April Propwash 2018 web.pub

the NAMBA Membership Portal to make voting faster, more informative, and secure. We have gone from less than 10% voter participation on rules proposals to almost 50% member voting participation! That means that the boaters of NAMBA are engaged and involved in charting the direction of the organization. Candidates can now submit video bios that allow our membership to know what the vision for NAMBA is before voting rather than just voting for a name they recognize. I spent the first couple of years with the website really just updating the data. Chris Wittrig was the original designer of our main NAMBA web page and it was so thoughtfully laid out and designed that I have not had to make too many changes to it. I have mainly been sorting through data and marrying it to the new NAMBA Membership Portal. One of the biggest changes is the availability of near real-time membership data in the form of our Membership Roster, sanctioned sites, and races data, which is now almost a live feed directly from the NAMBA Membership Portal. We will be enhancing the integration between the two website even further in the coming year. I have developed a working system for importing data like records quickly and accurately to try to keep the data fresh. My dream project is to develop the next generation of race management system. I have already substantial design work done on the NAMBA Membership Portal to incorporate this directly into the system to track membership verification, individual race result history, etc. A group of us have already begun some proof of concept work with things like video replay, starting enhancements and use of mobile devices and tablets for registration, pitting and race management. We developed a test model where, using an ordinary $16 web cam, we can mount the camera to the driver’s stand, directly perpendicular to the start buoy and using a mouse to tell the ( Continued on page #8) From The NAMBA I.T. Chairman By David Santistevan NAMBA I.T. Chairman My name is David Santistevan, but many of you may know me as “Team Ed”, and I have been the NAMBA IT Chairman for the past four years. Al Hobbs, our new President and a dear friend of mine, has asked all of the chairs and District Directors to write a bio about themselves as he felt the membership rarely gets to see the work we do. A little bit about my personal background: I am 58 years young and live in Littleton, Colorado. I am married with three children. My beautiful wife Valerie and I have been married for 35 years. Our children are Sol, my oldest son, and my twin daughters Jenna and Alysa. I am very proud of my kids and my wife, as they are all amazing, loving and caring human beings. We are big animal people and as many of you have seen from my Facebook profile, we have Corgis (dogs), and not just a one or two, but lots! I like to tell people they are like potato chips… We also haves horses, which are Valerie’s love (I just write the checks on that one). I started model boating back in 1978 when I was very young and then left the hobby to raise a family. I returned about six years ago and I have been very active in all aspects of the hobby ever since. I am an IT professional by trade and my entire career has been about developing business processes and marrying them to technology. My greatest joy in the hobby has been the fellowship that comes from boating with people from Florida to California. I have come to realize that I will never be a top competitor in the hobby, but that does not really matter to me. I love the people I boat with and I love contributing and doing what I can to build this great hobby and organization. I have met many of you in my travels over the last 6 years and I have had the opportunity to be part of some very special events, some of which, like the West Texas Shootout for Autism Awareness and Hobart, no longer exist. I have been actively involved in the helping to build NAMBA over the last five years. Some of my work has been obvious, like the NAMBA Membership Portal, and some not so obvious, such as the organizational efforts associated with putting on four national events. If you attended the Las Vegas SuperNats this year you would have seen the advertising program I put together with the help of Al Waters and Jay Stone for a rolling billboard advertising the race that potentially reached over 3 million people. The last four years have been very busy for NAMBA in the technology space, as I have been working to develop the organization’s social media presence and enhancements to our existing websites. Our biggest project has been the development of the NAMBA Membership Portal, which I am sure all of you are probably familiar with. The NAMBA Membership Portal has been such a satisfying effort for me because of the acceptance and benefits it has brought to NAMBA. This year alone, before Al event sent out any of the email renewal reminders, almost half of the membership had renewed on their own. I worked very hard to get the online voting passed using PROPWASH April 2018 Page 7 “Propeller’s by Chris Hoffmann” Complete Propeller Service Sharpening, Balancing, and Modifying All Props in Stock! ABC — PropShop — Octura ABC and PropShop Dealer Nine Time NAMBA SAW Record Holder www.dasboata.com Contact Chris at dasboata@aol.com