[Citrus Dad]

While paper scouting can work for a new team that is just learning the game, moving to electronic scouting (we use tablets) can make your team better in more ways than you might think. Our bottom line though is that the scouting system is only partly about being more competitive. It's as much about improving the skills of our team members, which is ultimately the real goal of FRC.

We originally set up our system as a way to reduce the clutter of paper AND to use our surplus of programmers (which I think is a frequent issue on many teams.) Their product definitely made us better on the field, our scouts lives easier in the stands and took our programmers to another level.

We are now able to easily send live data updates to our drive coach and strategist in the pits. We are able to develop draft lists easily and quickly. We are able to digest our data on the fly. And we are easily able to trace scouts' errors.

Our head scout can focus on managing the scouts, not the paper. We can scout with a skeleton crew when we travel. The interaction with the tablet better constrains the choices that scouts can enter. And we're able to track qualitative scouting better.

As for power requirements, it teaches our head app programmer and head scout to manage the schedule for recharging equipment. This is a big teaching opportunity for high school students who may not always have such management skills.

But most importantly, our programmers have learned to work in Android, iOS and server environments. They've learned statistical methods that are rarely taught in high school. Of course, the success of the system is a good reward, but even last year when we didn't use the full capabilities of the system, the learning process was tremendous.