A vote was taken at the summer meeting and was roughly equal. Please share your thoughts here about the pros and cons of each.
1 thought on “Paper vs. Electronic (PDF) Guidebook”
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AWSA East
Eastern Region 3-Event Water Skiing
I like the paper guidebook but realize it comes at a financial cost. Then again, I am old school.
What I observe is the inability to look up tournament details online at some rural sites as cell coverage is sometimes spotty. I also wonder how PDF will present on small screen smart phones ?.
I tried opting for electronic PDF viewing for another one of my organizations’ magazine and contest calendar, and found that the PDF viewing was quite cumbersome, even on a computer, let alone a smaller screen smart phone. So I believe how user friendly the PDF viewing is will be critical. But electronic viewing does provide the ability to hyperlink to videos and other data or articles & websites that normally would not be available in a paper environment . (I went back to the paper magazine for that organization but also kept the electronic version. and now do both.)
But I guess it is inevitable as us old farts receed and young computer literate folks become the majority. It might go by the by – sort of like online rulebooks. ( I wonder how many judges actually have and carry the current and latest AWSA rulebook with them at tournaments ? I can attest that it is a bit of an ordeal and some modest cost to get one printed and then stapled or bound each year.)
I hope we think hard before we give up paper. But that should not stop us from developing an efficient, effective and user friendly on-line viewing capability for our guidebooks.
Roger Hammel