Letter to the Editor: WiFi war stories - July 2004  

Dear Editor,
 
I have just read your article on WiFi, which was both entertaining and informative (see View from the Editor: Taking the WiFi Express on a trip down the information superhighway - May 2004).
A while ago, those of us at the Information and Research department at the South African Sports Commission, set up what was probably the first WiFi network in Mozambique. The occasion was the Zone VI Games, a regional Southern African, multi-code sports event, kind of like a local Commonwealth Games.  We were roped in at the last minute (i.e., a week before the event) after it became clear that the Mozambique organisers didn't have the means to handle accreditation and results management at the event.
We set off from Johannesburg bound for Maputo with a few boxes containing six Centrino laptops, three printers, a Belkin wireless router, lots of scissors and paper, and....no cables! The software used was a customised database system called SportOrganiser, which we'd developed ourselves. In the space of two days we captured, from scratch, 2,500 participants from 10 countries and provided them with accreditation cards, using a hastily assembled but very enthusiastic team of computer science students from the local university.
I won't bore you with the war stories about malaria, crooked border officials, incompatible electricity outlets, and dicey lunches. But the real point is that wireless made running around a makeshift accreditation centre with a lap-top under your arm, sorting out irate team managers and printing out a list of boxers from Tanzania on the spot, an absolute cinch.
We brought the whole rig back to South Africa after the event, and now have a very mobile accreditation centre that does the rounds at local championships. The next addition is a handful (pun unintended) of PDAs to capture results with in the field, to be sent back to base camp via either WiFi or cellular.
 
All the best,
 
Charl Durand
Head of Information and Research
South African Sports Commission
www.sasc.org.za

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