[sammyjalex]

Holy Cows,

This idea sounds really interesting. I love the courage that teams, namely you and the poofs, are displaying to make scouting a full-fledged part of how we collaborate in FRC. I'm really excited to see the early details in the beta.

This program reminds me of an idea that I considered implementing on my team in order to save resources, make scouting more accessible to those that like to or need encouragement to begin dialogue with students from other teams as well as more accessible to the collaborative goals of FIRST, and to begin to fight poor scouting.

Let me know if this has similar qualities:

The team would eliminate the common waste of paper through scouting by only using six laminated sheets and recording both specific objective notes and notes regarding its role with those teams with which it plays both offensively and defensively. After each match, perhaps there would be an extra set of sheets to allow time, this collected information, objective, subjective and relative, would be recorded onto a cloud template on only a single laptop that the team could choose to share with other teams easily following the shared dialogue of the two teams regarding scouting etc. That other team could then input their own information into this document. Ideally, this one document could contain information from almost all teams at the event, allow them to understand their role in the game from the perspective of others and, of course, develop meaningful social relationships between teams more widely than the teams' drive teams or that which is limited to a team social.

When I read about CowScout, this is what first came to my mind-a structural opportunity to share scouting information, a means to limit paper and expensive technology per team and a great way to improve networking, social opportunities for students and as a result the overall quality of scouting.

Best,
Sam