If you run Masters meets using Hy-Tek's Meet Manager software, read on.
Your LMSC Registrar now has the ability to provide you with a file that contains the names, USMS numbers, clubs, and birthdates of the swimmers in your LMSC. This file (of filetype .RE1) can be imported directly into the Meet Manager program.
When you import the .RE1 file, the "Athletes" list in Meet Manager is automatically populated with names, clubs, USMS numbers, and birthdates. All you have to enter are the swimmer's events and seed times.
This does three things:
1) It saves you, the meet director, a lot of typing as you enter swimmers into the meet, and
2) It ensures that the swimmers' names appear in the meet results AS THEY APPEAR ON THEIR USMS CARDS, and
3) It ensures that the swimmers' USMS numbers are stored in the meet results.
To obtain an .RE1 file, contact your LMSC registrar and ask for him/her to create an .RE1 file from the Club Assistant registration software. He/she can then e-mail the file to you.
To import the file into Meet Manager:
From the main Meet Manager menu, select "FILE"
Select "IMPORT"
Select "REGISTRATION FILE"
Locate and choose the .RE1 file that was sent to you
After the meet you can delete the names of everyone who didn't enter the meet. (You do this by going to File >> Purge >> Remove Data Selectively, and deleting athletes with no entries.)
My LMSC has used the .RE1 file for our past three meets. It really helps improve the accuracy of the meet results!
Anna Lea
From Thomson - Privacy: Role of the Organization
Concept of privacy - Simply put, privacy is the right to be left alone. If a person has disclosed personal information of a confidential nature to an organization, it must not be disclosed to a third person without the consent of the discloser.
Some people may feel that their age (not on your list, but used as an example), gender, club affiliation or even membership in USMS is a matter of personal privacy. And while gender, club affiliation and USMS membership generally fall into the category of ordinary personal data, age and an individuals USMS number could be considered as sensitive data.
So we no longer post results from meets either? When you enter a meet, your exact age for the purpose of the meet goes on the psych sheet, heat sheet, and results. At a certain point, agreeing to compete in competition means that you agree to that data being published because it's necessary for the operation of the meet.
Some LMSC's (mine included) post information such as your name, registration number, and team affiliation. And if I really wanted to, I could brute force lookup every single permanent ID by going to www.usms.org/.../(permanent_ID), for example www.usms.org/.../023RX for me. I'm sure that would violate the terms of service for the website, but that wouldn't stop someone from doing it, which could get you names, team affiliations, competition history, sexes, and ages.
Think about it this way: the meet director is already in a position of trust to begin with because they are operating a meet for an organization granted a sanction or recognition. They have access to all of the registration information for each swimmer in the meet, which is all of the information that's protectable. An unscrupulous meet director could abscond with this information and misuse it. But I don't see many calls to not have the meet director take meet entries. It would overly impede the orderly operation of the meet.
I could see a limitation of what information is distributed to meet directors as reasonable, and I could even see a policy on what the meet director can do with this information as reasonable (e.g. information only usable to validate entries, but not allowed for the purpose of harassing people to come to your swim meet). But saying that all of this information is completely private is ignorant of the reality that the meet director already has much of this information.
Now I suppose you could also go to a partial USA Swimming model, and require meet directors to submit entries to the LMSC registrar for meet recon a certain amount of time before the meet. It would certainly cut down on the ability to do deck entries, and it would probably add to the workload for the registrars. But it's not a very effective model for USMS.
Patrick King
From Thomson - Privacy: Role of the Organization
Concept of privacy - Simply put, privacy is the right to be left alone. If a person has disclosed personal information of a confidential nature to an organization, it must not be disclosed to a third person without the consent of the discloser.
Some people may feel that their age (not on your list, but used as an example), gender, club affiliation or even membership in USMS is a matter of personal privacy. And while gender, club affiliation and USMS membership generally fall into the category of ordinary personal data, age and an individuals USMS number could be considered as sensitive data.
So we no longer post results from meets either? When you enter a meet, your exact age for the purpose of the meet goes on the psych sheet, heat sheet, and results. At a certain point, agreeing to compete in competition means that you agree to that data being published because it's necessary for the operation of the meet.
Some LMSC's (mine included) post information such as your name, registration number, and team affiliation. And if I really wanted to, I could brute force lookup every single permanent ID by going to www.usms.org/.../(permanent_ID), for example www.usms.org/.../023RX for me. I'm sure that would violate the terms of service for the website, but that wouldn't stop someone from doing it, which could get you names, team affiliations, competition history, sexes, and ages.
Think about it this way: the meet director is already in a position of trust to begin with because they are operating a meet for an organization granted a sanction or recognition. They have access to all of the registration information for each swimmer in the meet, which is all of the information that's protectable. An unscrupulous meet director could abscond with this information and misuse it. But I don't see many calls to not have the meet director take meet entries. It would overly impede the orderly operation of the meet.
I could see a limitation of what information is distributed to meet directors as reasonable, and I could even see a policy on what the meet director can do with this information as reasonable (e.g. information only usable to validate entries, but not allowed for the purpose of harassing people to come to your swim meet). But saying that all of this information is completely private is ignorant of the reality that the meet director already has much of this information.
Now I suppose you could also go to a partial USA Swimming model, and require meet directors to submit entries to the LMSC registrar for meet recon a certain amount of time before the meet. It would certainly cut down on the ability to do deck entries, and it would probably add to the workload for the registrars. But it's not a very effective model for USMS.
Patrick King
