Kiosk Check-in on Race Day – Lessons Learned

We are getting more and more races using our race day registration services.  Here are a couple of races that used our service last weekend.

The Graffiti Run used the check-in capability to check in over 5,200 runners this past weekend.  They had 10 Chromebooks with volunteers doing the check-in.  They felt they could have used 12-15 checkin stations to handle the volume over two waves of starters (9AM and 10AM).

They use it for several reasons:

• Bib Assignment – they hand out bibs at the race and this allows them to enter the bib number as they check people in.
• Giveaway and Store Items – By looking up the runner, the system can show what size of T-Shirt to give as well as any items purchased (in their case sunglasses!).  Keeping track of this on paper is near impossible and it let’s them avoid the overhead of having to package up a bag for each runner.
• Check-In.  They know exactly who has checked in and who has not in real time.  They are also able to run reports to see the volume of people checking in, so they know how to staff for future races.

The Scott Coffee Moorestown Rotary 8K also used kiosks for race day registration.  This race used the Bib Assignment in the following manner:

• One week before the race, they did an Auto-assignment of all the bibs in alphabetical order.
• Then used the bib label printing capability to print them all out on Avery 5160 labels.
• Then they assembled the bibs – putting on the label and the bib tag.  Since they were able to do these in order, we were able to place the bibs into file folders alphabetically.
• They turned on auto-bib assignment.  So when people registered after the first batch was printed, they received a bib number.
• Bib pickup happened in a local running store.  Store employees were able to look up the bib by the last name since they were already in alphabetical order.  New registrations that had been done online were either checked on a computer, or new labels were generated for those bibs and put into the bins.
• Registrations also happened via the kiosk system in the store.  Those wanting to pay cash could do that and the store just put the cash into an envelope for the race to pick up later.
• Race Day morning, kiosks (Netbooks) were used for runners to register themselves after paying cash.  Bibs were manually assigned on the kiosks and the bib was handed to the runner at the end of the kiosk registration process.
• The timer was able to do downloads of the CSV with bib assignments the night before as well as during the race day registration.

Please share your stories of how you do race day registration.  And if you have suggestions for how we can improve your processes, let us know!