Planning your first competition
This page answers the question most first-time organizers ask first: what is actually required of us as organizer, and what do we have to enter into Vote4Dance ourselves?
Read it once from top to bottom. Every step links to the page with the details.
Short answers
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Do we create the competition ourselves in Vote4Dance? | Yes. You create the event and the competition in Manager yourself, and you keep control of it the whole way. Nobody does it for you. |
| Do we need permission first? | Not in Vote4Dance. Choosing the federation when you create the event is what puts the competition under it; there is no approval step. Your federation may still have its own requirements, such as sanctioning the date, so ask them. Its dancers need active licences, and a club the federation has not approved cannot hold licences for them. |
| Who enters the dancers? | The dancers and their clubs, through registration on the public event page. You approve the registrations and import them. You can also enter and add walk-ins yourself at the desk. |
| What does Vote4Dance handle on the day? | Start numbers, check-in, heats and lineup, judge marks, results, screens, speaker, diplomas and exports. |
| What does Vote4Dance not handle? | Music, microphones and lighting. Those stay with your DJ and the venue’s technician. See Screens, projectors and venue technology. |
| Can we test everything before the day? | Yes, and you should. See Test run and venue rehearsal. |
Who does what
| Who | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| You (organizer) | Creates the event and the competition, sets classes, rounds, schedule, judges, registration and prices, staffs the functionary positions, runs the day. |
| Federation (if any) | Approves clubs and licences, and owns the rules: licenses, age and class rules, ranking points. See Federation. |
| Clubs and dancers | Register themselves, pay, hold valid licenses, confirm their roster at check-in. |
| Judges | Open the Judging app on their own device and mark. They need an invitation from you, a device and Wi-Fi; the PIN they set themselves. |
| Venue | Projector, sound, light, power and internet. Your Vote4Dance display computer plugs into their projector — nothing more. |
Before you open Manager: decide these
You can enter all of this later, but the setup goes much faster if you have decided it first.
- Dates and times — competition day(s), doors open, first round, prize ceremony.
- Venue — name and address as the audience should see it, plus how many floors you run in parallel.
- Classes — which classes dancers can enter: discipline, age group, level/class, team size.
- Round structure per class — is it a final only, or qualification → semifinal → final, and how many go through each time.
- Judges — who judges, how many per panel, which classes each panel takes.
- Registration — when it opens and closes, what it costs, and whether payment is online (Stripe), invoice or free.
- Functionaries — who sits at the desk, who runs the screens, who is the speaker, who lets dancers on to the floor.
- Devices — count them: one computer for Manager, one computer per projector/TV, one tablet per judge, one tablet or phone each for check-in, lineup and speaker. See Technical requirements.
- Awards — medals/diplomas per class, and whether you print diplomas on site.
What must be entered in Vote4Dance
This is the minimum. Everything else is optional polish.
| # | What | Where | Why it must be there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Event (name, dates, location, description) | Manager → Events → Create event | Holds everything else. See Event setup. |
| 2 | How you start, and the event mode | Event creation | The first question is How do you want to start? — Training competition with default settings (“Best for your first event”) or Competition for a specific federation. Further in, Event mode is Practice event or Live competition; live competitions enable reusable competition profiles and billing. Both shape everything after them. |
| 3 | Event image | Manager → Event → Overview | The event cannot be made public without it. 1600 × 900 JPG/PNG, not HEIC. See Event image. |
| 4 | Floor | Manager → Event → Floor | A round can be placed on a floor, so the Speaker, the Supervisor and each screen can follow one floor. A new event already has a Main floor, which is enough for most competitions. See Floors. |
| 5 | Competition and classes | Manager → Event → Competitions, then Competition → Classes | What dancers register into. Each class maps to a Federation Class, which carries its age and level rules. See Competition setup. |
| 6 | Rounds per class | Inside each class, under Manager → Competition → Classes | What you actually run on the day. Use the Round guide to generate them rather than building each one by hand. |
| 7 | Schedule | Manager → Event → Schedule | Each round sits on a schedule item, which gives it a time and an order and feeds the public schedule, the speaker and the screens. A dated day header is also what the dressing-room and admission-per-day features need. See Schedule and conflicts. |
| 8 | Judges and panels | Manager → Competition → Judges | Without a panel, Start judging is refused: “Assign a judging panel to this class or round before starting judging.” |
| 9 | Judge invitations | Manager → Competition → Judges | Judges are invited by email and show as Not invited, Invited or Active. Each judge sets their own PIN on their own device the first time they open the Judging app — there is no event-wide code for you to hand out, and you can reset a forgotten PIN from the judge’s row. |
| 10 | Registration period | Manager → Competition → Registration → Registration period | Without an open period nobody can register. See Registration and check-in. |
| 11 | Users and stations | Manager → Event → Users and → Stations | Each functionary gets exactly the apps they need; shared devices join as stations. See Users, apps and stations. |
| 12 | Screens | Manager → Event → Screens | One screen per projector or TV, each with a label, a floor and what it shows. One device drives one screen, so count your displays. See Screens, projectors and venue technology. |
| 13 | Event status | Manager → Event → Overview | An event starts Hidden. Publish competition makes it public — which needs the event image, and billing information for a live competition. See Event setup. |
Before the day, open Problems in Manager and resolve everything it flags. Problems runs a set of automatic tests over your setup — start-number conflicts, participants scheduled in two overlapping rounds, advancement that does not add up, and (for DSF competitions) license conflicts — and re-runs them whenever you change something.
Timeline
| When | Do this |
|---|---|
| 8–10 weeks before | Create the event, under your federation if it has one. Ask the federation whether it needs anything from you. Upload the event image. Decide classes. |
| 6–8 weeks before | Build classes, rounds and the schedule. Set prices and the registration period. Make the event public and announce it. |
| 4 weeks before | Book functionaries and judges. Count the devices you need and borrow what is missing. Send the venue questions to the venue’s technician. |
| 2–3 weeks before | Add judges and panels. Do a desk rehearsal on your own computer with a practice event. See Test run and venue rehearsal. |
| 1–2 weeks before | Book the venue rehearsal: projector, Wi-Fi and the real devices. Registration closes. |
| Registration closed | Approve registrations, import participants, assign start numbers, check licenses. |
| 2–3 days before | Final schedule. Print heat lists and judging sheets as backup. Charge every tablet. Create the stations — the devices scan their QR codes off your screen on the day, so there is nothing to print. |
| Day before / morning | Set up screens and devices, run one live round with test data if you still can, clear Problems, then set the event to its live status. |
| On the day | Follow Live operations. |
| After | Confirm and publish all rounds, then Post-event and exports. |
Functionaries and which app each one gets
Vote4Dance gives access per app, so decide who gets what before the day.
| Position | App | Device |
|---|---|---|
| Organizer / scrutineering desk (sekretariat) | Manager | Computer with Google Chrome |
| Chief scrutineer / observer | Supervisor | Computer or tablet |
| Speaker / MC | Speaker | Tablet |
| Screen operator | Screens | Computer connected to the projector |
| Floor entrance (insläpp/infösare) | Lineup | Tablet or phone |
| Check-in desk (anmälan) | Check-in | Tablet or phone with a camera for QR scanning |
| Cafe | Cafe | Tablet or phone |
| Judges | Judging | One tablet per judge |
Full detail, including the naming traps: Users, apps and stations.
Next steps
- Event setup — create the event
- Competition setup — classes, rounds, judges
- Registration and check-in
- Test run and venue rehearsal — prove it works before the day
- Live operations — the event-day runbook