M+E Daily

On May 22, at the Hollywood Innovation & Transformation Summit (HITS), Brightspot turned the spotlight on its content management system (CMS) that powers over 450 annual events for boys and girls 7-15 years old at golf courses across the U.S., leading to the season-closing tournament finale the week before the Masters Tournament in April.

During the AI/Advanced Tech breakout session “TECH CHECK: How Drive, Chip & Putt Hits the Green Every Time,” Chris Hutson, principal product manager at Brightspot, pointed out that Drive, Chip & Putt is a free, nationwide youth golf program that was brought to life via a partnership between the U.S. Golf Association (USGA), the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) of America and Augusta National Golf Club.

With requirements that include event registration, player and event administration, plus live scoring across digital and analog screens, Drive, Chip & Putt is the perfect example of the power of structured content organization and real-time workflows and automation.

During the session, attendees were shown how the same structured data approach has been applied to support other live events at scale for multiple major sports.

Brightspot was founded about 15 years ago by two former America Online (AOL) executives who Hutson said  had an idea for a CMS that was as friendly for editors and publishers as it would be for developers and engineers.

“Out of that, Brightspot was born,” he said, noting “our mission … is to be the place where modern content teams thrive and “we strive to be a bright spot in the lives of our customers, our colleagues and our communities with a differentiated platform and incredible service by delivering the most powerful content platform and personalized attention.”

Brightspot partners with its customers to ensure that an entire package of “what you need for your content business” is provided, he pointed out. “This means that you don’t have to deal with third parties like a separate design agency, technical support, or storage and hosting to help you get what you need.”

The company’s customers are in multiple sectors, including media and publishing (Associated Press) and sports/live events (NBC, Special Olympics and Univision).

“So you can go” to the website drivechipandputt. com, “find a local event closest to you and get your kids in it,” Hutson said.

Running the program involves a “complicated entry system” and managing metadata, he pointed out and then explained how the process works.

Editors can “go in and use this event management system  to edit specific fields that they need” to for the event,” he said, adding: “They’re able to edit specific information, like the contact info, the next event, any  scoring access codes and [other] things that might be needed.  They don’t need to worry about the location. That’s already been set. They also have the ability to generate reports in PDF or Excel, so they can generate rosters [and] participant  labels on site.  They can see the event roster to see who’s been registered, their guardian information, and manage any contact.”

Then there is “my favorite part about this: Once all the kids are registered, they’re going to be able to go in here and actually click and drag and set up the times for the event.”

To download the presentation, click here.

To watch the session, click here.

HITS Spring was presented by Box, with sponsorship by Fortinet, SHIB, AMD, Brightspot, Grant Thornton, MicroStrategy, the Trusted Partner Network, the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA) and EIDR, and was produced by MESA in partnership with the Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business.