Discussion: Meet quality

no silver bullet for perfect meets

Yes there is. Outsourcing of cohesive event tasks (e.g. mapping; course setting; results; social) to for-profit entities.

Don't believe that outsourcing is going to make everything peachy. Just from our Dutchman Flat meet two of the jobs that we outsourced didn't work out the way we planned--the original mapper's results sucked and our banquet did not have enough food (despite repeatedly telling them that orienteers eat a lot).

Of course, this wasn't the case for all our outside help. Dominie, Vlad, and Valerie Meyer were all awesome in their respective areas. We knew that they would be because we had personal experience with them all. Maybe this is the outsourcing secret.

I think that some very important elements in meet quality (and project management in general) are to give yourself more time than you think you need, get more help than you think you will need, ask a lot of questions of the experts, check-recheck-triple check everything (especially the maps, courses, and control locations), and copy/steal from other meets that went well.

I have a bunch of examples for each of these items, but I think I'll just leave it here and see what other people, with a lot more experience than me, have to say.

Actually, I've found from both meets and my day job as a project manager that putting together the smallest possible team gets the best results. It's too easy for a large group to think that someone else is covering for them. Small groups know that they either deliver or the whole thing fails.

I've always jettisoned things like banquets that don't directly affect the quality of the competition. Maybe that's why attendance at my meets is lower than most A-meets. But the people who do come seem to like the orienteering a lot, and that's what matters.

Yes, the banquet at the COCs was excellent. And as far as I could see, all the food was also cooked by those in charge of putting out controls, or at least their families.

Optimal group size is 5. With 5 active and knowledgable stuffers any NA meet can be sufficiently covered in most important areas: map, course design/setting, permits, and start/finish (with electronic punching). You will need probably another 5 to cover small support tasks for big meets.

I am astonished each time hearing about or witnessing myself misplaced or missed controls. There are certain procedures that could guarantee the qulity of control placement:
1. Course review with consultant.
2. Taping all control locations and consequent vetting by independent person.
3. Placement of controls with extra sufficient time. Preferably day before the race.
4. Early pre-runners - you can cover all controls with two-three pre-runners!

Ommiting any of the above would jeopardize the quality of the meet.

For the way I'm picturing the job, two to three pre-runners would be totally inadequate. This is one of the most important tasks in the entire meet during one of the biggest time crunches--the morning of the meet--that you are going to have. Get a lot of help from people who already know where the controls are from previous checking or rehearsals. If you are using e-punch, have each person put out the units in one area then swap sections with someone and check that the units turned on and that the control numbers are correct for those new controls. They should already know where the controls are for this new area as well. Oh yes, each checker should have a spare e-punch with them to swap out with dead units.

If you can get the e-punches out the day before, you can save a lot of time, but I would be nervous of theft and batteries dying from the cold.

Speaking of batteries and cold, I have put out controls for a ski-o the night before an event just to test them and they lasted without a problem. Most of them were about 1/2 full when put out, and surprisingly didn't seem too affected by the cold.
Anybody has had any experience with that or do people always put out the day of for ski-o?

I have had no issue with electronic controls put out 1-2 days before a cold event. Of course, Washington, DC cold isn't quite as bad as other parts of the country/continent. But several times, the meets were being held with snow on the ground and the controls.

I may be able to get you precise information about how long batteries will last in a given temperature. What type of batteries do SI systems use?

I had discussions with SI, being employed in similar design work. The cold-death issue seems mostly not "how long do batteries last?", but "is the charge indicator you get at the time you are about to put the unit into the woods telling the truth?". If it's not, which is a plague of the SI 5 and earlier designs, and the weather conditions are not favorable, you get the 10% failure rate MNOC observed at the 2004 Individual Champs.

In regard to meet quality, one thing that really helps to drive meet quality is a good communicarions scheme ( i.e. good radio contact during the event between start,finish,setter-vetter team, prerunners, field stations etc). Things are going to happen out there in the woods and the success of the event relies upon small problems being discovered and fixed rapidly. MNOC has developed a partnership with the local amateur radio club who love to support our big events. We were able to react to 8 SI stations (BSF-6 version) battery failures due to cold and get them all fixed in < 30 mins with no delays to the starts at our last A meet because of excellent radio comms.

We have now upgraded to the SI series BSF-7 e punch units which have far longer battery life and are much easier to work with. Hopefully USOF can upgrade their SI punch stations too.

I agree that radio communications are very useful. High-powered walkie talkies are very reasonably priced these days.

On the other hand, the 1000-Day has never used any radios (except for a cell phone to call an ambulance once). (And a couple of times that we had a radio control on the relay.)

I'm reminded of a Dwight Yoakam song:

"Got a note, from the folks over at Bell.
Just to let me know my next phone call I could walk outside 'n yell."

No fair using the 1000-Day expert staffing as an example. They put on the meet with perfect precision and timing kind of like synchronized swimmers.