Twilight Zone : 9:10AM to 10:XXAM

[kickslop]

Here's something I still don't understand.

What HAPPENS between 9:10AM and 10:15AM? From all I can gather, everyone is waiting, yet not a single person anywhere knows what we're waiting on.

It's like clockwork at every event.

[Loren]

Most of the time it's the organizers getting their stuff together. The course is usually done by then, as is registration and tech is usually done by 9:30. The time between 9:30 and the driver's meeting is eaten up with final setting of run/work groups, sometimes setting up the timer, final tweaks to the course, things like that.

THIS event, it was simply a matter of no one person being in charge and jumping up to say "Okay, welcome everyone" and starting the driver's meeting. We had everyone gathered around the trailer for a drivers meeting for a good 5-10 minutes while a couple people messed with timing in the trailer, Howard was writing stuff on the board... and nobody was doing the driver's meeting.

I came very close to starting the driver's meeting myself, but dammit, doing that is exactly why so many people still see me as "the head" of this club, and I don't want to be in that position. Been doing it too many years, need a break from it. So, I made a concious effort to NOT step in for this event.

I can tell you for a fact that a motivated event chairman CAN get an event started, first car on course, by 10:00-10:15. It CAN be done. But that chairman needs to be DOING less and SUPERVISING more. Somebody has to be watching the clock, making sure several different things are happening at once (Registration, course setup, tech, timer setup, chalking the course, setting up grid, etc) in addition to having made a good plan for who's going to actually DO a lot of those things before the event. For the event chairman, it's all about delegation. Hand course maps to 3-4 people and say "okay, can you build this section here? From the far end to about right here? And you build the start section, and you build the finish section and you start building the bit in the middle. Great!" While they're doing that, you find someone else to build the grid area, you go check that Registration is covered, you find your tech people and make sure they're ready... all the while, you, the event chairman, really aren't DOING any of this. It's the biggest pitfall of a lot of first-time event chairman (and not just first-timers), they try to DO too much, and if somebody like Steve or myself isnt' there to orchestrate all of the things that they're NOT doing... we fall behind.

Look at how well the school event stayed on schedule. For that event, we got on site at 7am, had the course set up by 8:15, and first car out before 8:45am! Granted, it was a smaller group, a very simple course, and we had 16 very experienced people on hand specifically to set the course up. But that's an extreme example of how tightly a schedule can be put together.

In my opinion, we should try to standardize our "typical event" schedule a little more. On-site at 7:00, course set up by 8:30, Registration closes at 9:00, Course walking 9:00-9:30, Novice meeting and walk-through (BEFORE the driver's meeting) 9:30-9:45, driver's meeting 9:45-10:00... first car out at 10:00.

We COULD rush and get things started earlier, but we have to remember that we're doing this for fun... cracking the whip on people, and/or being the whip crackee, adds stress and takes away from the fun.

10:00am-12:00, an hour for lunch, and 1:00-4:00 gives us 5 hours of coruse time. Lose an hour for worker changes, and that's 4 hours. 240 minutes. If the course is properly designed to allow a 30-second start interval, that's potentially a maximum of 480 runs before 4pm. With 60 drivers, that's 8 runs. With the 36 drivers we had yesterday... that's why we got done early in spite of starting late!

Going off on a tangent here: course design, particularly considering the element of start interval (how you can safely start a second car on the course), is critical to the efficiency of the event and ultimately how many runs we'll get. At SPC, it almost takes care of itself unless you use too many crossovers. The site is just too small to get much more than 35-40 seconds out of, so you usually end up with a 30-second interval by default. (but it still warrants attention! A poorly placed cross-over or adjacent elements can make the rare 45-second SPC course have a start interval that is also 45 seconds!)

On the long-thin sites like Brooksville, you have to be really careful where you place cross-overs, and you need to have a long stretch of course that stays very tight to the sides where you want car A and car B to pass by each other on course. Jamie did an excellent job of this on his March course. The only limitation to start interval for that course was the overall length of the course. Had the course itself been 10 seconds shorter, we'd have had the flexibility to adjust the starting point to give between a 25 and 30 second interval, which is perfect. (the closer you get to 20 seconds, the harder it is for timing to keep up... but 25 seconds is usually doable)

Okay, done rambling.

[kickslop]

That's helpful.

I don't know if this exact list is enumerated in our current event chair docs, but it sounds to me like the problem could be that there are a lot of smaller jobs that get forgotten until "crap, this needs to get done".

In no order, things that can be assigned (in many cases, before the event):

* Trailer unload
* Drinks + ice set up
* Power source set up + test
* Course set up
* Grid cones set up
* Course chalking
* Novice walk through leader(s)
* Registration
* Run group calculation after registration closes
* Timing equipment set up + test
* Lunch pick-up
* Course tear-down
* Timing tear-down (should be happening WHILE the course is being torn down)
* Alternator tear-down (should be happening WHILE the course is being torn down)
* Trailer load (should be happening WHILE the course is being torn down)

[Loren]

The event chairman document is about 3 years overdue for a rewrite or major revision. I'm not sure Steve has time to do it. I bet he'd welcome your input on that if you want to take the existing one and draft something.

[kickslop]

Yeah, he's actively reworking it and I've already agreed to review it. Was just throwing it out there.

