Sports Management Software - The Benefits.

Sports Management is a very diverse, intricate area. There are many different sports, and levels of professionalism within each sport.

Nowadays, sports management is quite analogous to any business management. Perhaps this is due to the sums of money that can be involved, not just in professional but, amateur sports as well.

Sports management software systems can help to alleviate the problems inherent in sports managements in many ways.

- A sports management software can streamline the paperwork involved (as in any business) and heading towards the “paperless office” ideal. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paperless_office)

- The software can manage the human resources side of the organisation, whether that may be teams and employees or club membership.

- The use of software can help with advertising and ticket and merchasing sales (via mail-lists, etc.).

- Training support can also be found in sports management systems that can use more technology driven methods of delivering training to players, such as motion-capture systems to improve sporting form. (http://www.innsport.com/Sport.htm)

These benefits will lead to an increase in profitability in the professional sports arena as well as lowering the costs for amateur sporting organisations.

The more pervasive nature of Web 2.0 technologies takes this to a new level where management can have real time communication with the players and analyse data recieved during the sporting event to predict an events outcome and tailor their responses in accordance.

An example of this would be Formula 1 teams, where diagnostic systems monitor drivers and their vehicles. Statistical analysis programs then can predict and advise on when to pit, what tyres to use, and other myraid changes to the car and drivers approach during the length of a race.

Some organisations also monitor such things as the amount of TV viewers watching and tailor the “action” show and the ad breaks to their viewing audience.

This sort of control is still available to amateur organisations. With the use of Freeware and Shareware programs and mobile/wireless technologies an amateur organisation can enjoy similar benfits without the cost of a high end system. In fact its the decentralised and pervasive nature of Web 2.0 technologies that allows the amateur organisations to obtain the capabilites that previously where limited to the multi-million pound budgets of professional sporting organisations.

In fact, the benefits to an amateur organisation could be said to be proportionally greater than that to a professional organisation. This is due to the fact that many amateur organisations are mainly voluntary in nature. Here lowering cost overheads, amount of paperwork, and man-hours involved in the running of the organisation has a great positive impact on the organisation.

Opportunities and benefits of the COGKNOW project

One of the most distressing aspects of the onset of mild dementia is the loss of independence. Once fully functioning members of society, sufferers are fully aware of their advancing debilitation. The COGKNOW project seeks to address this. As  described in previous posts the Cogknow concept seeks to address the unmet needs of dementia sufferers. These needs were identified as memory problems, communication, physiological distress and lack of information. The needs were gathered by involving world-class medical and clinical experts in the fields addressing dementia.

The outcome will be that these needs will be addressed and the following benefits will be experienced

• The aids will help sufferers remember: the aids prompt users to take medicine, remember social events and even prepare food
• Offers enhanced social contact: the aids make keeping in contact more accessible and puts the user back in control of their social lives
• Daily life activities will be aided: the aids prompt user to preform activities that they used to do to relax or entertain themselves, such as peruse photos or listen to the radio.
• Aids will provide an enhanced feeling of security. Sensors will remind suffers to close and lock doors so that they don’t become anxious about their personal safety.

 The greatest benefit to sufferers of dementia is that these aids will offer an enhanced standard of living. The elderly person will experience greater autonomy and will feel empowered.

Opportunities

At present the target market is fixed at the countries that are taking part in the trials, the greatest opportunity is the worldwide market. At present, whilst there are many cognitive prosthetic products available none specifically target mild dementia

With the population in all developed countries becoming older there will be an increased market size for products of this nature.

Once the concept is a reality, the benefits of computer aided living will become beneficial to non dementia suffers, many of the Cogknow concepts would have applications in everyday life

Open innovation risks vs benefits of this concept

 Risks

-Intelectual property rights, must be legally sound use of open innovation materials. Increasing demands of licensing issues, who decides what is open and what is closed? Things are usually a mixture of open or closed, this leaves a grey area. 

-Distribution rights- eg movie industy. They could in theory demand software to protect the distribution and viewing of the material they distribute. Some steps to do so eg pay per view on Xbox live, subscriptions. There will always be ways around this though.

