AQHA Leveling - How Will Show Management Handle It?

It's 10:15 PST (1:15 my time) and I'm sitting in the Las Vegas airport waiting for my flight home. My first time in Vegas and I just spent the week out here...beginning at an AQHA show management seminar (also my first) and then observing the new Leveling classes at the Silver Dollar Circuit Horse Show.

Quite a week it's been. It was great to put faces to many of the voices I have been talking to all these years. Good to get kudos of our software as well as get some new ideas for future updates.

The new leveling will be put in place in 2013 by AQHA. What will that mean for show management? Horse Show for Windows already does concurrent classes so setting up the Open classes to run with either the Progressive or Intermediate class is something the software already does. What we have to work on is the Open class results need to include the placings of the Progressive or Intermediate without giving them points for both the Open class and the Progressive or Intermediate.

At the test shows they have held so far, the exhibitors are really appreciating the new system. In the office and the announcer's stand is where the extra work comes in. If you aren't already doing so, a computer in the announcer's stand connected to the network in the office would go a long way to helping with that. Placings for the class overall are being announced as usual but those in just the Progressive or Intermediate class need to be announced as well. With someone inputting the results immediately, the program will figure correct placings for just those entries in the Progressive or Intermediate class and the announcer will be ready to go either by viewing the results on the monitor or having a printout run right away.

Once we make the adjustments to the software to allow for keeping the correct placings, we will outline the best way to set up your shows to let the program do the work. Keep an eye out for the changes.