The Blue Alliance and the Community

[Barry Bonzack]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

It would be really cool if The Blue Alliance turned into the FIRST Encyclopedia way beyond what it is today. Taking all the info from team logos, robot history, parts catologs, everything that would be described into a powerful resource.

I'd also like to see TBA turn into SportsCenter for FIRST. Lots of talking to other teams about their progress and letting other teams know with a type of FIRST news series. Large discussions on how to best play the FIRST game, What teams have been able to accomplish in the game.

I know its hard enough to get match video from regionals as is, but what about a short interview with some of the key teams? Say when I go to look up 1114 and 233, there is an optional video I can watch that has one of the students in the pits discussing how the team designed their arm and how it works. If a team, say 272, had a really cool idea for a magnetic shooter, they can talk about how great it has worked for them, or elude to any troubles they have had during a specific match (like the trackball firing toward the audience after power was shut off, but luckily the arm held it inside the robot), Then I could go find that match and watch it.

This would be a pretty easy addition, Just give people that are already scouting a camera with video mode.

[Katie_UPS]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

It would be really cool if The Blue Alliance turned into the FIRST Encyclopedia way beyond what it is today. Taking all the info from team logos, robot history, parts catologs, everything that would be described into a powerful resource.

I'd also like to see TBA turn into SportsCenter for FIRST. Lots of talking to other teams about their progress and letting other teams know with a type of FIRST news series. Large discussions on how to best play the FIRST game, What teams have been able to accomplish in the game.

Having TBA, FIRST, and SOAP team up sounds like a good idea...

Maybe just take information from FIRSTwiki....

TBA could be even cooler than it already is, especially with all the teams that don't have a [decent] website...

[Clinton Bolinger]

TBA should calculate average contribution data for each regional and the overall AC (similar to 1114 data that was published).

Also displaying awards won at each regional would be cool or maybe a virtual trophy case with all of their awards over the years.

Ability to submit team logos would be useful as well.

-Oris-

[lynca]

To keep developers interested in contributing to community websites, you should make a developers mailing list (on googlegroups or mailman). Have people discuss what they can contribute and ask questions about additions.

I think integrating FIRST wiki information would be a crucial step to getting more information on a team.

Google maps and team locations are also very important
http://mentorsearch.us

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

I'd also like to see TBA turn into SportsCenter for FIRST. Lots of talking to other teams about their progress and letting other teams know with a type of FIRST news series. Large discussions on how to best play the FIRST game, What teams have been able to accomplish in the game.

I like this idea. A lot.

I'd be totally willing to help out if TBA wanted to do this. Then again, I'd be willing to help TBA with anything! It's a valuable resource and I would love to see it grow- if I can be a helpful part of that, then please y'all, let me know.

[Nate Smith]

I would definitely be interested, but between my other projects this year(see sig), I'm not sure how much time I'm actually going to have...definitely keep me in the loop as far as what you decide to do...

[artdutra04]

(Disclaimer: These are following post is ideas only. I am far to busy right now with my classes, existing projects, and social life to try taking on another project. After I wrap up a few other projects I may take on these...)

Okay, so there are a lot of ideas here about getting additional content onto TBA, with things like additional photos and videos of that team. While not all teams have extensive presences on the web, some do, and many of these have all their data stored in databases.

So why not right a reverse TBA API, sets up a standard protocol to read from an XML or RSS file or something of that nature hosted on each team's website. This protocol could contain things like additional photos or videos, which would then get "embedded" inside that teams information on their TBA page.

Of course there would have to be some sort of authentication necessary to prove that for example Joe123 is really from team 123. There would also have to be some kind of community-based Report Abuse kind of feature to report inappropriate/irrelevant stuff, spam, etc.


Also (this is something I can help with), it would be really nice if all of the match video was encoded in h.264. I can encode into high-quality*, iPod Touch/iPhone resolution h.264 video at almost 200% playback speed, so converting an entire regional's worth of videos (assuming they have already been cut up into matches) takes about 4-5 hours, which can be easily done overnight. (Hurray VisualHub!)

Plus, if all the video is in h.264, importing into iTunes and copying to iPods/iPhones for video scouting is really easy.

* 640x480 or 704x384, 1320 kbps h.264, 128 kps AAC Stereo; which ends up being about 9 Mb per minute.

[Jonathan Norris]

I would love to see something on TBA to help coordinate recording of all the regional's this year (keeping a list here on CD was a bit of a pain last year...). Most importantly a page that allows volunteers to sign-up for a regional to help record, and lets multiple people connect to organize the recording of an event. It would also have to include instructions how to upload the video and naming standards to use.


It would also be useful to have this for webcasts. I could probably also put up a quick guide how to set up a Stickam or Ustream webcast (it really isn't hard at all).

[Greg Marra]

I've posted a thread about redesigning The Blue Alliance website, and I'd love feedback from everyone (technical and non-technical people!) about how you use TBA and what you'd like to see kept, removed, or added to our new design for 2009!

Please add your thoughts in our site redesign thread.

[rogerlsmith]

Here's my personal opinion -
I think TBA and CD are both invaluable resources for existing teams, and I wouldn't change a thing.

I felt there was a need to have a site powered by the FIRST community, but was more public facing; something that would hopefully inspire more teams to get started, or help students find teams when their school didn't have one.

I started FIRST Objective to fill this gap. I've also added what I think are valuable resources to FIRST teams, to try to build a solid user base.

I feel that through TBA, CD and FIRST Objective we are meeting the needs of the FIRST community and out into the general public.

[ttldomination]

In my opinion, I think that videos should be greatly contributed my the community. I notice that there are lots of videos that aren't available for most teams. That should be fixed.

Also, I think The Blue Alliance is perfect right now, The only expansion I can think of is possibly more content, and possibly expanding into FTC. FTC is fast growing with the new kit, and it'd be great to see an organized video archive for that.

[ATannahill]

maybe make FTC theredalliance.com?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by rogerlsmith

Here's my personal opinion -
I think TBA and CD are both invaluable resources for existing teams, and I wouldn't change a thing.

I felt there was a need to have a site powered by the FIRST community, but was more public facing; something that would hopefully inspire more teams to get started, or help students find teams when their school didn't have one.

I started FIRST Objective to fill this gap. I've also added what I think are valuable resources to FIRST teams, to try to build a solid user base.

I feel that through TBA, CD and FIRST Objective we are meeting the needs of the FIRST community and out into the general public.

I'm confused as to what your site does.

[rogerlsmith]

It's very simple. FIRST Objective has tons of videos (lots of team promo videos), with forums, maps, blogs, calendars, along with user profile spaces, personal messaging systems and lots more.

I'm encouraging teachers and school administrators to visit my site through various sites that educators visit.

I want to help more schools start FIRST teams.

FIRST Objective is an outward reaching site, we're not preaching to the choir.

Take a minute and check it out.

[galewind]

What I would like to see is videos of teams delivering workshops or presentations to their students or others that they might find of interest to the community on things such as design, EE, programming, inventor, fundraising strategies, scouting, etc. So... I guess I'm saying if you wanted to go into further detail as to what your original site was all about, providing tutorials and resources to teams, you might be able to fill yet another gap.