United States Eventing Association

As both an eventer and a show secretary for several dressage and eventing competitions, Kim Goto Miner has a unique experience using a variety of software for her work and competition needs.

This year, The Event at Rebecca Farm, held in July in Kalispell, Montana, used ShowConnect for the first time, and -Miner got a chance to try it out while she worked for the first time as a scorer for The Scoring Chix. She also got to see how the software looked from a competitor’s point of view as she rode for the first time at Rebecca Farm aboard Solaguayre Largento in the Open Preliminary division.

“It was fantastic,” said Miner of her time at Rebecca Farm. “I guess working for new people is always like getting to know each other, but I've known Dawn [Benson, of The Scoring Chix] for a really long time, so she's fantastic, and I love her crew. It was nice to have that opportunity. She got me to come to Rebecca for the first time, which was a beautiful and fun experience.”

A professional eventer, Miner juggles her work with serving as show secretary for Ram Tap Horse Trials in Fresno, California, Shepherd Ranch Horse Trials in Santa Ynez, California, and for several recognized dressage shows.

“I use other programs, and each one has its own positives and negatives to each of them,” she said. “I think that depending on what you're trying to do, everybody has their favorites, because when it comes to scheduling, as far as a show secretary is concerned, our brains all work a little bit differently on how we prefer to schedule. Depending on how your brain works, certain programs are going to be easier than others. And same with the stabling chart, depending on how your brain handles doing the, I call it the ‘wedding seating’ plan of stabling—each setup is going to be a little bit different.”

Miner appreciated the training from USEA’s Margaret Marcus, Event Technology Operations Manager, before she left for Montana, and felt secure knowing Marcus was just a phone call or text away throughout the competition.

“Margaret was fantastic,” she said. “She gave us access to a couple of test sites so we could practice putting in dressage tests, figuring out how to do errors, all of that stuff, and I thought that that all had really good functionality. There were a couple of glitches here and there, but there are with every new program that you use. They were super responsive and were easy fixes. They were fast at fixing everything and getting us back online.

“Glitches happen, and you have to have the capability to have somebody on staff to answer your questions,” she continued. “Because, of course, when are we going to have problems? At Sunday, at like, 10 o'clock in the morning on whatever time zone that you're in. So, the fact that we had somebody that we could text and get a hold of and fix fast—that makes or breaks whether or not you want to use a program. Not all of them come with that great of customer service, so that was key.”

Miner didn’t look too much at the backside of ShowConnect in her role as scorer over the week, but she was happy with the ease of the scoring side of the program. “As far as the scoring portion went, I thought that it was nice to be able to put in every single rail—not all of the programs do that. Some of them you just put in the total jump penalties and the total time penalties, and you're done.”

And from the competitor and trainer’s side, Miner appreciated the ability to look up riders alphabetically by division to see ride times easier.

Overall, Miner says that ShowConnect’s ease of use was what she appreciated the most during a competition with over 500 entries.

Her trip to Montana ended up being a bit of a family vacation as her husband and two sons also came along. One of her sons even helped her with scoring. “That attests to how user friendly the program is,” she said. “My 12-year-old kid was totally capable of doing dressage and show jumping scoring, and 10-year-old son was able to do some as well.”

About ShowConnect

ShowConnect has been designed with the future in mind. The system provides the critical features event organizers need to register, schedule, and score an event, but also provides many additional features to all sized events that would not be cost-effective by any other means. It’s designed to allow the flow of information, and in the future, transactions securely in real-time to and from the people and organizations who interact with your event.

ShowConnect facilitates the management of event entries by accepting manual entries and imports from Xentry, the USEA’s online entry system. Additionally, import options into ShowConnect are set to expand, enhancing its flexibility and ease of use.

ShowConnect provides one location with everything needed to run an event, state-of-the-art technology, enhanced scoring systems, real-time updates, easy accessibility, and support for organizers and secretaries when you need it most. Click here to learn more about ShowConnect.