 -Security- Open innovation use of materials must be secure, threat from bugs/hackers if using an unqualified supplier/developer. Old view that open innovation is piracy or theft. In terms of software can threaten monopoly as design is transparent

-Openning up software can reveal its weaknesses, bad reputation for a company may result.

-Supplier qualification - Do your suppliers meet your own standards? Obvious risk if they do not, how can you be sure? Need for compliance standards.

-Low compliance standards, may not meet your own standards, risk of failure if using open end user development

-Product quality, how to monitor progress effectively? Not as easy as to monitor as closed innovation, less control?

-Slow time to market (issues of slippage, and as a result effectiveness/value of  product), how to pull together resources for openly developed software

-Lack of regulation. Need for a new style of leadership with open innovation. Leader must persuade developers that what they are doing is worthwhile, new motivation. Are developers less disciplined if they know they can quit at any time? 

These risks it has been suggested can be mitigated by introducing the following:

Product Road-Mapping and Portfolio Management

Iterative Product Development and Validation

Product Architecture and System Design across the Value Chain

Knowledge Management on the Front End of Innovation;
Content Management, Product Data Management, and Search

Intellectual Property (IP) Security & Management, Authentication, and Authorization

Talent Management

The right Product Lifecycle Management - Sourcing Platform
Since the goal is to lower costs while lowering risks and increasing quality and value. The right, integrated, platform will go a long way towards helping you implement the strategies above.

(Source: http://blog.sourcinginnovation.com/2007/08/27/the-benefits-and-risks-of-global-product-development.aspx )

Benefits

-Only thing to fear is fear itself- example of lego’s succcess of opening up their code. Users are increasingly inquisitive and talented, to let them experiment increases the demand and kudos of a well-developed piece of software for a company

-Openness complies with the essence of free open sharing in which the internet was created

-Incentive for creation, encourages experimentation and creative process

-Value is not necessarily obtained only by controlling access and charging for it, but value for an innovation can be obtained by sharing it. This is the case with Wikipedia and with Linux. The more it is shared, the more valuable it becomes.

-New technology has the ability to track the (intellectual) rights of material, less risk of theft.

-Openness inevitable? End users find loop-holes to make protected material free and open eg.CDs Peer to Peer filesharing. Can creative industries afford to stand in the way of this onslaught? Expensive legal cases as a result, companies can benefit from open sharing.

-R & D, would a company rather have 10 R &D collegues or a million?

Not everyone agrees that openning up movies to “pirates” is going to harm the movie industry:-

Risks and negative issues in technology, opportunities and benefitial issues

Risks/Negative issues

A useful article in the independent on Sunday recently highlighted a few social implications of facebook/bebo users

: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/facebook-can-ruin-your-life-and-so-can-myspace-bebo-780521.html

-No control over who views often highly personal information on your homepage eg. prospective employers/collegues…

-Risk of poor character representation. More importantly, how safe is your personal information…eg home address,telephone number

-Potential for harassment or identity theft or worse? See youtube video posted yesterday on this site for rape case as a result of Facebook harrassment. Easy access to information, people often forget social network sites are in the public domain.

-Much irresponsible use of social networking sites, a potential to forget that this is communication with real people without the barriers of face to face social convention. As (very) young people make up a majority of users, can they really act responsibly with this technology? No doubt the cases of harrassment/stalking will continue to rise if unchecked. De-personalises (is that a word?) communication

- Facebook has come under fire for its use of advertising on the site. No way of knowing what company holds your information…

-Facebook very hard to leave. Must delete every comment, post, application to really leave the network

-Social networks are a distraction, do they really contribute to the sense of an online community? Do they really provide any insight in to the modern world or is there too much information to obscure any real trends in society?

-A fad…Facebook and Bebo are slowing down, have they had their day? Too commercialised? Growing sentiment that this is the case. Social networking sites are in fashion now, wait for the backlash.

-They are difficult to negotiate due to the number of pop-ups and advertising space. Heavy corporate investment, does this dilute their validation as a forum for free speech and the sense of community?

-Evidence that many people spend more time on their social networking site than they do with people in the real world. How can this be healthy? Social networking sites are designed to be fun and easy to use, are they becoming addictive?

