New AskFRED: Year 1

Last Updated 31 July 2024 @ 9:30pm EST

This past month, we celebrated the one year anniversary of the New AskFRED! We kicked off things over the week of Summer Nationals in 2023 and haven’t looked back. The road was a little bumpy at first, and we appreciate everyone bearing with us while we flattened out bugs in the new system. Rebuilding a 20-ish year old system from the ground up in a few months was not a simple undertaking, but we'd like to think it was ultimately successful!

Here's a quick recap of the 2023-2024 season in numbers on AskFRED:

  • 2,845 Tournaments - about 54 tournaments per weekend on average
  • 13,520 Events - about 4.75 per tournament
  • 219,038 Event Registrations- about 16 fencers per event and about 76 total registrations per tournament.

In terms of historical data and modeling, this season has started to reverse a downward trend in local events (ignoring COVID). Since peaking in the 2012-2013 season, EVERY consecutive season afterwards has been incrementally "worse" than the season before in terms of AskFRED - fewer touranments, events, registrations, etc.. This is, again, ignoring the period including the COVID-19 shutdown and subsequent return to fencing. Until this most recent season, which beat out the performance of the 2018-2019 season, indicating a potential return to growth in the sport's local events. We're looking forward to seeing what impact USA Fencing's strategic plan will have in this upcoming quad, as it has some aggressive targets that would see significant growth for membership and for local tournaments.

In terms of growth in the AskFRED platform, we've been busy with things that are a bit more hidden than the average features, but are excited to be launching some new stuff! Here’s a quick roundup of changes and new features we’re released in the past month or so:

Reply to Respond to Messaging Emails

When you're sent a message through the AskFRED touranment messaging system, you get an email notification. You can now reply to these notification emails directly in your email inbox, which will send that response into the correct message inbox you're replying to. You can still click the link to reply in-application, of course. Note this does mean replying multiple times will create multiple responses.

Tournament Registration Countdown Timer

Tournaments were a little ambiguous about exactly when registration closed. This could work in some unexpected ways due to timezones of a competition and the timezone a user is in. We addressed this by adding a more explicit countdown timer on the main tournament page. The closer you get to a registration deadline, the more specific in words the timer is (i.e., “registration closes in about 30 minutes” vs “registration closes in about a week”). We hope this helps to clear up exactly when the door shuts for new registrations on a tournament, and the proof is in the pudding with a drastic reduction in support cases being opened against the topic.

In-App Waiver Management

BC members can now optionally define a set of standard waivers, apply a waiver to a Tournament, and fencers will be required to e-sign the waiver as a part of their registration process. This new functionality also includes a suite of tools to view the completion of those waivers. Waiver management beyond this will be up to the Tournament Organizers - what you do with someone who does not sign a waiver is up to you. But we hope this helps TOs streamline their paperwork processes!

Additional Registration Information

BC members can also now optionally add a few fields to their event’s registration process - for example, you can ask someone’s t-shirt size when they register, and generate a list of all the shirts you need to pre-purchase for the event! We support a few different data fields - if you're interested in possibly adding something not supported, reach out to support to talk.

Increased Tournament Registration Fees

AskFRED has been charging $2 as a platform registration fee for almost 10 years now. Adjusting for inflation, we should be charging about $2.73 (USD), but that felt like too much, so we’re adjusting pricing to $2.50 per paid registration. We feel like this is a very competitive price still, while going a long way to try and make sure that AskFRED can continue to operate successfully as an independent business. For example, EventBrite charges about $3.75 on average for comparable event registrations, and USA Fencing charges between $3 and $10 (or $10-12 if you include the sanctioning fee).

Fencer+ Subscription

AskFRED has added a Fencer+ subscription, which adds functionality for highly competitive fencers, such as the ability to search, filter and create notes against individual bouts you’ve fenced in the past. A Fencer+ subscription will also waive two of your registration fees per month, for up to a $5 value per month, making this option more attractive for an actively competing fencer. We're still in the early days of this functionality, so please let us know if you have any feature requests, feedback, etc..

Minor Tweaks and Quality of Life Improvements
  • You can now download a USA Fencing Results Reporting package (zip file) that includes everything you need to send to USA Fencing for a sanctioned event. FencingTime handles this for most people already, but not everyone uses FT to run their events, so we’ve added in AskFRED’s own version.
  • The homepage map now functions a bit better and more consistently, particularly on mobile.
  • The experience of uploading results for Tournament Organizers is now a bit better and more consistent.
  • The tournament registration and results pages are a bit more mobile responsive than they were.
  • Added in Adult (21-39) and Adult Combined (21+) age categories
  • And many more!

Many of these features have help documentation found on our support site - we'd encourage you to check it out, and while you're there, recommend any missing topics and articles you'd like to see!

In addition to looking backwards at what we’ve accomplished, I want to make sure to look forward a bit at our upcoming roadmap. Here’s a list of changes that we’re making soon for the start of the 2024-2025 season:

FencingTime Live Tournaments, Bouts, and more

We’re partnering with FencingTime Live to pull in historical data for the purpose of data aggregation and display, including in your Fencer+ subscription!

New Public and Private APIs

We’ll be surfacing a user’s data (private) as well as certain tournament search features (public) via API in an early access program, and possibly expanding the scope further over time.

Club Features and Functionality

We're working on a suite of features for Clubs and Bout Committee members - including the ability to create a public-facing profile for your club which includes all events you're hosting and have hosted, robust features to keep tabs on your club's members, and better management of your Stripe connection so that multiple Club Managers can use it.

Custom Tournament Lists and Calendars

In the future, you'll be able to define a custom list of tournaments for distribution to your club, as well as the ability to create an embeddable calendar for similar purposes.

Mobile Application

We're working on a mobile application so that fencers can use these features on the go, as well as push notifications and similar mobile-focused features.

And much more!

We have a long list of features and improvements we're working on, and we're excited to share them with you as they come out. We're also always looking for feedback on what we can do better, so please don't hesitate to reach out to us with your thoughts!