Commissioners League - Any comment on the live draft?

The Commissioners League draft on 1/31 was the first attempt at doing a live draft for BWB.

Any comments on how it went?

I'd rather not focus too much on the technical aspects. I know that some of the setup was not complete until Saturday afternoon, so there wasn't a lot of time for you to check it out. I don't anticipate a full rush on my part to try to program an interface like you see on ESPN or CBS or whatever...but I'm more interested in your thoughts on doing it live rather than doing it via a list.

Here are some initial comments from me:

• The only remark on the tech interface is that for the chat room, I did ask people to try it out prior to the draft to make sure that it worked for them. We got off to a slow start as people tried to get it running (it does require your browser to have a working Java plugin, and I'll make sure to make that point ahead of time in the future).
• OK - two comments on the interface: I'm constantly working with multiple browser windows and tabs and am very comfortable with that and tend to take it all for granted. I'll try to make that clear as well prior to anyone joining another one that you need to easily switch between the chat interface, the player list, and your roster to adequately participate.
• I fully admit that the "what do we do if you're not there?" rules were last-minute. However, I assumed everyone was going to be there. The fact that at least 7-8 people (more?) weren't there made it tougher (see some notes below on dealing with missing people).
• This was a bit tougher for me, as I was running everything else and auto-drafting for others, but staying under budget was a big issue. I spent the most on draft night and have had to go really cheap in Phase 2. I know that typically in online roto drafts the top players go first, but people probably need to be thinking seriously about the salary cap.
• I was happy that we got it done in about the estimated 3 hours (a little longer, but we started late). I think if everyone had been there, it would have gone faster.

OK - some thoughts on the missing-drafters:

• I need to be more insistent on doing a pre-draft list - and RANKING the picks (for the team that had 400 un-ranked players on his list, that wasn't much help).
• I see that I need to make it possible to edit the list mid-draft so that if you have to leave you can set up how to do the end of the draft.
• I'll modify and tighten up the auto-draft procedure. I had thought teams would be going after more prospects, like in the list drafts, so that was the reason to take a prospect in Round 3. Also, it was easy to say - this team has a 1B, so don't take one...but tougher when trying to determine how many SPs or OFs constitutued "full." I'll also put something in there to look for some budget players in there earlier. Again, this was harder to do in practice because there were so many teams I had to be looking at.

Your thoughts? What did you like/dislike about doing it live? What were you surprised at? What would you do differently the next time?