In this season of thankfulness, I am thankful for many things...one of them is all the awesome show managers and secretaries that use Horse Show for Windows!
To those of you in the states...have a blessed Thanksgiving.
Thursday, November 27
Monday, November 24
Coming to the end of one season and the beginning of the next
As fall comes to a close and the weather here in Ohio gets colder, our phone rings less and less. Horse shows across the country and around the world are winding down. Not that there aren't shows being held (I know several that will take place over this coming Thanksgiving weekend...hopefully you won't need my help through them ;-), but that there are fewer shows overall being held any given weekend this time of year. Those of you in the warmer climes are still plenty busy while those of us up north are gearing down for the winter.
Here in the office, it means the time of year where we work to put together our first release for the next show season; contacting the breed associations to see what rules changes they have up their sleeves, going through the wish list we've compiled from users, and updating our development environment with the most current tools.
This year we hope to develop some 'how to' video clips to post online to help answer the most often asked questions we get in the office regarding show set up. Our plan is to walk you through different types of shows and how we would set them up. We are putting together some tools to help us do this smoothly and once we get that completed we'll start working on the clips and post them as they are finished. If there are particular set up issues that you find difficult or confusing, please let us know so that we can generate a clip for it. As usual, our purpose is the make the lives of our show managers a bit easier!
Here in the office, it means the time of year where we work to put together our first release for the next show season; contacting the breed associations to see what rules changes they have up their sleeves, going through the wish list we've compiled from users, and updating our development environment with the most current tools.
This year we hope to develop some 'how to' video clips to post online to help answer the most often asked questions we get in the office regarding show set up. Our plan is to walk you through different types of shows and how we would set them up. We are putting together some tools to help us do this smoothly and once we get that completed we'll start working on the clips and post them as they are finished. If there are particular set up issues that you find difficult or confusing, please let us know so that we can generate a clip for it. As usual, our purpose is the make the lives of our show managers a bit easier!
Friday, November 14
Welcome to our new blog
In the new world of blogging and keeping people connected via the internet, we decided to start a blog for horse show management information specifically geared for the Horse Show for Windows user. We hope to use this blog as a way to offer tips and tricks in the usage of HSW. Feel free to send your comments our way...our software has grown over the years (see we've come a long way baby! post) largely due to information and requests from you.
And not to leave anyone out, certainly feel free to push out our blog (as well as our products ;-) to other show managers that might not be using HSW but might get some useful information from fellow managers on how to run a better horse show.
And not to leave anyone out, certainly feel free to push out our blog (as well as our products ;-) to other show managers that might not be using HSW but might get some useful information from fellow managers on how to run a better horse show.
We've come a long way, baby!
I started working in the horse show industry almost 15 years ago. It's a little know fact that other than riding in camp when I was growing up, I've never actually shown a horse so I came in to this field fairly blind. I have learned so much about this business over these years; both from the co-workers I've programmed with and the users I program for.
The original version of this software was written as a DOS program for the Ohio Quarter Horse Association as their All American Quarter Horse Congress got bigger and bigger year after year. This was all before my time; Tony Lewis got it all started through his first company that I can't even remember the name of (it will come to me in the middle of the night...anyone else remember?...not CyberTech...before then even). When I first began working with Tony in 1994, he had 'remade' the Congress software to accommodate OQHA's weekend show managers. Word of the software to run horse shows easily spread from Ohio managers to surrounding states and Tony started selling his Horse Show System to managers across the country.
Over the years that I have been working with this program, a lot of changes have taken place. We've grown from usability for AQHA shows to encompass basically any breed or open show. We've moved from selling largely in Ohio to hundreds of users across the country and around the world. The development platform has changed several times along the way as we moved from DOS to Windows. We've been through several versions of Microsoft's Windows that has made the usage and technical support of our products a challenge (don't get me started on the issues we are still trying to work through with Vista).
Each of these changes has improved the software. I'm working through some new things now that will continue to allow the program to grow and help you run your shows more efficiently. As noted in a previous post, keep the comments coming...the software gets better because of them. I won't promise to incorporate every new idea but many items that we might not be able to add in lead us to others that are similar or just as important.
The original version of this software was written as a DOS program for the Ohio Quarter Horse Association as their All American Quarter Horse Congress got bigger and bigger year after year. This was all before my time; Tony Lewis got it all started through his first company that I can't even remember the name of (it will come to me in the middle of the night...anyone else remember?...not CyberTech...before then even). When I first began working with Tony in 1994, he had 'remade' the Congress software to accommodate OQHA's weekend show managers. Word of the software to run horse shows easily spread from Ohio managers to surrounding states and Tony started selling his Horse Show System to managers across the country.
Over the years that I have been working with this program, a lot of changes have taken place. We've grown from usability for AQHA shows to encompass basically any breed or open show. We've moved from selling largely in Ohio to hundreds of users across the country and around the world. The development platform has changed several times along the way as we moved from DOS to Windows. We've been through several versions of Microsoft's Windows that has made the usage and technical support of our products a challenge (don't get me started on the issues we are still trying to work through with Vista).
Each of these changes has improved the software. I'm working through some new things now that will continue to allow the program to grow and help you run your shows more efficiently. As noted in a previous post, keep the comments coming...the software gets better because of them. I won't promise to incorporate every new idea but many items that we might not be able to add in lead us to others that are similar or just as important.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
