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Brass View Drop Down
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Posts: 1151 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Brass Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: No race officer sailing
    Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 9:50am
Originally posted by tink

It is the mindset to look for improvement and embrace technology. Boats have changed because the technology has existed. Running races is unchanged in many areas not because the technology doesn’t exist but because people are unwilling to change, taking and handful of people to run a race the same way as they would for a national championship as they do for the handful racing.


Originally posted by 423zero

I suppose it depends if you sail at a 'Last of the summer wine' club or a 'Next generation' club, I am 'tech savvy' and use it all week, nice to leave it at the weekend, 'Swallows and Amazons' forever.


So, tink, there's another mindset among sailors about wooden ships and iron men and NOT embracing neew technology. This may or may not produce a particular 'culture' in a club.

Originally posted by Rupert

, it means I cant see the point in making something harder, slower and less fun just so it is modern.



Originally posted by Chris_H


I live and breathe IT technology & software - its what I have been doing for the last million or so years and have the scars to prove it  ;-) , and so am curious as to whether the 'harder, slower, less fun' is a perception, feeling or a reality? If reality, then what specifically is wrong - so that it can be fed back to the developers to be made easier, faster, more fun? Technology is meant to 'enable' not 'disable'. I am genuinely curious.


Using a laptop or tablet to record results should only be 'harder, slower, or less fun' if:
  • individuals are not skiled at using keyboards or devices, and are determined to remain so; or
  • you are using a particularly difficult program (that is, one that is unsuitably chosen).


OK, so if you are real-time recording finishers using a keyboard, the ability to touch-type, on a numerical keypad is probably a threshold. If you can't type as well as you can handwrite this may be a barrier.

Different programs may be better or worse for different phases of race management.

For example, I understand that Sailwave was originally developed to support transcribing paper finishing sheets, and producing very sophisticated results, for which I believe it is very good. If you then try to use it for real-time on-water finishing, it may not be so good.

On the other hand, DRSC is specifically designed for on-water recording, on a smartphone. It's good for this, and good for very quickly publishing results by SMS, but not so good for complex result manipulations. And if you have a small phone, it may be a bit problematical for large fleets and close finish clusters (but very few other apps are any better).
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Brass View Drop Down
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Posts: 1151 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Brass Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 10:12am
Originally posted by Rupert

Does speech to spreadsheet exist?

If I could read out a boat number and time, and have finish times automatically be entered into sailwave or similad, that would certainly be labour saving. Leaving aside teething issues such as accents and mumbling, would that be possible? Do a back up recording just in case.


I have no doubt that sophisticated speech to text applications like Dragon could handle speech to spreadsheet, but this would probably require some pretty complex 'verbal punctuation' so would require quite a bit of technique to use.

What certainaly does exist (at least on Samsung devices from the Galaxy A8 upwards), is a pretty good speech to text recorder, built into the voice recorder.

I haven't actually used this in anger (because my nice A8 leapt overboard in the middle of a race and hasn't been seen since), but I reckon it might be a bit easier to use for problem solving with written/keyboarded results than audio playback, and if you coupled it up with something like Sailwave's capacity to resolve partial sail numbers, might actually be capable of producing a finishing order list. But this might require some pretty agile programming, and a bit of human intervention.

Of course you do a back up. If you don't have two result recorders doing sheets (or one computer andn one sheet) AND ROs voice recorder going, you are crazy. And by Sods Law, the time that the RO forgets to turn on the voice recorder, or it dies, is the time that the biggest stuff-ups occur.


Edited by Brass - 07 Jan 21 at 1:11pm
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JimC View Drop Down
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Posts: 6662 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 1:42pm
Originally posted by Rupert

Does speech to spreadsheet exist?

If I could read out a boat number and time, and have finish times automatically be entered into sailwave or similar...


Its got to be technically possible or approaching now, and it would certainly solve many of the problems associated with the use of screens on committee boats. I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of voice tech were an eventual solution.

Still be vulnerable to many of the same issues though. Typically on an overlapped finish I might call out "3457 then 2048 then 3932, now, now, now". Sorting that sort of thing out with VR would be challenge, but on a close finish you probably can't say individual complete numbers in succession quickly enough.
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Posts: 237 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Chris_H Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 1:45pm
Dragon Naturally Speaking software has supported voice input and manipulation of Excel for years. Such tools are mandatory requirements in public sector organisations for inclusivity reasons. However, it would require as much training to use this as teaching someone to input correctly using a keyboard and mouse. For those that use this way of inputting already, it would be easy. For those that dont, it would be a new learning (and slightly cumbersome) 

Edited by Chris_H - 07 Jan 21 at 1:50pm
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Posts: 929 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Paramedic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 4:37pm
I quite like doing Race Officer......
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Posts: 497 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Grumpycat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 5:46pm
Me too. 
The the only problem I have had in years was running of our very few handicap races ( most of our races are pursuits) using the lap top we use for starting the races as it can also be used for taking race times. It’s easy , all you have to do is click on a on screen button that has the boat no on it . The button then disappears and the time is taken. You then go to another tab and all the times are listed . It’s easy if all the buttons have disappeared all the times must be taken . Except when I did it , all the buttons had gone but I was missing two times . So I had to guess the times which is not easy after the race . 
As I said , I am all for new tec but it has to be as easy to use and as fault free as what’s it’s replacing. So in this case I am more than happy to use the lap top to start the race and sail wave to work out the results but it’s back to pen and paper for taking times for me .


Edited by Grumpycat - 07 Jan 21 at 5:47pm
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Posts: 8956 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Rupert Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 5:49pm
If the system involves just clicking on a button to finish a boat, joined to an internal clock, then most of my objections would be gone. Trying to key in numbers under pressure is my main worry.
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Posts: 210 		Post Options Post Options   Quote ClubRacer Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 6:57pm
Originally posted by Rupert

If the system involves just clicking on a button to finish a boat, joined to an internal clock, then most of my objections would be gone. Trying to key in numbers under pressure is my main worry.

I think this would be the aim for our club. My only worries would be that; setting up a computer program to run the racing, inputting the correct competitors and then exporting a set of results to Sailwave being a little too difficult. 

DRSC sounds vary appealing although I've not tried it as I don't have android. My biggest concern is having enough competitors up on the screen and be able to finish 10 boats in under a minute with just 2 people  
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Posts: 6662 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 7:56pm
Originally posted by Rupert

If the system involves just clicking on a button to finish a boat, joined to an internal clock, then most of my objections would be gone. Trying to key in numbers under pressure is my main worry.

I've set up systems that do just that. Under pressure it didn't work nearly as well as I thought it ought to when I set it up. . Fine with 5 entries, anything but with 40. Once you have to go scanning the list, looking up at the water then focus down on the screen to find the boats it all goes pear shaped very easily. I thought I had it all nicely setup, with the boats in previous lap order they'd be easy to find, and on the last lap the fast fleet started lapping th e slow fleet and it all went to hell.
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Posts: 3420 		Post Options Post Options   Quote 423zero Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 Jan 21 at 8:34pm
Technology and AI, will be a tremendous force for good, already just mentioning 'Alexa' for instance, will end loneliness for isolated elderly people, will soon be that simple for virtually anything, Alexa, Bill and Ted are racing, Alexa, will ask what boat are they using?
Robert
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