[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by 1306scouting

As I mentioned (apologies for the double post, but this post covers different topics), 1306 has experience doing this, so I thought I should share to offer that viewpoint for anyone it can help:

1. It's really cool to watch teams work together on scouting.
   
2. We've designed most of the server-side application and are beginning to implement. Once I meet with the lead programmer, I'll see about open-sourcing it. We have dedicated server hardware for this, as well as some possible leads into getting redundancy and so forth.
   
   For the techies here, we're planning on using relational databases to store all the data so that we can efficiently pull the data we need while retaining large amounts of metadata (like the team that submitted and timestamps).
   
3. Mycroft Holmes method is fantastic, but it's not infallible - even if your person is amazing, they can be susceptible to biases and so forth. I like having a Mycroft Holmes-type person with data that we can tap into if we need. You are very lucky to have people that can do that.
   
4. In regards to privacy: 1306's general preference is to give all the raw data to everyone that participates and some "processed" data away for free (balanced by algorithms to create lists). 1306 has always given these lists away to rookies, but we think they're valuable to everyone without giving up any competitive advantage to participants.
   
   This is very open for discussion as we move into implementation and so forth. I personally think information should be free for everyone, but I can see why others would not agree.
   
5. We've designed the platform so that we have a CrowdScout API this year that allows us to take data from pretty much any electronic source. We use paper for our scouters (it's reliable and inexpensive, as well as not needing power and allowing the people scanning it in to see the data before it's uploaded to catch human errors immediately), but we should be able to support apps that implement the API as well as pretty much whatever else the community can dream up.
   
   The API is still young - I agree with brennonbrimhall about having different teams track different metrics, and agreeing on them on a per-tournament basis, but there are advantages to standardized metrics.
   
6. Bluetooth PANs work fairly well for localized internet sharing, and shouldn't have any interference issues with the field nor break any rules. That said, I highly recommend setting up ethernet networks if you can - bluetooth can have issues with many hosts; an old router and ethernet will almost always outperform bluetooth.
   
7. Qualitative data is incredibly important, and because every team functions differently, it's hard to share. CrowdScout could be the platform for doing so, if needed, but I've always thought a team-by-team basis was better for that.

I'm very interested in your platform; 20 has been working on our own solution called Gemini. It too isn't designed to replace paper scouting, but to aggregate and calculate statistics. We've also scouted with other teams at WPI, Connecticut, Champs, and IRI, so our system was designed with that in mind. Once the finishing touches get finalized, I'll post the codebase here.