FrankAnswersFridays: October 25, 2013: Safety at Championships

[thefro526]

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

The premise is to provide scouts with all the things we wish our own scouts had at the events we've completed at. Of course the video/audio feed has to be good enough at the end of the day, but it needs to be good enough to identify the robots, and what they're doing. Having watched the streams from MI champs, and the HD WatchFIRSTnow streams, they were good enough for this, when they stuck to a fixed, full field view. With those streams and fixed views, I'm pretty sure our scouts could've tracked all the info we had asked them to record on our match scoring sheets.

This is a fantastic idea. While I agree that there is no replacement for watching a match in person, especially at a reasonable viewing distance (and angle, which may be more important) I think that a high quality fixed feed is a appropriate substitute. It would be interesting to see this expand to all events, although more than likely it would require quite a bit of legwork to make it happen.

Just thinking out loud here, but I think it would be amazing if each of the divisions at the championship had the sort of video feed that's being planned for GTRW and it were webcast-ed along side (separate feed) the traditional webcast. At that point, it would open up a handful of different options for scouting, or at least provide a secondary reference for gathering data. I guess the most obvious problem here would be how teams on site would access the cast without some sort of public wifi or a 3G/4G/LTE connection, but even those can be worked around... I know I was able to stream eliminations matches of Waterloo over 4G/LTE while at another event this past season without issue. (There's also the potential of logging the full field stream throughout the day and splitting it for reference later - some teams already do this with personal cameras.)

It seems like some other great ideas are being thrown around in here as well - especially regarding crowd control. Splitting each division/level up into it's own entrance or series of entrances would do wonders for organizing the chaotic 'mad dash' to the stands in the morning - and would hopefully eliminate some of the need to have a group of kids up as early as is needed now especially on Friday, since we know the scouts are going to have a late enough night as is.

Also, last year, and possibly years before, there was a second entrance into the Dome/Center that was immediately across from Starbucks. Out of sheer dumb luck (or an appropriately timed breakfast craving) another mentor and I happened to walk through this door as it opened, and into the pits with a much, much calmer pace than if we'd gone through the main doors.

One last thing, as someone that carries a backpack more often than not during events, I can assure you that I was asked to open mine each time I walked into the Dome/Center complex. The bag check is a necessary process, especially considering the timing of last years CMP, but I think it might benefit everyone if during morning opening, anyone with a bag/box/tote/etc were to go through a separate door than those without. That might help to cut down a bit on the stop and go as people are getting through the doors initially. (Not to mention that it should benefit those who are bringing in carts and things of that nature on Thursday morning.)