Scouting Data Update

This evening I finished adding scouting data from the first 2 weeks of competition to my special event analyzer. In a previous post I claimed that you'd need to be a member of my FIRST Objective website in order to access the system, however today I re-thought my reasoning.

I'm going to let any user of FIRST Objective access the data, in hopes that they'll appreciate what I've put together and maybe at some point join. By joining FIRST Objective, you'll be a member of an online community that is interested in getting FIRST into more schools and helping teams of all levels get started.

I'm certainly interested in reading stuff online regarding building a better machine, but I think there are a lot of people out there that are just as interested in every student having the opportunity to be involved in FIRST.

So, if you're interested in getting un-biased statistics regarding Lunacy, go to www.firstobjective.org.

You can also get the same info for Overdrive and Rack n Roll, if you're interested.

Scouting Data

For the past 2 years I have been compiling data from regional events and providing an online analysis for anyone to use. Actually last year was the first year that I had the info online, and I've been intending to do the same thing this year.

This year the data is not complete; match data from the Buckeye regional is very sparse, to put it mildly. I've managed to find all the other data and I'll be making a 2009 Lunacy Scouting tool available on my website very soon.

You can view my website at: firstobjective.org, although you'll need to join to have access to the scouting data. It's free, painless, spamless and you'll be joining a community interested in spreading the word of FIRST.

Follow my blog for more details; I plan to have it active before the weekend.

A Slow Day in Michigan

I spent most of the day today watching it snow. It seems like that should be done by now.

Anyhow, when our team last met, we discussed ways of scouting other teams and marketing our team. I think we've decided that we're going to do a lot of pit scouting and gather as much info as possible from each team. At the same time we are going to give each team a business card with all of our information on it.

Scouting can be done a couple different ways. Pit scouting is just that, we approach and interview each team and ask them about their strong and weak points. Of course it may be possible that teams exaggerate their abilities slightly and we want to back up their claims through match scouting. We want to watch each team in action and try and verify all the claims they made during our interviews.

Scouting is important for teams that feel they have a chance of finishing qualifications in the top 8. The top 8 teams get to pick who their alliance partners will be, and if you don't know the team(s) that can best help your team, you may not win.

We feel that we have a really good chance of landing in the top 8 this year and we are taking scouting very seriously.

So, today, while I watched it snow, I started laying out our business card that we'll be giving to teams. What I did was just a suggestion and I will be letting our marketing team make additions and changes.

5 days till Lunacy begins.