Newsflash: The winners of the most recent World Championships of Magic in Stockholm, Sweden, are determined. The judging process was 100% assisted by LiveScore software, operated by Arnoud.

In this section we present LiveScore, a score keeping, ranking system and statistical apprentice for competitions in the field of theatre and performing arts. 100% Hanky Ranky, so to speak.

LiveScore is a 100% self-supporting score-keeping and ranking system for creative, performing or theatrical competitions. More generally, it may be used for any competition that has its winner(s) not easily determined with a stopwatch or ruler. The system facilitates the processing of the individual score rankings of jury-members judging the various contestants of theatrical or creative competitions.

The system offers cumulative reports, reviews and additional statistical information to support jury-members during their important task of determining the potential price-winners. Because LiveScore was especially build to facilitate competitons in performing arts and the theatrical field, it has already been stress-tested and put to good use at various Dutch national magic competitions. To facilitate the International FISM competition in 2003, LiveScore was internationalized, rebuild from the ground up and made computer-platform independent. Because the system was originaly build to assist in judging magical competitions, it fully complies to the price-assignment rules for both the national Dutch NMU and international FISM competitions.

The system 

Currently the LiveScore system exists of a few parts:

• The special software written, enhanced and maintained by Arnoud van Delden (who's that?)
• A laptop computer, portable printer and a dedicated operator (i.e. the above mentioned creator of the software)
• A set of special documents to be used for score-intake by the various jury-members. Take a look at LiveScore's screenshots and downloads page.
• Optional: Beamer for use in the judges-room during discussions, validation reconsideration or score-intake.
• Optional: Paper shredder to destroy confidentional documents during contests or competitions that span multiple days.

Functionality 

The main characteristics of LiveScore are:

• Customizable for the task at hand. Configurable for international (i.e. 'country-based') or regional ('club-based') competitions. Unlimited number of contestants, judges, performance categories or competition sessions.
• Maintains information about judges, contestants, judging-categories, competition sessions (performance blocks) and assignable prices.
• Playable 'what-if' scenarios are possible, contestants may be easily switched between categories or performance blocks. Ranking impact can be easily visualised in reports and is automatically statistically checked to signal potential pit-falls in the judging process.
• Professional statistics. Instant contestant ranking, 100% automagically price assignment, score-range statistics (standard diviation) to signal possible judging conflicts or abnormalities.
• Various dedicated professionally pre-pressed multi page reports and documents to be used to assist the overall judging process. These currently include overviews for the judges-president (full coverage of all individual scores) or the individual jury-members (eg. reviews with scores of other jury-members blanked to facilitate double-checking of the data-entry process). Please take a look at the screenshots and downloads page for example documents with fictive rankings.
• 100% FISM and NMU judging-guidelines compliant. Features to keep track of 'below quality level', 'over-time disqualification', etc. Keeps track of potential candidates for additional awards ('originality' or 'comedy presentation').
• Flexibility. LiveScore is developed by its operator: Easily trouble-shooted or even enhanced on the spot with additional functionality or dedicated custom reports if the circumstances should dictate this.
• Redundancy. Because we should consider LiveScore to be a mission-critial system, it accepts no single point of failure. During multi-day competitions individual performance-block backups can be made and send out over our own secured virtual private network (VPN). A fully functional fail-over system is kept available online in case of ultimate disaster.
• Immediate distribution of digital and/or paper-documents to resticted receivers (e.g. local newspaper, HTML-version for use on a website) is possible. Only minutes after the final contestant is ranked, the complete overview can be generated in your proposed layout to facilitate a printing on demand process (eg. hand-out for the audience on their way out in the theatre).

• Multiple jury-pools that judge a subset of all contest-categories.
• Fully digital (possible wireless) voting-style score input for jury-members.
• Live ranking beaming/projection in jury-room during discussions.

Technical 

• Webbased application with own Apache webserver, MySQL database and PHP-engine. Unix/Linux used as operation system for stability.
• LaTeX based report generator with output in PDF for multipage (landscape ratio) tables and reviews in documents.
• Stand-alone operating on a Intel-based laptop with Linux operating system (FISM 2003).
• Stand-alone operating on a Macintosh PowerBook with OS X operating system (NMU convention 2005).
• Wireless photo-intake (BlueTooth) for photos of contestants or jury members.
• EPS or PDF-based logos can easily be placed in the final reports and documents.

The judging process: Screenshots and downloads 

There are some differences in score inventarisation (generaly done in the jury-room immediately after a block of contestants has been viewed) between national (NMU) and international (FISM) conventions. For the national competitions with a relative small number of contestants and jury-members, it is economic enough to have each jury-member call their score out loud and type the scores directly into the contestant-form. The average score can then directly be given, each jury-member can print this in a reserved box of the score form for their own administration. At regular intervals the complete ranking is printed by LiveScore and can directly be discussed. Click here for an example of an score-form for Dutch national magic competition.

