Mr17Hz

Joke? A business owner should ask themselves a number of questions before reading such a claim. How much money will your business lose if your software is unavailable due to internet connectivity on a Saturday afternoon? RealDropzone is the only product on the market that works online, and offline, in one fully integrated product. If your internet goes down for a few hours, it is business as usual. How much double entry is involved in your software product? Does it keep track of online reservations, check in, manifesting, marketing, and act as a point-of-sale product with credit card reader integration? How flexible are the credit card processing requirements of your existing product? Are you forced to enter a $$ value into your credit card machine, and then a second time into a software product, causing double entry and a chance for financial error? Does your software product take an excessive percentage of credit card transactions? Such as a whopping 6%? RealDropzone allows you to use your own providers or ours, and the markup is only 0.35%. Does your software vender charge hourly for support? We offer support as a part of the subscription. It is very easy to lose $3,000 of profit in a single day because your system failed you. The setup fee that I charge depends on the implementation, and it includes 1-3 weeks of ON SITE implementation and training. The full amount is then credited towards license fees. The subscription also entitles you to RealWaiver, a full featured paperless waiver system, utilizing kiosks with electronic signature tablets. The subscription also entitles you to RealRigger, a full featured product to keep track of your parachute usage and maintenance through a touch screen kiosk used by packers and rig maintenance personnel. For you to claim that “You have a program that you pay $20 a month for that can basically accomplish the same thing” is nothing more than a demonstration that you do not fully understand exactly what RealDropzone is capable of. I would be happy to provide a live demonstration for you. There is simply no other product like it on the market, and it is a full featured business intelligence and management tool for dropzones. The full product is now being utilized at many of the most well-known drop zones in the country. It has seen more than 10,000 hours of product development. Every single implementation we do has added even more capability. What product is it that you’re utilizing for $20/mo? I would be happy to overview the differences for you for that specific product. RealSkydiving is a multi-employee business that has been supporting the industry since 2006, we've remained in business by offering innovative products not offered by others, and keeping our clients happy by adding value to their business everywhere we can. We're not taking that install fee and blowing it on new skydiving gear. The mark up on our services has always been very modest. It pays for onsite training and implementation and hosted server provisioning, as well as needed customizations to the product to fit your specific business needs. Any 'profit' gets re-invested back into new product development. Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

Building drones is a lot easier than you think. $1,500 and a few weeks and you can have a quadrotor, helicopter, or fixed wing aircraft that can fly exactly where you tell it to go where it can lock a GPS signal, indoor flight is still experimental and would require more R&D, but this stuff is VERY accessible. http://www.DIYDrones.com http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/ Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

This thread was started over 2 years ago, It's funny seeing replies to it now. JumpRun was abandoned. 2 years after ProSkydiving announced a new version, they still have not released anything. RealDropzone actually exists and has even more capability today than it did 2 years ago. Plus it's running at over double the dropzones we had running it when JumpRun was aquired by ProSkydiving. Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

Waivers are saved in four places. First, on the local kiosk, then, on the local server, then on a remote server in texas (which has fault talolerant drives, and is protected by armed gaurds 24/7), and lastly, by nightly backups that move the data to new york. It's a lot more secure than a single stapled packet of paper in a box at the DZ. Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

I'm not playing lawyer. I made software as instructed by lawyers and business owners. I was told by lawyers that no opposing attorney would ever contest if it was their signature or not. I disclaimed my entire post by making it clear that I am not a lawyer. I am confident however that federal ESIGN laws have been passed by congress (back in 2000) that make electronically signed documents JUST AS VALID as ink signed documents, and that this solution follows all of the capture and encryption laws exactly (I used libraries provided by www.Topaz.com, who use this technology in MANY industries, often to protect many billions of dollars from fraud.) Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

Good Question, I think I've covered some of this in my prior post, but also consider that we're asking for a lot of customer information up front... Name, Address, Email, Birthdate, Drivers License number or passport (required by UPT), gender, marketing "how did you hear about us". Frankly, it would be a pain in the ass to enter all of that information via a cell phone. Having a keyboards and not making the customer feel like they are supposed to have a phone for this are to very important aspects to the overall customer experience at the DZ. There are also legal concerns, which I covered in an above post. Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