-These sites arguably over-valued. Can one networking site be worth more than the GNP of a small country? Bubble will inevitably burst.

Opportunities/Benefitial issues

-Business-wise a success story. Myspace, Bebo, Facebook valued in the billions

-Opportunity to gauge trends in the market through use of online applications, advertising, quizzes etc

-An opportunity for people to communicate with others as they have more time to think about what they want to express. Obviously as it takes more time and effort to post something about yourself there is an opportunity to confidently convey yourself to the world.

-Fan-sites popularity, meet people with mutual interests and hobbies. At a business level bands can create newsletters and communicate directly with fans eg. Myspace phenomenon of acts like arctic monkeys, kate nash, libertines. Adds to the hype and offers a community orientated experience for fans who do not even need to meet to communicate.

-Will the bubble burst for this technology? No concrete evidence that it has or will. As users drive the popularity of these sites their scope is potentially limitless.

-Offers cheap communication between people on opposite sides of the globe on their own terms. No expensive phone calls. Applications available allow the sending of online cards, gifts etc. If these gifts could be traded in against sites, there could be a new business potential. Eg send an online card with a £20 amazon voucher “inside”. People keep abreast of friends’ travel and work news when a few years ago this would have been impossible/expensive.

-Example of Second Life. Total immersion in another virtual life, interesting from a social anthropological perspective. Online community growing all the time. Social networking sites could offer a version of this immersion in the future.

-For many just a harmless way of keeping in touch with old friends…the casual user

Benefits of blogging- primal scream or validation

Whoo, getting abit philosophical now.

Am currently in too minds over the benefits of Blogging

1. Primal Scream: Do we get a psychological benifit of getting our frustrations out in the open, even though there could be potentially no one listening.

or

2. Validation: Am I actually screaming validate me! With putting personal opinions into a public arena, am I looking for someone to agree with my post and thus prove that my opinion is valid and there is a point to my existance.

Or perhaps I’ve drank too much coffee.

Opportunities

Having briefly explored how real money can be made from the inane rambling of Joe Public in my first attempt at a blog. I’m now about to step up a gear. Following in the steps of Belle de Jour: The Intimate Adventures of a London Call-Girl the next logical step for me to take is to set about making a Blook. This is the term given to a book published from a Blog.

As opportunities go, a blog with heavy traffic is one that publishers will not miss out on. A good Blook already comes with a loyal fan base, which has developed strong connections with the author and will willingly spread their adoration for the author to all who will listen.

Take for an example the case of Tucker Max. Having read this book I cannot imagine that publishers would have considered publishing the rantings of a misogynistic booze fuelled never-do-well without his huge following of devoted followers that he amassed through his Blog at www.tuckermax.com. This blog catered for an under represented segment of society, that of the frustrated young man seeking for likeminded role models. The Book managed to sell so well that it was in the New York Times Best Seller List for two weeks.

There is even an annual literary prize sponsored by lulu.com, this years winner was My War: Killing Time in Iraq, by Colby Buzzell a US soldier writing about his experiences in post war Iraq. So in the near future look out for my Blook Why is everyone else able to catch fish: A diary of a crap angler.

for more info on Tucker Max and the new strain of publishing check outthe new york times article

Making money from Blogs

Using AdSenseI’m trying to see if is possible to earn cold hard cash from blogging. I have set up a trial Blog and am sticking ads on it like crazy to see if i can retire early.

I have set it up on Blogger as this is Googles own web log editor and it very easy to add extra content. The two products I am trialing are AdSense for content and AdSense for search.

The idea behind Adsense for content is that the hosting blog is crawled to see what content it has and then relevant adverts are posted on them. At present mine are very generic but over time and after all the millions of hits I am expecting they should become tailored to the site.

Additionally Adsense for search allows me to provide Google’s web and site search to my visitors, and to earn extra money by displaying the Google ads on their search results pages

At present there is very little information how much money I can make, it is kept vague. Their advise is to get it set up and see. Presumably this is because it is dependant on site traffic.

To check out this wonderful website click here and don’t forget to click at my adverts to contribute towards my retirement fund.