More Thoughts On Greg’s Stats.com

I thought of a few other issues with Greg’s Stats.com.  The main one being I don’t really control the data.  The success of the site (outside of the usefulness, design, programming, etc. – let’s assume all that works, it looks great and is super sexy) depends on the ability to use/obtain the results of each race.  Right now, all of that information comes from SetupEvents.com – a great company that organizes fantastic races and was willing to let me play around with their data (thanks guys).  If for some reason, Setup Events decided they didn’t really want their data used on Greg’s Stats, the website immediately sucks.

The more I started to think about this, the more frustrated I became.  So I took a step back and started reading a little bit (current reading list on Shelfari if you’re interested).  I came across Getting Real, by the team at 37 Signals.  About 2/3′s of the way through the book and assuming these are hard and fast rules that I should probably follow, I’ve done a lot of things wrong.

1. My design sucks – I’m no good at it.  And when you’re a programmer, with no team, you get a crappy design.  I knew going into this project it would suck.  But I figured if the data analysis worked and provided valuable information, who cares what it looks like.  I thought the graphs I was able to setup were pretty freaking neat (and still do).  You want design?  Look at those graphs!  Which brings me to

2. graphs, charts, and other fancy diagrams.  Getting Real says, get rid of them. More is less.  Well, my design sucks and now you want me to get rid of the one cool part about it?!?

3. You’re design shouldn’t suck.  It should be your starting place. Don’t program and then design.  Sketch the design on paper, mock up some HTML pages and then program.  Not how I rolled.  I programmed, then designed.

I’m sure there are others, but who cares… it’s time to figure out where to go from here.

Getting Real suggests finding competition and doing something simpler than what they are doing.  Less features, less code, faster delivery.  Looking in the sporting event space (marathons, triathlons, etc.), active.com seems to be the biggest site out there.  They offer a lot of different features, but from what I can tell don’t really do one thing great.  There’s just a lot out there.  I feel like there might be an opportunity in organizing the organizers space.  If I want to know about every race/event in Charlotte, NC (or maybe the greater Charlotte area), where can I go to find the information on what’s available from active.com, setupevents.com, fsseries.com, activezach.com, etc.  There are a ton of different organizers out there, but who’s organizing the organizers?  So you organize the organizers, allow the community to provide feedback or ratings on the events and maybe sign up for the event (via the organizers website).  How do you generate cash flow doing that… or is it too early to think about the revenue or profitability of the project?  I’m not sure yet… haven’t gotten to that part in Getting Real.