Developing a standard

[Jack]

Scouting has really grown in the past few years from something one person does per team, into an entire division of the ‘FIRST Process’. Teams are beginning to share data, and creating custom programs to allow data collection on palms. Now, just as in any business, no team wants to give away 100% of their data, but sharing some of it is very good, and falls within the ‘gracious professionalism’ of FIRST. Currently, there are a few scouting databases on the web, <plug> www.feds201.com </> and teams are creating programs to share with others for data collection. However, the large problem is that every program has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, and every web database specializes in certain data. So, when it comes time to share data, there is no common format.

Therefore, I believe that we should try to decide on a common way of collecting data. The ‘scouting community’ should decide on what data to collect, and how to collect it. Ex: From last year a possible standard would have been:

1,2,3 Goals
0-10,11-20,21-30 Balls
1-5 Traction
1-5 Power
Y/N Mini-Device
1-10 Overall Rating

Having decided on a ‘standard’ teams them could have used whatever program they wanted to use, and when the time comes to share data, all the records are in the same format. We should also decide on what is a 1, what is a 2, … This allows an even and equal way to evaluate all teams.

Obviously, we can not decide on what data needs to be collected until after the game is announced (whee… only a few days away ). Personally, www.feds201.com will be adopting the ‘standard’ once it is created, and I would hope that other programs will be do the same. We will also need to decide on a common way/file to import/export data from palms to the computer. Personally, a CSV or (comma separated values) is a great way to do this. This allows for easy editing in any text editor, MS Excel supports CSV, and dealing with the data using a web scripting language like PHP is much easier with a CSV. All that would need to be decided there, is what symbol to use to separate the fields, and in what order they would go.

What do you people think?

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Go 2003 FIRST SCOUTING!!!!