In MushMate, a race was only a line of the catalogue: a name, a distance, no date, no organiser, nobody enrolled. To know where and when, you had to look elsewhere. An event has a date, a place, a programme, trails and entrants.
What changes
Two blocks on the Club screen. A single entry, club or event, opens straight away. As soon as your kennel has several, the screen opens on “Your clubs” and “Your events”. One tap opens the club or the event. On the website, a “Your clubs and events” link takes you back to the two blocks; on the phone, the back button. On the phone, the two blocks also have “I have a code” at the top (on Android) and, if you already have a club, “Join a club” at the bottom.
An event's page. At the top, its dates (“Mar 13–15, 2027”), its place, who organises it and, if different, the partner who proposes it, then its state: “Upcoming”, “Under way”, “Over” or “Cancelled”. Next to it, for your kennel: “Enrolled” and, while it runs, the end of your offer (“Access offered until …”). Below, three sections: Programme, Trails, Entrants. A cancelled event stays readable, with its state.
You enrol with the partner's code. The code opens three months before the race. Typed, it enrols your kennel and, if there is an offer, the offer runs until the last day of the race. “See the event” then opens its page, on the website as on the phone. On iPhone, the code is typed on the website.
Times are the place's. The programme of a race in Toronto reads in Toronto time, wherever your device is. The event becomes “Under way” at midnight where it takes place, not where you are.
“Add to my Plan”. On a race that has its course in the catalogue, the button opens the objective form already filled in: the course and its date. You confirm, or not: nothing is created without that gesture. Afterwards, the line says “In your Plan”.
“Leave the event”, on your kennel's row, under Entrants. The owner can even when the kennel is read-only.
What others see
- Enrolled kennels see each other, as in a club, under Entrants: the kennel's name, region and cumulative kilometres, and since when it is enrolled; never its dogs, plans or logbooks. Never those of another event.
- Your offer is read only by you. “Enrolled” and the end of your offered access are in your header; other entrants never see whether you have an offer, nor until when.
- The partner reads only numbers. Their private page says how many kennels are enrolled and how many offered accesses have been given against their cap. Never a name, a kennel, an email.
- The public sees no entrant. No public page names a kennel enrolled in an event.
What events do not do
It is not “not yet”: these are choices.
- No enrolment without the partner's code. An event with no partner has no code: it informs, nobody enrols.
- An entrant never writes the programme or the trails. MushMate enters them. You answer “I'm coming”, you read, you leave. Otherwise every entrant could add a “race” offered to everyone.
- No comparison of times. No times leaderboard, no “Show my times” agreement in an event, and no leaderboard on its trails' pages.
- No live position. Nothing shows where another kennel is.
Choices taken against the obvious
A race's trail is not a reference trail. The obvious choice was a public trace, for everyone. But a reference trail is downloaded by every phone and offered to every musher, enrolled or not. A race's trail is neither listed for every musher nor downloaded on every phone: entrants read it in the app, under Trails, with no author's name and no pace.
Leaving does not take the offer back. The confirmation says so, while the offer runs: your offered access runs until its date. The offer is counted against the partner as soon as it is created, and a kennel receives only one in its life: taking it back would give nothing back to anyone. Typing the code again re-enrols you, with no new offer.
The hub replaces the club picker. A row of pills (website) or a drop-down (phone) lines up things of the same kind. An event has dates and a state, a club has neither: two blocks put each in its place. A kennel with a single entry, club or event, sees it straight away, no extra tap. A kennel enrolled only in events does not see the gestures to join or found a club: an independent kennel does not have to belong to a club.