Brett Janaway <info> writes:

Airtribune is now 8 years old, and by far is the biggest
competition website in our sport, with just over 50% of all FAI events being
hosted on our platform. In fact, we host 3 times more events than our nearest
competitor. Over those years we have enjoyed a continued growth, and last year
again saw a 10% increase in events, just as the previous years have seen.

2018 was a year of stabilization for Airtribune. After taking over the service
from the former team in late 2017, there was a lot of aspects at breaking point
and not functioning properly. To tackle this we increased the server power
significantly (at an eye-watering cost) and set to work fixing some of the aging
code. Our efforts were rewarded and for the second half of the year Airtribune
suffered almost no downtime or ill effects.

Google maps charging for mapping data came unexpectedly and would have
quadrupled our costs. Luckily some dedicated developers managed to tackle the
issue and we are mostly back on track for efficient maps. There is still some
small tasks to finalize, but we will look to this in the coming weeks.

In addition, for the admin staff of events, we added functionality to help them
manage their events more efficiently. In particular adding far more information
to their scoring files for their events.

For the non competition users of Airtribune, we managed to improve the
processing of tracklogs and for 2019 we plan to launch a new App so you can
track your leisure activities even better. This will continue as a free service.

So what does 2019 hold?

We will be putting more resource into improving the service for sure. We have
plans to make competition management even better for organisers. Details we are
keeping under wraps for the moment, but I think administrators will be pleased
with our plans.

For pilots, expect new tracking solutions, and new ways of viewing competitions.

It has to be said, tracking is a cutting edge activity in any sport, and our
sport is ahead of almost any other leisure sport in the world. We have already
been contacted by cycling, motocross, aviation and more to use our tracking
services. Exciting times that are transforming what we do, and how we do it!

Are you a programmer?

The above section leads me nicely into a search for new talent to join our team.
Airtribune continues to be run with the lowest costs we can manage, but we also
wish to continue our development into the future. For this we need dedicated
programmers, with unique skills and a passion for working on something to
benefit the sport. Could this be you?

We particularly need programmers with skills in Django/Python, Javascript and
Git. In addition, Android and iOS App development. But combined with them, an
understanding of events management and tracking would be great assets.

If you are skilled in some of these then we would love you to get in touch. We
do have budgets for some projects (but you won't get rich). We are looking for
experienced programmers, not those looking for a project to learn from.
Airtribune is a serious platform, with over 32,000 registered users relying on
us.

Drop us an email and lets see where it goes.