Let me prefix all of this by saying that I am not an attorney, and that you should consult your own attorney for his opinion on my words. It is also important to note that laws regarding validity of waivers of liability in general will vary state to state. The authenticity of the electronic signature has never been challenged, even in multi-billion dollar real estate disputes. It is protected by the federal ESIGN law that deems a properly collected and encrypted electronic signature to be just as legally binding as pen signature on paper, or a photocopy of that, for that matter. You will not have to prove that the signature is actually theirs (as a final stage your employee is looking at every signature collected on the software and visually comparing it against that customers government issued ID), and you’ve got a witness signature. What you may have to prove is this: - Was the customer not fully aware that this agreement applied to them? - Was the customer misled through a confusing process, to sign something they did not realize they were signing? - Was the customer let to believe they were signing something completely different? - Was the Dropzone genuinely interested in making sure that all customers are FULLY AWARE of the agreement they are making with the business before they participated in activities, or was the Dropzone being deceptive? The next thing to consider is that a trial is not all about facts. There is an emotional side, and a psychological side. This is especially true when you’ve chosen to have a trial by jury. What you need to do is calmly and plainly make a case to the jury that there is no way that the business misled the customer. Here are measures that we take to assure this can happen: - We have a separate page before the waiver begins that explains how very important it is to read the waiver entirely, stressing that they will be giving up important legal rights. - Our digital “Pages” are designed not only to look good on the screen, but also in print. Every single page of the waiver is signed separately, and then finally the entire document is signed as one long document. Every single page can then be presented as a SEPARATE EXIBIT, each blown up on a giant poster board with its own signature and date at the bottom. An attorney can then point to it by an attorney during a questioning in addition to handing out copies for individual review. - After signing every page individually, we present the entire document as scrollable text so that it is signed again: together. We did this for two reasons, first I got a couple of different opinions on how to handle multiple signatures from the document storage perspective and I wanted to cover all bases, and second; this further helps to drive in the point that the customer had every opportunity to read and understand this document before agreeing to the terms. - Our software uses clean easy to read fonts and black and white contrast. While the waiver content itself is decided by the DZ, we recommend that everything is the same size and is very uniform and clean. Each page of the waiver should be treated like a work of art, as you may need to present it to an audience. - At the bottom of EVERY PAGE, right next to the signature line, we bluntly declare “You may be injured or killed while skydiving.” Not only are you required to scroll to the bottom of the text, but the bottom of the waiver must be clearly visible at the time you are signing. (you can’t scroll back up to the top without starting your signature over) - Our solution does not use iPads or other tablets that the customer can walk around with. They sign their waiver at a fixed station using a workstation or fixed laptop computer, exposing an “ATM like environment” that very clearly feels like each individual person is signing the waiver separately, where they have time to overcome any peer pressure, and are not being distracted by others during the process. - At existing implementations, there are high definition security cameras in place that capture the customer’s face when they walk in the door, while they are watching the tandem video, and while they are at the kiosks. This can be used to show the ‘likeness’ of the customer, that they were not coerced in any way. - The staff component of this software requires that the signatures be reviewed and compared against the customers ID, the staff member is then able to act as a witness to the transaction. It is important to note that we went through MANY revisions of this software since the time we first thought it out before we let it go live. There are actually some products that run on an iPad now and claim to accomplish the same thing that my solution does (and technically, they do), but a lot about my solution is the presentation to the customer, and how all of this will be presented to a judge or jury. The iPad solutions that I have seen on the market might work for real estate, and frankly the ones I have reviewed are actually more expensive (Thanks Apple!). That having been said, if you find a competing product that is comparable for less money I can look into matching their price, or clarifying why our product stands out as different. Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

Only one person can use the kiosk at a time. A customer spends around 5 minutes on the kiosk entering information and then reading and signing multiple pages. Take a look at the photo gallery link on my first post, Skydive Hawaii is VERY large and has 15 kiosks. Skydive Long Island is large and has 8 kiosks. With 3 kiosks you can get 9 customers through in 15 minutes, so this would be the number for a smaller DZ. If you're more than a cessna dropzone I would recommend 6+ kiosks so that it's very convenient for your customers. Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

