Challenge

For a student athlete, a college scholarship may be the only way for them to afford higher-education; and for a college athlete, a full-time career in a national league is the ultimate goal. In the past, the only way for scouts to notice athletes is to attend the actual sporting event. This puts tremendous pressure on the athlete and provides a limited opportunity for scouts. What if there was a way to search for and scout athletes off the field?

Objectives

TheNextIcon.com is a website and database tool that allows student athletes to connect with collegiate and pro-team scouts in order to secure scholarships or full-time careers in professional sports. Not only will this tool need to feature a landing page for each athlete to showcase their abilities and information, but it needs to be easily searchable for scouts to find exactly what they're looking for. As a professional website design and development company, with degreed database programmers and graphic designers in house, this unique marketing tool will utilize a wide variety of DDA's website design and development capabilities, including multimedia flash website development, graphic design, flash and database programming, and web-based automated video compression and upload.

Solution

Launched in 2008, TheNextIcon.com is an interactive website that features in-depth custom programming that allows a student athlete to create a personal profile with all pertinent information and upload highlight videos of their athletic abilities. Scouts and coaches are able to log-in and easily search for athletes based on certain criteria and review their profile. All of these features were made possible by DDA's team of experienced programmers, who created the code that allows the site to function correctly. There are four different types of user accounts, and an in-depth administrator back-end area that allows The Next Icon staff to monitor and adjust nearly all aspects of the site. A discussion forum is also included that allows student users to interact with other athletes, Next Icon staff members, and even professional athletes that are invited to contribute.

The site required programming for complex video upload features that allows users to submit highlight clips in nearly any format. Those clips are then converted automatically, compressed, and attached to the user profile, allowing scouts and coaches to see the athlete in action. DDA also incorporated a dynamic "video wall" on the front page of the site, including HTML animation, which gives administrators the ability to put their favorite video clips on the front page for easy viewing.