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Ok, I am going to make this as constructive as possible. I experienced my first day of the digital draft board. Here are my thoughts:

Positive -

-Automatically uploaded into my team page and can follow along with the draft as it is happening
-Once all of the glitches are worked out, it does keep the draft moving

Negative-

-Gone are the days of hanging around after the draft with the guys and checking our draft board and the other boards
-No numerical values, on the board, during the auction (which I am sure, someday, can be added)
-Hard to see the board, even sitting close up (or maybe I am just getting old and blind)

I will say that I am sort of missing the old stickers. Sure, I guess this makes things much easier, but there was definitely something missing today. Hopefully tomorrow, at the Main Event, there will be more of the old feeling. Hopefully....

I'am sorry, but I didn't like the new technology at all; someone bought my dad's movie screen from the 50's. in this age of high definition and digital technology, one would think we could have high definition and not the unfocused names hard to see; not to mention getting dizzy as the board refreshed every 30 seconds (in the auction). I give this a 3/10. Just my honest opinion.

JETS SB wrote:Ok, I am going to make this as constructive as possible. I experienced my first day of the digital draft board. Here are my thoughts:

Positive -

-Automatically uploaded into my team page and can follow along with the draft as it is happening
-Once all of the glitches are worked out, it does keep the draft moving

Negative-

-Gone are the days of hanging around after the draft with the guys and checking our draft board and the other boards
-No numerical values, on the board, during the auction (which I am sure, someday, can be added)
-Hard to see the board, even sitting close up (or maybe I am just getting old and blind)

I will say that I am sort of missing the old stickers. Sure, I guess this makes things much easier, but there was definitely something missing today. Hopefully tomorrow, at the Main Event, there will be more of the old feeling. Hopefully....

Thanks for all feedback on the electronic draft boards and we want to see all suggestions so that we can improve things going forward. We are moving forward with this technology without a doubt for many reasons and improving on it is key; not bringing back stickers and cardboard. But we don't have it perfect just yet, so this is an important thread.

I don't want to influence any of the feedback, so I'll just answer the quick responses:

** Dollar values will be added to the auction leagues going forward and will subtract the totals with each bid starting in baseball. Our bad for not quite finishing that for these football auctions, but that will be done and everything will be automated. I don't know about New York, but I'd say the Las Vegas auction set a record for fastest finish ever. The automated board made things go extremely fast, despite a 15-minute delay by yours truly. But dollar values are needed and will be added.

** In Las Vegas, we kept the early draft board on the screen until everyone around was gone. That being said, we need to form a plan for outputting the finished drafts and putting them on white boards outside the room for you guys to see them later that day or the next day. That is the next plan; in Las Vegas we have Scott Keikoan's copier machine copy to help us here and we'll test it out next week. Anything is doable and this is a top priority. It's technology so of course we can find a way to print out results for all to see and yes maybe even have copies right there for you when the draft is done so you can go to the sportsbook and talk about each draft.

** I don't know why New York had "hard to see" or bland colors. That is with the settings on the LCD projectors and maybe we need to work on that. I don't think we had the same problems in Chicago or Las Vegas, but I'll let others chime in. But all of that is fixable with adjustments to the projectors and the guys will work on it.

We finished a 14-team, 26-round Draft Champions League between two cities that included phone drafters in 3 hours and 20 minutes. As the Chicago guys said, it was almost too fast. We finished the 14-team auction in 3 hours. The technology puts the names up immediately and if done right they should be more visible than anything else since the screen is 10-feet (even bigger in Las Vegas).

But we can improve it even more. Keep all suggestions coming and from all cities. Thanks all.

But can we print boards for you guys? Certainly. Can we make the colors brighter? Sure. Keep 'em coming and thanks as always.

Jim Christie wrote:I'am sorry, but I didn't like the new technology at all; someone bought my dad's movie screen from the 50's. in this age of high definition and digital technology, one would think we could have high definition and not the unfocused names hard to see; not to mention getting dizzy as the board refreshed every 30 seconds (in the auction). I give this a 3/10. Just my honest opinion.

The auction board should not refresh. It did not refresh once in Las Vegas. We'll discuss what happened here. Thanks Jim and we'll get it right.

I believe the NYC 14 team auction lasted approximately 4 1/2 hours, maybe a little less.

I like the new technology and think it's the way to go moving forward. The key is to improve on it from here. Alan and Jim brought up great points and I agree so I might be repeating what they have said.

1. With this new setup having auction values and subtracting from each teams budget is a no-brainer

2. I missed being able to sit after the drafts with a bunch of guys looking over boards and asking Mr. Lowy why he keeps taking Rashad Mendenhall in the 4th Rd

3. For some strange reason the draft kept refreshing which I'm sure is a simple fix

4. Player names need to be bolder/darker to be able to see the names clearly.


Plenty of positives to list on why this is the way to go, but the one for me that sticks out is........ Gone are the days of someone standing in front of the board putting up stickers at a frantic pace and meanwhile your trying to look at the board to see who the guy 3 picks back took and all you can see is Tom K's butt..........

Alan,
You will like how current pick pops out at you in snake drafts. We finished the super in about two hours and rhe facilitator part of snake drafts couldn't be easier. I see why Greg said one person could do it. Improvements could and should be made as others suggested and I am sure tom and greg will address.

I sat at the end spots for all drafts yesterday so I coyld see the board fine but others in the pick five thru eight pick range who were furthest from the board had difficulty.

I agree its a big win to incorporate auction format into the tool instead of manual tracking like yesterday.

Its a good first step in the technology era but tweaks certainly will be made along the way.

Looking forward to see how this works next weekend.

One thing I am hearing is that it speeds up the draft. I don't know about others, but I don't necessarily think a LIVE draft should be a "race". The live draft experience is one of the best out there, and I want it to last as long as possible (within reason of course). Looking over the draft boards for a good hour afterwards is part of that in my book.

BillyWaz wrote:Looking forward to see how this works next weekend.

One thing I am hearing is that it speeds up the draft. I don't know about others, but I don't necessarily think a LIVE draft should be a "race". The live draft experience is one of the best out there, and I want it to last as long as possible (within reason of course). Looking over the draft boards for a good hour afterwards is part of that in my book.

All good comments guys and tweaks are surely coming.

Billy, I think when people talk about faster it's the time inbetween the announcement of the pick and the sticker actually going on the board. We actually leave 1:05 after the pick goes on, but the extra 10-15 seconds before of finding the sticker is eliminated. So there's a bit of a quicker pace, but it can easily be slowed by folks taking longer to announce their picks.

I didn't sense a rush at all yesterday, just a quicker rhythm between when the player was announced and the sticker went up on the board and now onto the next drafter. Again, all drafters can take their full 65 seconds to keep the pace slower, but our job of putting the name up there for all to see has gone from 15-20 seconds to 3-6 seconds.

Quick thoughts before I head down to the Classic in Las Vegas:

- I couldn't read the clock, I had to rely on the facilitator to tell me when I had 10 seconds left. I don't like this, I like to know exactly how much time I have left.

- I sat at the end and found it VERY hard to read the names on the board. Several times I had to get up and walk up to the screen. The resolution is poor and the screen is set back farther than the boards were. I think a High Def projector would be part of the solution.

- Count me as one that missed hanging out after the draft and looking at ALL the boards. I couldn't see the screen well, so having that up after was not even close to the same thing.

- I think there needs to be some way that owners are asked to verify their rosters before they leave the draft. Have a printer there and ask us to sign or something.