TILTS: Social marathons

Tomorrow Indianapolis will host it's OneAmerica 500 Festival Mini-Marathon.. For those of you outside Indianapolis, a mini-marathon is the same as a half-marathon, or 13.1 miles. I discovered that the term mini-marathon is unique to Indianapolis when I went to Arizona earlier this year for the P.F. Changs Rock 'n' Roll Marathon and Half Marathon. People looked at me really strange when I referred to their half-marathon as a mini-marathon.

This year, I heard that someone (sorry, I can't remember who) is allowing people to send text messages to a generic number. Text messages sent to this number will then display on a public message board for all mini-marathon runners to see as they pass by. Although I applaud this use of technology I think the idea is horribly flawed.

Good idea, but needs better implementation

For starters, although I haven't seen the actual message board, I presume it can only display so many text messages at a time and thus the messages will have to be put in a rotation. So it may be several minutes or longer before your message comes up in the rotation.

Second, it's highly improbable that your message will be displayed on the board at the exact moment the intended recipient is running by. So this leaves you with the choice of sending a generic message to all runners or crossing lots of fingers.

Expanding on their idea

So my technology I'd like to see is integration of this type of text message board with each runner's timing chip. These timing chips are already capable of logging start, stop and split times so why not add another social dimension to it? How cool would it be to lay a timing mat across the road a block before the message board that reads your bib number and displays any messages sent to you at the precise moment you run by?

I may have just created the first social marathon. How much longer until you see your Facebook wall at the finish line?

Disclaimer: Technologies presented in the Technology I'd Like To See (TILTS) series are based on my original (and sometimes delirious) thoughts. I present them here to the public only because I can not afford to implement any of them myself. If you steal borrow one of my ideas and end up filthy rich because of it, please remember where you got the idea and throw a little love my way. Something like a BMW or a big fat check would do just fine.