Live draft but out of towners cant make it

[ReuterNation]

We have started doing a live draft and love it, but some people are now out of state and cant make it to the draft. Last year they skyped in but it was more work than wanted. I was wondering if anyone knew of any software out there that we could enter in our draft as we go like in an online draft so they could just follow the draft via web so we dont have to try and phone the picks back and forth to them.

I have been searching and ran across a website called "draft order" but have never used it and am having a tough time with the webpage.

Also instead of using a draft board we were going to attempt to run a "draft board" on to a projector screen connected to a laptop. Used a trial on "Fan draft" that looked really nice.

Anyone have any experience with any of these softwares? Any advice on anything else you know is useful?

PLEASE HELP!!! Drafting next weekend so gotta figure it out quick!!

[Bobbleheadrusty]

Almost every host site allows for online live drafts, just set up a fake league on yahoo if your site doesnt.

[ReuterNation]

We are doing our league on Yahoo! Were doing a live offline in person draft at someones house though and not everyone will have a computer there to do it online. Plan was just to shoot it on a projector but with everyone not being there its tough.

I might be missing what your saying though sorry. You saying just do a live online draft with all of us there and have the out of towners just draft as usual if we were doing an online draft? Can I enter all the other teams picks with out being logged in to all 10 accounts simutaneously and jumping from screen to screen?

Plus were doing a keeper league. You can keep up to 3 pple but dont have to keep anyone in which case you get a draft pick before the draft.(idk if that makes sense) But basically your 3 keepers are your first 3 picks. But with it being some people keeping more than others idk how i can do that draft order wise in a live online draft.

[Bobbleheadrusty]

Just use a chat room then. There are a ton of them. Enter the taken players as they go off the board so the out of towners can follow along.

Sadly yahoo doesnt have a built in chat room like MFL does, but there are a dozen sites that have live chat rooms you can set up quickly.

Cover it live is pretty awesome for that

[Hags888]

If the out-of-towners have Skype and webcams, then all you need is one computer with Skype and a webcam for the rest of the in-person drafters. Then you can do it as normal and just have the out-of-towners in video-conference. If that's too tech-savy for your guys, then I agree with what others have said, go with yahoo messenger or some other kind of chat software.

[FantasySportsMaven]

Heck, worse case scenerio is to just do the draft via text/phone messages and let the out of towners keep their own cheat sheets with regard to who is taken and who is not.

[Cleokatrah]

Google Docs.

Set up a spreadsheet to look like a draft board. Invite all of your owners. Set up someone (or two someones) to be at the live draft who is in charge of updating the doc after each pick. Anyone signed in to the document will be able to see these changes in real time. They can then either enter their pick onto the document themselves (will have to give them editing rights) or they can participate in a skype manner again, but with the real time document, this should be much easier.

I've used this method a few times and it is always a success.

[MPappadato]

Google Docs.

Set up a spreadsheet to look like a draft board. Invite all of your owners. Set up someone (or two someones) to be at the live draft who is in charge of updating the doc after each pick. Anyone signed in to the document will be able to see these changes in real time. They can then either enter their pick onto the document themselves (will have to give them editing rights) or they can participate in a skype manner again, but with the real time document, this should be much easier.

I've used this method a few times and it is always a success.

Furthermore, whoever is doing this at the live draft can link the computer to a TV/projector and you can use it as a live draft board as well.

You can also do desktop sharing, but I like the google docs idea best