Hammy
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.1 #2 · Event Sales Quick Setup Help needed | |
NB,
First, I'm making an assumption on #3: Maximizing sales - but not printing onsite? Because #5 and Photo Parata suggests that you are selling onsite.
1) Hardware needed: Personally, I believe in a box for every specific function and a backup for that box. That means TWO of every critical part: server, downloader, cashier and then as many viewstations as you can get. I do this because I don't want one function taking down something else. If my downloader crashes for some reason, I don't want the server affected and vice versa. And I have backups for everything, so even when something does go down, I simple swap over a cable and everything is back online.
However, I understand that tight budgets don't make that possible up front. Which then comes down to how much money you can afford to spend toward those components. The faster the download and processing, the faster you get images to customers.
There is such a wide gamut of possibilities depending on your consolodation and budget considerations that you may want to start with what you have, and then decide what you need to build.
For viewstations, again, there are several scenarios:
- stand alone boxes from full PC's to thin clients
- Applica software or hardware for expansion
- nComputing expansion hardware
- ThisSoft Inc expansion software
Keep in mind that the more you expand a single box to multiple head, the more beefier system you need and the more you concentrate a single point of failure.
I've been using BeTwin (from ThinSoft) for several years and it has served me well with 3 heads from one box. A single failure doesn't take down my entire bank of stations. But I'm moving away from it to single micro-board PCs running Linux off of a USB key, so I have no moving parts (not even a fan on the CPU).
I've done cost analysis on all systems listed above. They come out to about the same price for every solution - differences come down to:
- power
- space
- wiring
- time to setup/teardown
For which my solution has built 4 computers into a table that sets up in seconds and I can run 40 stations off of one 15A circuit (which no electrician yet has believed me)
2) Number of shooters
Bottom line - you can't sell what you don't have ... and more importantly, you have less than 2 minutes to get as many shots of 15-20 competitors. For this, I generally have 3-4 shooters per stage. Two in the center, one shooting telephoto, one shooting wide, and then two more shooters in the corners to get the angles on the kids in back.
3) Maximizing sales
- flyers
- announcements (often)
- slideshow (plasmas work in bright environments, projection better if dark)
- images on viewstations when customers walk up to your booth (potentially a VERY small window if your stations are in the arena to the side of the stage where kids walk off)
- Booth location - in sight of the parents in stands, off the side of the stage where kids walk off is the best - it captures them as they get done competing, not waiting for them to leave the arena hall and see you on the way out, but they are ready to go.
- images at stations organized and easy to find, easy to order, easy to checkout. Without this efficiency, your number of stations is monopolized by a few.
5) # of stations.
You'll never have enough. 15-20 kids per team, but 3-5 minute routine separation means 15-20 teams performing every hour. So if you have a show of 50 teams or 250, you'll still have 15-20 teams (225-400 kids) per hour that will potentially be at your booth with their 2.5 family members/friends that came to the show - roughly 600-1000 people per hour.
Cheer is not like most sports, where competition lasts an hour or more where you can fill up cards with pix, have lots of time to chimp and small batches of kids come to your booth every so often. Cheer is one of the most dense event sports you can deal with. It requires a highly efficient system to capitilize on sales with the high volume of people and photos.
Hammy.
Edited on Dec 22, 2009 at 02:35 PM · View previous versions
|
and plugging in network is just as easy. I set up all boxes on a static IP address - so that way I know exactly what box is what in the event I have to address it and they can come online without a the server up yet.
