Here's a summary of the Nixon Fair Database (also known as the 'Fair DB'):
The Fair DB holds, in a detailed and organized way, data on:
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All the Persons, Families, Organizations and Groups that are connected in any way with Your Fair.
The Fair DB gives one or more persons, using PC computers, the ability to lookup, update, enter, change, save, delete, print, and backup all the above data.
The Fair DB uses Menus based on the yearly cycle of a fair ("Before", "Just Before", "During", "Closing", and "After").
However, in a spreadsheet cell, you can type anything. In the Fair DB, your typing is constantly double checked, making sure that your data is of high quality.
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All the Competitions and Prizes that Your Fair offers
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All the Entry Forms and entries that Your Fair has received. Exhibitors are given types and numbers.
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All the Judging decisions that Your Fair's judges or executive have made.
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All the Cash Payouts and Gift Prize awarding done by your Fair.
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The Calculations methods and rules used to prepare the Cash payouts.
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Terms that Your Fair uses to describe various parts of your fair
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The time that Your Fair's Volunteers contribute to the Fair.
The Fair DB also holds data, for one or more years, on:
Many people are comfortable using Spreadsheets, but scared of Databases. The Fair DB was designed to look and work like a bunch of related, connected spreadsheets.
The Fair DB helps one or more people manage the data, coordinate their work, and produce the reports, for many of the tasks to be done during Your Fair's year. It clones data from one year to be used in the next. Plus, it allows comparisons between years, and other analysis.
The Entry Forms and the Judging Results modules of the Fair DB were designed to quick to learn, and easy to use. So, during fair time, willing, but untrained, people can be helping the data entry effort after spending 15 minutes watching someone else do the work. There are several features available to doublecheck their work.
The Fair DB has grown over the past 9 years to it's current state by the comments, concerns and input of it's many users.
Ag Societies using the Fair DB have been able to better manage the changeover from one secretary (or treasurer) to another. This is partially due to the 3+ hours of training videos included with the programs and files.
The Fair DB will, in the near future, make use of tablets. For now, it provides printed paper forms for people to use to record the activities and decisions of the fair. Paper is less prone to loss of signal, and has a short learning curve.
Your Fair's Data stays on your Fair's computers. It's not stored somewhere "in the Cloud".