If the number of contestants and jury-members grows (as is the case with FISM), and the scores are confidential between jury-members, another method is followed. Each score form has a tear-off strip at the bottom. Right after an contestant has performed, each jury-member copies the final score over to the strip, signs it and tears it off. The individual strips are collected and stapled together to become the unprocessed scores-bundle for this contestant. Each so formed bundle is entered in the system by the operator. To double check their own scores, personalised reports (showing only the own private scores) are printed and handed to each individual jury-member in a follow-up session. This provides an extra degree of security, makes each member responsible for their own scores and eliminates interpretation errors in reading, sometimes sloppy, handwriting. At the same time the margin for unfocussed discussion is kept as small as possible because only the president of the jury has access to all individual scores. The download page features an example of an actual FISM score form.

For more indepth information, please consider the special page with screenshots and downloads. Here you'll find more background information and documents thay may hint you on constructing your own score-intake forms to be used with the system.

Development history and intented use 

ImproMedia's LiveScore was never build for commercial use by third parties. The system was initially build for his own use by Arnoud van Delden to facilitate the score-keeping of the national Dutch magic competition in 2001 (after an experiment with an Excel spreadsheet in 2000). Over the next few year this evolved in a Microsoft Excel application with VisualBasic (VBA) macro's. The drawback of platform dependent (closed source) Windows software and the limitations of the Microsoft Office Suite led to a rebuild of the software in 2002. The first incarnation of this version (with many necessary report facilities added) was running under the Linux operation system during FISM 2003. Recently the system was ported to OS X to be used on a Macintosh PowerBook.

Procedural statement and disclaimer 

Cumulative reports create the essential moments of feedback in the procedure of score intake. After all the jury members are solely responsible of their own rankings and are given the possibility to double-check the data-entry process. LiveScore facilitates, its creator does not accept responsibility for the final ranking or unnoticed (mathematical) errors.

Although LiveScore is a non-commercial piece of software, it is not freely available to be used by everyone. It was initialy developed and is currently being further enhanced and refined solely by its creator. A lot of (unpaid) time is spent in making a functional application rather than a monkey-proof piece of software with lots of warning messages and a paper manual to be operated by any non-technician. It can therefore currently best be operated by the creator, simply because the development focus has never been on ease of use but rather on technical functionality and mission critical operation. To put it in other words: To create a mathematical solid ranking report for 150 international contestants in a artistically scrutenised competition, you need rock-steady tools you can rely on. This goes far beyond the functionality, technical stability and scalablility (in terms of reports) of an office spreadsheet.

At the moment there are no plans to open-source the software, encourage the use by third-parties or spend a lot of time in making a stand-alone version that can be used without thorough knowledge of the undelaying technical workings. Although a lot of the functionality was dictated by external parties (eg. FISM, NMU) the software is copyrighted and owned by its creator.

Using LiveScore for your competition? 

Arnoud: Will work for food and shelter (and probably miss out on all the lectures when on the job)....
Organiser: That sounds good, there must be some catch....
Arnoud: Well eh... no, but lets say that this is my donation to the magic fraterny?

When we both agree that you have a great job for LiveScore, there will be no 'salary' needed for the operator or for the development or use of the system. The operator will be available during the convention to assist the jury to his best effort. What I do ask however, is that costs of living during the event (the LiveScore-system is operated for) are to be covered by the 'requester'. These should at least cover hotel-costs and the admitance and/or entrance fee to the event (e.g. a magic-convention) for one person for national, and two persons for international events/conventions.

For a project to be considered, a written confirmation and all necessary entrance/admission documents must be supplied in advance!

What is needed? 

Technical and physical requirements during the event:

• Lockable jury-room in the vacinity of the contest performance areas. Most likely this will be somewhere in the theatre. Please provide a table to position the laptop and printer on. At least two 110-240 volt outlets are needed. Ideal is to construct a 'satellite position' (seperate table somewhere in the room) for the system and operator, so that judges are not disturbed during discussions.
• Have seperate keys of the room for both the LiveScore-operator and the president of the jury because their use of the room may not always overlap.
• The online fail-over system and VPN-backup are only possible when there is a functional internet-connection (or WiFi lan coverage) available in the jury-room.
• Please keep ample printing paper (A4 format) available for reports.
• Optional paper shredder for confidential reports and cumulative documents.
• Optional video beamer could be experimented with if available. This is not a turn-key feature due to technical complexity (and small gain over paper reports). It might be a communication feature to consider although.

• A full list of all contestants must be available for initial data entry two weeks in advance at the last. This list must contain the stage name, performing order and artistic category of each contestant. A picture or photo of the contestant and a club name (regional) or country name (international) are optional additions. An online entry-system may be set up so that you can fill in the contestants yourself!
  
• Provide the exact layout and logo's for any final reports you need way in advance. Preparing dedicated reports is almost impossible on the spot, I realy like to do my homework with this one!