[Loren]

Cool. 8)

[AScoda]

Howard agreed to do the drivers meeting in Jamie's absence. No one else had planned to do it and I figured Howard was probably the best one around at the time that could do a drivers meeting without forgetting to mention important stuff. But, Howard was also rearranging the run/work groups, which had been done by Jamie ahead of time, but for 60 drivers, not 35. Plus, Kenny had the timing equipment, but had taken over registration at the gate. We could have started earlier if not for the last minute changes.
Last month there were a boatload of people to round up and not enough that showed up early to get set up done early.

One thing that will definitely help is to have the novices check in early so the walk through can be done while everyone else is walking the course.
After driver's meeting, send the station workers out right away, or better yet, get a volunteer to drive them out to their stations. It takes a while to walk out there. Then grid up and go!

[kickslop]

After driver's meeting, send the station workers out right away, or better yet, get a volunteer to drive them out to their stations. It takes a while to walk out there.

YES

[impalanut]

Overall, I think things went well. My attitude is always just get it done. There is a small but dedicated group with the same attitude. I agree that there are a larger group that just needs a little guidance, and I think having a working loudspeaker or bullhorn would allow us to manage this group easily without any friction. Just calling for set up/ take down help, gathering people for the drivers meeting, and such would allow us to stay on schedule. For those people unfamiliar with things, there are a lot of little things that need to get done that aren't obvious, particularly the paper work as it relates to timing. With the new software, this should move alontg a lot better, especially the reorganizing when the people who sign up don't show up. Maybe we should only put the people who prepay on the official list and just add the rest as they pay. We could have a template of worker assignments and just plug in the names as they sign up. Could give work assignment preference to those who pay in advance.

[kickslop]

Personally, I love the idea of prepay ONLY.

I could swear we went round and round about that topic once before somewhere... perhaps over on the NASA-X forums back then.

[Loren]

I would not object to a pre-pay format. I bet Jamie and/or Steve could give us numbers on how many pre-pays we have at each event.

[kickslop]

I don't know about any previous trends, but the pre-pays at the 3/18 event were very low. Maybe 30%.

[Native]

Lemme see if I can get caught up here:

Yep, the twilight zone exists.
Yep, it's an "orchestration" issue.
Yep, synchronization is important, as is start intervals The more coodinated things are before an event, and the closer the start intervals, the better it will run.
Nope, whipcracking is not good. Violates the "Fun" rule.
Am working on the Chairman's Guide, slowly but surely. Also trying to get caught up with Championship Points tracking, too. If anyone wants either, I will hand off to you without hesitation.
Prepayment: 22 in Feb. 10 in Mar. I don't mind people not prepaying, as each prepay costs us $2.40. But, I'm cheap. I'm concerned that if we require prepayment, it won't help attendance at all, may hurt it, and we'll (Jamie and I) be inundated with "My car wouldn't start so I couldn't make it to the event. Can I have credit or a refund??" We already have a list of a dozen due credit (if they remember to use it), and it could easily get out of hand. Refusing refund/credit for a no-show is not customer friendly, even if it's announced and posted. However, if popular opinion is to require prepay, and if will enhance the quality of the events via easier run/work group planning, we can certainly try it.

[Anonymous]

Prepay only is dumb.

[Jamie]

Howard was also rearranging the run/work groups, which had been done by Jamie ahead of time, but for 60 drivers, not 35.

35? Before I left, I got notes or otherwise knew about a half-dozen folks who weren't going to show (the red-lined entries on the run group chart). Found notes in the drop-box from maybe another five or six when I finally got back...I expected about that many. That should have left some 50 drivers...which meant 15 additional just blew us off without saying anything. Weasels...they couldn't have all been stranded.

In no order, things that can be assigned (in many cases, before the event):

* Registration

Dedicated work position -- this time, the pair assigned dropped out several days before, and no one answered the multiple pleas to replace them.

* Trailer unload
* Drinks + ice set up
* Course set up
* Grid cones set up
* Course chalking

All duties for the setup crew -- we had two volunteers in assigned specifically (Brian Kollar and Drew) for this one, but I'm willing to bet Drew got sucked away elsewhere in the last minute turmoil. I don't think we want to expand dedicated setup and teardown crews beyond 2-3 people each -- we'll run out of workers to man the course! That core, plus a couple of draftees, can easily get things physically set up -- that's often been the least of our problems. I'm also reluctant to assign non-volunteers to the early and late crews -- we need to count on those people, and I'm pretty certain volunteers will show up!

* Novice walk through leader(s)

Hmm...this has always been ad hoc. I'll look at this as a work assignment. Shouldn't be the event chair.

* Run group calculation after registration closes

I've been doing this based on assignments roughed out after pre-registration closes. Sounds like this one was tougher because of so many no-shows. Maybe I should do two sets....

* Timing equipment set up + test
* Power source set up + test

Dedicated postion. Kenny's adopted this one, but anyone familiar with the equipment could do it.

* Lunch pick-up

...and figuring out before the event where it's coming from. Also a dedicated work position.

* Course tear-down
* Timing tear-down (should be happening WHILE the course is being torn down)
* Alternator tear-down (should be happening WHILE the course is being torn down)
* Trailer load (should be happening WHILE the course is being torn down)

Also a dedicated assignment...and another one that had only one volunteer (Kenny, who was already doing two other jobs).

Loading the trailer actually can't happen before the course is torn down at Brooksville. The trailer is so nose-heavy that the cones must go in the back. What we need to get in the habit of doing is having the course workers stack the cones near them, then sending a truck out with a couple of people to pick up the stacks. Heck...if we have the capacity, send two trucks, and pick up the workers, too.