Best in the Bay: what our first event taught us

The day

Best in the Bay was hosted by WellneZone Armwrestling at Brinkleys River Village in Klein Brak River, in the Western Cape. It was the pilot for everything Armstrong is meant to do. Online entry, a waiver, weigh in, brackets, two tables and a livestream with the scoreboard on it, all from one laptop.

About 45 pullers took part across 23 classes, on both hands. Every class was finished. That matters to us, because it means the core of the thing held up with a real crowd watching and real people waiting for their turn.

It was not smooth. Here is what went wrong.

The connection dropped and the stream went with it

The laptop and one of the camera phones shared a single mobile data connection. At some point in the day that connection dropped. The stream stopped, which we expected. What we did not expect was what happened next.

When a livestream loses its signal, YouTube can close the broadcast on its own. Ours did. A closed broadcast cannot be opened again, but our console kept trying to send video to the same broadcast, so pressing go live again did nothing. We went round in circles for a while before we understood why.

We found a way to start a fresh broadcast on the day and got the stream back. The deeper problem is that the console showed a green light when nothing was actually reaching viewers, so nobody could tell what was wrong. We are reworking how the stream is started, watched and recovered, so it can survive a bad connection and tell the organiser the truth about what is happening.

Three microphones is too many

Both camera phones and the laptop were all putting sound onto the stream. Three microphones in one room gives you echo, and the stream had plenty. A stream should carry one clean sound, chosen on purpose. We are changing that.

Classes were the biggest lesson

This one taught us the most. Armstrong builds weight classes and age groups from the people who actually enter. We had set the event up so that each puller could only enter their own class, with limited room to move up.

Real pullers do not always fit that. Some did not want to pull in their own class at all. They wanted to pull only in the open divisions. We had set the tournament up so that was not possible, so on the day we had people who wanted to compete somewhere the system would not let them go.

Classes were also locked once they were built, which is a sensible rule until a real competitor turns up who does not fit it. For a while we drew a class on paper while the console caught up, and in that stretch it is easy to lose track of somebody. We did not want to be that event.

So in the middle of the tournament we built a new feature. It lets the organiser see every class and who is in it, add a puller to any class, take one out, and make a new class when a group of pullers needs one. It had no guard rails and no clever rules. It just let us put the right people in the right bracket so the event could carry on properly. It worked, and every class finished.

What it showed us is that the problem is not the buttons, it is the rules underneath. We are going back to the standard federation weight classes, and rethinking how thin classes are combined and how many classes a puller may enter. Each event will choose its own entry options up front, and the organiser will get to look over every class before a session starts.

What we are working on now

Here is the short list, without the detail of how yet.

• A stream that survives a dropped connection, and a console that is honest about its state.
• One clean sound source on the stream.
• Class rules that fit how people really enter, set per event.
• A check of every class before a session begins.
• Competitors entering themselves from their own phone, and choosing their classes when they do.
• A check before an event that tells the organiser whether their laptop and internet can handle the day.
• A full quality recording of every stream, kept for the replay.

Why we are telling you this

We would rather you read it from us. Armstrong is young and the first real event was always going to find things. It found a lot, we fixed what we could on the day, and we have a clear list for the rest.

Because of this, organiser access is closed for now. We want the tournament side to be properly right before more events depend on it. The club directory is open to everyone, so if your club is not on the map yet, that is the best place to start.