Last week, Zach Leatherman contacted me in search of beta testers for Tournology, a startup he, another Omahan, and a Linconite have been bootstrapping.

He describes Tournology as a tool to better involve and inform the players of any league, competition, or tournament. (Now, I understand why his bio on Twitter includes “Tournament Specialist.”)

Here’s their blog post about the beta release, and below it is a screencast of how one might use their webapp:

Beta Testers Wanted

Tired of not knowing where you stack up against your friends on your favorite game, activity, or bodily function? We can help you with that. At Tournology, we can help you coordinate or compete in any tournament, league, or competition. Here are some of the problems we’re just starting to solve:

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1. You’re coordinating a city-wide marathon and you want to use Tournology to allow your runners preregister and prepay online. Afterward, participants can log on to see the race results on their own customized profile and easily compare to previous races.
2. You’re new to town and you love playing softball. How do you get involved in a local league? Go onto Tournology and we’ll show you all the leagues in your area.
3. Or maybe you’re already playing in a local sand volleyball league. You’re out running an errand before the game, and it starts to rain. Is the next game canceled? If it is, when will it be rescheduled? The tournament manager can use Tournology to easily send an alert to your mobile phone, letting you know that the game is cancelled and when the rescheduled match will be.
4. Perhaps you just want to get some people together for a friendly Poker game and want to use Tournology keep track of the winners from week to week, or maybe keep a running tally of chip totals.

We’re just starting to develop ideas about how Tournology can help you. How would you use it? We’d love to hear your feedback, not just about Tournology, but about any tournament experience you’ve had. What did you play? Was it poorly coordinated? How could the tournament have been improved?

If you want to check out the chunk of work we’ve already completed, we invite you to head on over to tournology.com and become a Beta Tester. Sign up for our (temporarily public) beta, try out what we have, and let us know what you think: the good, the bad, and the ugly.