gistfile1.md

cycling team planning tool

so it seems like there might space for a product that makes team communication easier. not like that is an underserved product category out there but still, i'm struggling to find a tool that makes it easy for users to

• communicate a point to every one
• keep it short and on topic
• identify important dates and times
• make it consumable by everyone.

as a result it seems like communication that needs feedback from everyone is done through group email (where at least one person is accidentally left off the list). Other non essential notices of the nature "hey i'm doing this at this time" or "hey i'm going to this race this weekend" are done via groupMMS, where undoubtely someone isn't in your address book and all you know is some guy at some number replied.

Diseparate from most other team sports, we dont really need to manage ice time, pool time, etc. We dont need to have playoff tournament functionality. So a lot of the features of a normal sports team mangement tool are not necessary.

hmmm. off the cuff maybe this product should.

• be mobile -duh. maybe only mobile.
• members subscribe with email/mobile number
• most interactions are done vis sms. post a ride, text a central number the details, said product takes care of notifying the other folks.
• also mms promotes short messages.

maybe it could also

• create some kind of scehduling tool that would allow users to opt in to the specific events and then target messages about that event to the subscribed parties, ala basecamp.
• other things that might be nice to track: sponsorship deals, pro forms, team proposals, etc.

i own a domain name we could use for that. i started working on something like this a while back. i also have some code that could be repurposed for some of the group sms stuff.

the only downside to the sms stuff is it typically costs per sms using services like Twilio or Tropo.

hmm. yah. seems like you'd have to budget 2 cents + 1 cent per user for each broadcast. probably have to do some math to figure out the pricing.

Jed - I could not find the full on biz reqs i wrote back then. here is a document i pulled together for a site we were using to communicate to the team in 2005. I was trying to get them to create a section where we could organize who was going to race in which races and what their results are. http://www.michaelwjohnson.us/tmp/bizreqs.pdf

This was a real pain point for the club and continues to be an issue with the club I'm involved in today --- it has 275+ members. the only thing I would add is the ability to upload action or podium images to the results pages. i would love to work on this with you guys. it's definitely needed!