.
Hand written-results looks sloppy, until retyped (a mind numbing, time sucking job), and the quality or consistency of the entrant’s handwriting (much less my own hieroglyphics) may vary. I don’t own a Hy-Tek license — it’s rather expensive, I think. Thus I have not become an expert in Hy-Tek. That exclusion keeps many other people from being as experienced as they might want to be.
It keeps the software expertise into a narrow club of people who can afford to pay for the license, supported by the number of meets they do.
Who, anywhere, does a mass of Masters meets? Nowhere. It’s youth, high school, college and open. That is what people get good at doing.
I want this to be easy. That way the function of meet management is an enjoyable experience, so people will put on more meets, and athletes can show up to have fun, without being bogged down by computer (software) driven restrictions.
Related posts:
- Anatomy of a debacle: NSG indifference to sked concerns
- New theory on why GeezerJock became Masters Athlete
- Charlotte aims to avoid lap-count debacle in long races
- Dissecting the debacle: stonewalling by Dr. Sander
3 Responses
Some (non-masters) clubs in New Zealand also use Hy-Tek for their meets, however there is a more user-friendly package available that we use for our national and local masters competitions called Sportscore.
There are built in masters age groupings and it handles multi-events with ease. It can work with manual timing or FAT systems (eg, FinishLynx).
I’ve used it myself and have assisted with both timing and results processing.
It may be worthwhile investigating, so check it out at http://www.times-7sport.com/sportscore-event-management-timing-software
We have been using Hy-tek for several years at our Texas Masters Championships and at the Southwestern Association meet without problems. Wayne Cunnings (formerly with UTA)does our computer work and does an excellent job. He understands the age grouping and seeding and we don’t have problems. Even mixing age groups and sexes doesn’t seem to bother him. I wouldn’t want to run my meet without him.
Hy-Tek is a very difficult program to learn. If a meet has access to someone who is proficient in it, then everything runs smoothly and works well. But it is much more difficult to use for masters, and it would be easy for someone used to running high school or college meets to think they could handle it for a masters meet, when they would actually need quite a bit more training to accomplish this.
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