[EricVanWyk]

I don't know anything about scouting or PDA software.

What I do know is that I never really did any REAL scouting as a student. I was my team's programmer for 2 years, so I was stuck in the pit doing last minute fixes. I thought it was great that I got to skip out on scouting duty. I was forced to do it a few times, which was kinda boring.

As a mentor I had a bit more time, and I did some non-official scouting. This made me realize how much I missed out on as a student. Casual scouting is really fun. It is a series of conversations with really cool people about things that they are really into.

What ever the tool set you come up with does, I hope it encourages long winding conversations about whatever. I therefore propose the following form:

Stand in front of their pit and look confused.
How many seconds until someone on their team initiates a conversation?
Was it a student or a mentor that initiated?
How enthusiastic were they?
How many students join the conversation?
How many students linger behind?
Ask for "the electrical person". Do they redirect you to a specific person, or do they do everything communally?
Stare intently at something weird/unusual on their robot. How many seconds before they begin to tell the story of its creation?

And finally...

You have partnered with them. There are 10 seconds on the clock in the tie-breaking match to win regionals. Your alliance is down by 1 [ringer, ball, tetra, gerbil,...]. Their robot suddenly wigs out, smashes into you, bursts into flame and releases enough magic smoke to fill 30 magic lamps.

Are they cool enough to turn this into a story you will tell your great grand-FIRSTies?