Ooh, scouting, my favorite subject! I was at a FIRST demonstration yesterday and was talking with a new member of our team, and a member of another team who said, 'You haven't told him about scouting? When I hear scouting, I think of Bethany!'
Anyways! I have been scouting captain for three years, probably the first person on our team to take scouting really seriously and invest a lot of time in it.
By the end of the first day of regionals this year, I had a personal knowledge of most teams on the field. And could spout off this memorized data to our team captain...she liked that
I always scout with the intention of being in a position to tell our team captain who to pick on Saturday morning. In reality, we have never been in a picking position. Scouting has, however, helped us immensely in playing from hour to hour. Before each match I will give our driver all the data I've collected on the teams we're playing with and against. Often we're the only team on our alliance with a familiarity of our competition. The same thing happens in finals, although unhappily I've sometimes known that our alliance partners [who picked us] were not as strong as they could have been, or had unwisely chosen our third partner. [Which they would not have done had they had as good a scouting system as ours...and on it goes.]
One type of scouting that I personally attach little value to is pit scouting. [I'd love to hear other peoples' opinions on this!] Because our small team is not always able to muster anyone else to help me scout, I consider it of much more value to watch every match, than to go round to a regional with 60+ teams and talk to each one. They give me data that I hardly ever refer to: I always trust what I've seen on the field, rather than what they say [or are sure] their robot can accomplish.
One big thing I see in favor of pit scouting is building rapport with other teams. I personally enjoy meeting other team members and promoting our own team
And that sort of relationship can pay off big on Saturday. Then there's the Friday afternoon schmoozing....but that is much easier if you already have rapport with the team in question.
So to conclude this, I'd say that if you have a small team, focus entirely on match scouting: if you have one or two extra people, send them round to the pits. Oh and try to hang out with other teams after hours/during lunch. Although I am always busy every minute with compiling the data....can I get an 'Amen!' for a bigger scouting team?