Digital draft boards

[kjduke]

I won't do a live draft until next week, but I liked the old stickers, big board, shot clock and draft facilitators. From Jules' and other feedback, I'm concerned it's not going to be the same experience. And I can't imagine doing an auction without seeing posted prices.

Is it too late to get a big board in for the Wednesday auction?

[Sandman62]

We just finished the Classic in NYC. And I have to say, the new digital boards are GREAT! We drafted from the 7 spot, so spots 6-8 are the furthest from the screen - and it's STILL legible. Even though we had our iPad on too with the draft board, we hardly used it.

Also, we never felt rushed just because the picks were posted almost immediately because we never lost 20-30+ seconds of our pick with someone manually posting a sticker - and blocking the board.

And Tom and Mike left the projectors on a good hour or so afterwards, which gave us ample time to admire our teams. Now, if only our teams stayed as good all year as they look right now?!

For the future, maybe a little crisper (HD?) display and maybe use a little more of the empty space at the bottom to stretch the fonts a bit taller. But for the first iteration, these worked out very well. Great job guys!

[JETS SB]

As a follow up to yesterday, today was much better. Classic took 2 1/2 hours with a lunch break. The boards were left up to look at and some of the old feeling is back. I.am sure.they will improve things as issues come up. There is nothing like the live draft experience. The less we make it like an online draft, the better, in my opinion.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Thanks again for all of the feedback everyone. It's very helpful as we make this process flawless.

The good news from this first weekend is that the technology worked and we now know we can input every draft pick in real-time (we've been doing that the last three years) and project every pick in real-time. We now know that the process can be done. Step 1.

Now it's time to tweak the rest of the visuals to make it as good as possible. The clock HAS to be bigger and I think you'll eventually see a BIG clock or heck we'll bring the old ones with us for old time's sake. The auctions WILL have dollar values along the side and will be automated so that there are no math errors. The Names can be used in a different font to pop out better or maybe the last name needs to be bigger and the first name smaller to pop out. But that can be tweaked with going forward to make each name, as someone kept saying, "pop out."

We can do all of that. In Las Vegas, I think most would agree that today looked much better after the Bellagio had the lights out over the screens while keeping the lights on above the drafters. It worked out very well today. Our Classic was done in 2 hours and 5 minutes and the Primetimes in 1 hour and 40 minutes. I'm not saying that as someone who wants to rush folks through drafts, but folks just were ready with their picks and few people took anything close to the full minute. Adding the stickers is quicker but these groups of drafters also were quicker.

We kept the boards on the screen until there was no more beer left and everyone stayed for dinner and enjoyed the results. But we still want printed boards if possible because come March there will be drafts over 3 days and guys love to look back at results for as long as the nights allow. We'll work with Scott and make it happen.

The technology is allowing us to do it this way. HD would be clearer, along with other ways we'll look into. But hopefully most saw improvements today and maybe even good results. I look forward to hosting all of the Las Vegas events this way next weekend. Keep the comments coming because they are very helpful. And please take your full minute when you draft to stretch out the enjoyment. We want that to happen.

[Money]

This might not be the right spot for this comment but I always found it strange that the draft boards were always open to anyone that walked in the room. Each individual league board should only be available to players in that league. I realize this would be impossible to police. Very strange that someone can walk into a room and look at a draft you just completed and then be drafting in another league with you shortly there after.

For this reason alone I like that there are no boards. I realize I'm in a minority, but for me this is a positive!!

[Jim Christie]

This might not be the right spot for this comment but I always found it strange that the draft boards were always open to anyone that walked in the room. Each individual league board should only be available to players in that league. I realize this would be impossible to police. Very strange that someone can walk into a room and look at a draft you just completed and then be drafting in another league with you shortly there after.

For this reason alone I like that there are no boards. I realize I'm in a minority, but for me this is a positive!!

I personally don't care who knows who I drafted because there are so many variables when going in to each individual draft. I have enough to do to worry about what I am going to do next than to worry about what an opponent is going to do next. I always laughed when doing online drafts or mocks some paranoid players wanted to be listed as anonymous.