Hudl Meet-Up: Kansas City

"Video Editing Sucks"

That was the sign that greeted approximately 100 coaches to the first Hudl Meet-Up that took place at Blue Valley West High School in Overland Park, KS on April 19th, 2011.

Hudl is the industry leader in sports video editing software. Two months ago, I wrote about their iPad app which is a game-changer for all coaches.

Just last week, Hudl released an update to the app which solves the problem of downloading film to the iPad for the times when you don't have an internet connection.

I am a football and technology geek, so when I heard that Hudl was going to host a meet-up for coaches 10 minutes from my house, it was the perfect combination of football and technology for me. As you can see from this picture, it was a full house:

The Hudl crew provided pizza and soda to start the evening. Kim Burnham from Hudl organized the event and introduced the speakers:

1. Coach Nolan Hochgrebe from Blue Springs High School spoke about how they structure their week with Hudl.



Best tips:

• Find great student managers to help set up the video equipment, film, input data, and upload to Hudl.
• Their Saturday schedule for how they divide up their film work has some great ideas for work-flow.
• They also have an Excel file that they input data into that will then create grading sheets and a Hudl import file.
• Their data entry coach on Friday nights wears headphones so he can hear the formation and play calls as he is entering in data. This is a great idea if you have an extra set of headphones.
• Coach also discussed some great ideas for marketing your team through your website and Twitter account. Their team website is www.bshsfootball.com and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bshsfootball

2. Next up, I presented "The Quick Game: Ninja Style" You can read about it here.


3. Coach Jared Kenealy from Liberty North High School presented "Effective Video Study Practices":

Best tips:

•  Their "Athlete's Guide to Hudl" document is outstanding. This is a great tutorial for all athletes and parents to have as an introduction to Hudl. (Note: I uploaded the files to Google Docs, so it lost some of the original formatting).
• Coach Kenealy trains his managers how to film practice. Here are his filming rules that explain the different shots he wants.
• Instructions for Live Capture Set-Up
• Game Week Hudl schedule - great ideas on work-flow and daily tasks.
• For his defensive scouting report, he focuses on three run and three pass plays. For Thursday, he creates a presentation with one clip showing the opponent running each play well, and one clip from practice where the defense stopped the play. This is a great tip to simplify the way the players watch film, while building their confidence in the game-plan

4. Kim Burnham closed out the evening by talking about upcoming updates from Hudl and answering questions from the audience. She told us that there is a new video uploader in beta testing right now, as well as continual updates to the iPad app. In fact, there is now an entire team devoted just to the iPad app.

 For a couple of years, Hudl was one of the best-kept secrets around. I was reluctant to tell coaches from other schools about it because I felt like it gave us a huge competitive advantage. The secret is now out. It was great to be in a room full of coaches sharing ideas about how to get better by using video and technology. I want to thank Hudl for putting this together. Hopefully it becomes an annual event here in Kansas City.

Questions? Post them in the comments below!