Security at regionals.

[mpking]

Originally posted by Doogan
I'm sorry, in a way, to post to this thread after so many days of peaceful inactivity. Unfortunately, although many pieces of good advice were repeated many times to ensure agreement, a couple key issues were left unaddressed:

1. Nick's theft of $1000 involved a large, heavy, locked crate, much more secure than a kit crate tied by a ziptie. If that was not safe, how can we rest with the main piece of advice being, "Lock things in big boxes or crates when you aren't with them?"

2. Nick's theft also occurred during the awards ceremony. It has been commonly and wisely suggested that someone be with your stuff at all times. This, in its manner, solves #1. However, I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that every team leave a member in the pits during the award ceremony. If so, no one has expressed it so clearly, and someone did say that this would be a bad thing. I think the answer to Nick's problem, as best as I can perceive it, is to have locked things under team guard as much as possible, but to essentially close the pits during the award ceremony. What need is there for visitors to go there then? If a team needs something from it, they can send someone who has an SME card.

This is just off the top of my head. What do other people think?

Both are Extremely good points.

I think closing the pits for the award ceremony is the best solutions. But I see the problems too:

The first few minutes after the awards ceremony, it's pretty much utter chaos in the pits when people start boxing up.

Also, To answer a teammate previous post in this thread.

Even our team has 2 or 3 laptops in the pit during the competition. We even had an LCD projector set up showing a slideshow on the wall. They definatly have a purpose, Even if it's dumping the pictures off your Digital camera cause you didn't buy the 64 meg card. (Or you did and you've already filled it up)

We just didn't leave any of this out in plain site when the owners weren't there. And to be clear, the laptops were their owner's responsiblity, not the teams.

Unfortuanly, As pointing out in the previous post, just locking in a large metal box isn't good enough. When you can just take the whole box.

However, I would hope that it would make it difficult enough that it wouldn't happen often.