Advancements in Dance Competition Software

The dance competition industry has come to a pinnacle point in technological innovation in the last few years. Dance competitions have always been a place for dancers and studios to come and showcase their skills and passions. That being said, just like in any medium of performance and arts culture there is a vast amount of organization and preparation that goes on behind the scenes. Traditionally and only up to recently, all organization, preparation, registration and scheduling for dance competitions has been done manually and by hand. Doing work by hand was the most efficient way for a long time but also the only way we knew how. Registration forms would by typed and printed, picked up, mailed out, downloaded, printed again etc etc… Every industry that has based their services on these kinds of business models has to adapt to the times or suffer the consciences. People today want to be able to complete tasks at an exponentially faster rate than ever, and the longer it takes the un-happier we become. Since the inception of the Internet our ability to send and receive data wirelessly has blossomed. It only makes sense that the dance competition industry would flower too.

Presently there are numerous technologies available that are benefiting dance competitions across North America.

Online Registration Systems

Dance competitions now have the capability to use Online Registration Systems that are built within their websites. These systems allow for studios to create an online profile. These profiles will contain all the studio information and all the dancers, teachers, choreographers at that studio. The studio can then; register students for different competitions locations, register the desired routines for the students and then pay instantly online. The whole process has gone from potentially taking weeks to minutes.

Automated Scheduling+Tabulation Systems

Along with being able to migrate all the registration needs of a competition online, we are still left with all the scheduling and scoring tabulation that takes place within the dance competition industry. Currently if no software system is in place things are mainly done again by hand using programs like Excel. Excel has been a great support for competitions when scheduling but when you have hundreds of routines to schedule and you have to manually make sure there are no dancers going back to back, all the times are correct and things are exactly perfect it can all add up to one big nightmare. There are now Automated Scheduling+Tabulation Systems available for dance competitions. These systems synchronize with the current Online Registration System that the competition is using to retrieve all; registration, location and studio information. At this point scheduling becomes a breeze. The competition can now easily design and maneuver the schedule for each location. Never worry again about dancer conflicts, as you will automatically be alerted by color codes if a dancer is going back to back. Now just save and print. Again new technology has enabled dance competitions to take the process of scheduling an event that could have taken days down to minutes.

The way in which competitions tabulate and give out awards is always unique and award structure is often the defining characteristic of the competition. With an Automated Scheduling+Tabulation System the character and unique culture of a competition are attended to while the ability to tabulate scores is streamlined and made easy. Scores from judges are now given to the tabulator who has a computer running the Automated Scheduling+Tabulation software on it, scores are then entered into the system and instantaneously calculated with the specific allotted award for that point range. Tabulation has never been better!

Automated Scheduling+Tabulation System’s are also able to create custom made reports that completely mirror every aspect of reporting that a competition may have been using!

Video

Getting professional high quality and affordable video of a dance competition has not been easy. But with the advancements in camera technology and multi-media integration with the Internet, solutions are popping up fast. Dance competitions are now able to shoot high quality footage of their competition and routines which can be sorted and organized by routine and uploaded to the competitions website. No more DVD’s and outdated VHS tapes. All the video from a competition along with audio from the judges will become available from their own website with the ability to sell or give away as the competition sees fit. Never before in history have dance competitions been able to share their show and performance with a global audience with such ease and brilliance.

It is always vital the companies designing and developing these kinds of systems and software are able to do it all. There have been many companies that are tackling one aspect of the dance competition industry but it is rare for a company to offer solutions to the entire gamut of the dance competition industry. Dance Comp Genie has done just that. Dance Comp Genie is a software development company that has created solutions to all of the above with its state of the art systems designed specifically for dance competitions.