PhotoEntry Feedback

[Mike Farley]

The PhotoEntry system is now fully operational. Following its formal introduction at Chairman's Evening, Tom has issued the supporting documentation and every member eligible to compete in the club's competitions has been sent an e-mail with their login details. From now on, PhotoEntry is the only method available for the submission of entries into DPI competitions.

There is a separate thread on the Announcements Forum where notices about PhotoEntry are being made, but as that forum does not allow any replies I have created this thread to allow members to provide feedback. If you like it and want to give those in the club who work on your behalf some encouragement, why not take this opportunity to say so? If you have questions or are unsure about any aspects, this too is your opportunity to raise them. There is a very good chance that others will have a similar experience and will benefit from knowing your thoughts and the response.

The worst thing you can do is have an opinion one way or the other and say nothing. Without that information, how can the club know what is working well or needs improvement? So over to you.

[Paul Heester]

Easy to use, logical and clear - that best describes it for me. Already submitted my images for the first DPI round without any issue.

[Rose]

Watching with interest as my club may be considering using this...

[Mike Farley]

Watching with interest as my club may be considering using this...

Hi Rose

I am happy to go through it with you or a fellow member of your club when we are in Somerset in a couple of weeks. As one of the administrators, I can show you what goes on behind the scenes. My experience is that once you have got used to the various concepts involved, it is easy to use. The developer, Chris Palmer, is helpful and has been very responsive to the various issues I encountered in testing. I did give it a bit of a hammering! Some fixes have gone in already and he tracked down a bug in Safari which was causing problems, then made a configuration change in PhotoEntry to counter it. That would not have been straightforward to find, but he persisted over two or three days until he established the cause. I have not seen a repeat so far.

Feedback from members has been positive so far in respect of ease of use when uploading images. Overall, I would recommend it as it cuts out a lot of hassle with submitting images, preparing competitions and notifying results afterwards.

[Rose]

Thanks Mike, that's good to know

[Mike Farley]

Now that the club has held its first DPI competition where all the entries were submitted via PhotoEntry, I thought I would give this post a nudge. With everything complete, if anyone has observations or comments they would like to make this is your opportunity.

[Tina]

Hi Mike
For me this new system works very well. Submitting the images was easy. As I wasn't at the meeting last night being notified of the results so promptly was very helpful.
Hope everyone else feels the same.
Kind regards and thank you for setting it all up.
Tina

[Bett]

It was easy to use and the results so quickly an extra bonus, thanks for all your hard work Mike and all the help you have given me, it is appreciated.

Regards Bett

[Sarahrs]

I think one of the benefits was the sheer number of entires. Was this more than what the first competition got last year?

[Mike Farley]

I think one of the benefits was the sheer number of entires. Was this more than what the first competition got last year?

According to my calculations, 20 members entered the first round of the DPI competition at the start of last season and 24 this time. It is the largest entry which I can remember for a while. No doubt Chris will gladly correct me if my maths is wrong.

The summary of last year's results is on the club website: http://croydoncameraclub.org.uk/WebSite ... 201617.pdf.

One of the things which I wanted to do this time was publish an entry list ahead of the competition. PhotoEntry had the function but included entrants' names, which the club did not want. It goes against the convention of anonymity for authors of images which do not receive certificates. The person who develops PhotoEntry is responsive to requests for enhancements and he has now implemented a facility to exclude members' names.

The successful upload of an image to PhotoEntry is confirmation that it will be included in the competition as the process to load entries into DiCentra (the competition software used by the club) is automated. Nevertheless, an entry list is further reassurance and helps generate interest as it goes to all members, regardless of whether they have images in the competition. So look out for an entry list next time.