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…
(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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
maybe make FTC theredalliance.com?
I’m confused as to what your site does.
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.
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.
I encourage discussion regarding specific changes to The Blue Alliance site to be posted in this thread specifically about that so we can keep this thread about how the community could help TBA develop.
Just want to keep things organized 
Sorry, I wouldn’t change anything with regards to The Blue Alliance.
Greg, sorry if the way I worded it was off – but I was trying to imply that teams would have to submit that content to you, so it’d be more like a categorizable youtube of sorts where teams would be contributing to help other teams through these videos focused on specific areas.
Sorry if my reply to this thread seemed like I was trying to quash discussion. I was just trying to encourage people with specific ideas for changing the TBA site to post in the threads that was about specific ideas for changing the TBA site. Other discussion is still completely welcome here
What I’d like to see added to The Blue Alliance is live feeds from each of the regionals as it happends (IE a single place to go to see all the regionals).
From there we might then (re: later on) add announcers and color commentary.
I’m willing to help with the backend however you need it. Let me know.
I think some of the good ideas mentioned earlier are the SportsCenter-like segments (I love that idea), and different videos of teams in their shops during build season.
Daniel, I think what you’re describing is already in place by Matt Keller of SOAP 108. This past season he introduced SOAP Gameday, which is a portal of sorts that you could go to see all the regionals at once, or each individual feed (still on their site) with more information and a chatroom. Very awesome and popular resource. He’s currently working on a new version for next season.