To be honest the cost may not be economical for a smaller drop zone, but I’ll let you decide: A three kiosk setup would run you about $3060 plus travel expenses to set it up plus $135/yr in support. This price would include: * 3 laptops to be used as kiosks (assumes $400 per laptop) * 3 Topaz signaturegem 1x5 pads (assumes $170 per pad) * 3 software licenses (assumes $450 per kiosk) * Complete setup of your waiver document. * 1.5 days onsite setup and configuration (You would be required to pay airfare from Chicago as well as provide local transportation and lodging) * We would provide offsite backup as part of the support plan. * We would provide unlimited customer support as part of the support plan. * In order for our offsite backup to be viable, you must have a stable high speed internet connection on site. * You would need a computer we can use as a file server, it does not need to be fast or new, but it should be reliable. * You would need a windows based computer for the staff “signature verification” portion of the software. If you don’t have one, add $600. This could also be used as the file server. For more than three kiosks I’ll go down on the license fee cost, but the hardware requirements remain the same. If you want workstations separate mouse/keyboard/monitor configuration instead of a laptop you'll pay a little extra for the hardware, but honestly the laptops have been doing great at Skydive Hawaii, almost a year and 20,000 waivers and all of their 15 stations are still fully functional. It's an even better product if you're running RealDropzone because the customer profile is overwritten / created with all of the customers detail when they type it in, so you literally NEVER have to type a customers name or personal information ever. Consider that you're saving on: Never having to order new printed waivers (or wear and tear on your copy equipment). Never having to "pre-load" clipboards again. Not have to store documents in boxes for 7 years. Never have any trouble looking up a waiver if needed. As I said I'm not sure if it's worth it at a small cessna dropzone where your major bottleneck is the lift capacity of your aircraft, but for medium to larger size dropzones it sure makes life easier on the ground when your staff doesn't have to handle the paperwork. Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

Okay, I see my "math" failure now. It turns out that what is advertised and labeled as a "20lbs ream" actually only weighs 6lbs. When I googled to find what a ream of paper weighed and many websites agreed that they came in 24, 22, 20, and 18lbs weights, I incorrectly assumed that a ream was 20lbs. I should have known better just based on having picked them up on a regular basis. My math was wrong, so it turns out that yes, the total is just under 1 metric ton (1,920lbs). Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

A ream of paper weighs 20lbs. A ream of paper has 500 sheets. It takes 320 reams of paper to make 160,000 sheets. 320 reams * 20lbs = 6,400 lbs. According to google's calculator, 6400lbs = 2.90299117 metric tons. Where is my math wrong? Sounds great!! Not too sure about your maths though. A sheet of paper weighs about 5g so 160,000 sheets is 800kg or 0.8 metric tonnes. Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

Good questions. We obviously approached the subject very carefully. The short answer is yes, these are fully enforceable do to a set of laws dubbed “ESIGN” laws. You can find information about the laws here: http://www.topazsystems.com/links/s761.pdf This article helps to put the law into perspective for those of us who don’t read legalese. http://www.topazsystems.com/information/esignlawexplained.pdf From the technical perspective, the tablet or surface that “records” the electronic signature records every point of the signature in real time, so that the exact speeds of the lines being drawn is recorded – not just an “image” of the signature. That information is then encrypted using the original document as the encryption key, so that only the original document can be used to extract the signature. The signature and document are then combined and stored. (This is the short version). There is absolutely no way an opposing attorney would try to challenge the validity of the signature, however we were not satisfied with just this fact. Our concern was that the user experience itself would be challenged, with a claim of “I did not understand what I was signing”, or “The process was confusing and misleading”. We overcame these concerns after some carefully thought out details to our implementation, which I may go into in more depth later but I’m about to head out for some food right now :-) Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

Just this past year I've put together a software/hardware package that allows for paperless waivers of liability. Here are some pictures of the product in action: https://picasaweb.google.com/102460970856039188704/RealDropzoneInAction# I just recently heard about another dropzone using another paperless waiver system, and it made me wonder: How many dropzones are doing this now? Does your local dropzone have a paperless kiosk system? We've already saved 160,000 sheets of paper at Skydive Hawaii. At 20lbs a ream, that's 3 metric tons of paper. (which no longer needs to be stored for 7 years). What other dropzones are using a paperless waiver system? Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

Contact [email protected], they have a great AFP program with courseware available. It's an 18 step program with canopy and freefall parts. I went through this training myself in 2004 and I can't say enough good things about the extended approach. Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.

You can also email us at [email protected] Matt Christenson [email protected] http://www.RealDropzone.com - A new breed of dropzone manifest software.