Discussion: WOC fails once again

Year after year the IOF cannot get the WOC organisers to provide adequate coverage! Website not working at all, the charging/payment system for live coverage is a disgrace. Come on IOF, do something about this perennial problem!

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The customers are revolting!

As an unimpressed member of the Foot O Commission, I think you can assume that the issue is on the agenda.

http://online.woc2013.fi/tulokset/en/2013_woc_spri... links to online results and is working - got this from the other WOC thread. I guess someone saved the url and didn't have to go in through the WOC portal. Every year it seems they underestimate the server capacity required, so hopefully as in previous years it will be upgraded before we get too far into the week. How about by tonight's sprint finals?

Oh, and looks like Felicity and Vanessa will qualify, not sure about Jasmine.

Jasmine's in - all starters in her heat are accounted for.

While we've got you Blair (and rather than resurrect that old, huge thread about future WOC, and stir Kofols up again!)) how come the fields are so small in the qualification races? Has entry been restricted? If not, then maybe countries are voting with their feet to support the proposed arrangements for 2014 & beyond.

Yeah I was quite surprised by the size of the women's fields - have they decreased? They may not have, just seem smaller than previous years on first look

Yeah it seems each heat has about 6 runners less this year - females that is

That's surprised me too. Not sure (but will find out) whether it is countries not coming at all, not taking up their full quota or both. Historically fields have usually been larger in central Europe than in the Nordic countries, but heats of 23-24 are the smallest I can remember for a while.

There's ANOTHER WOC thread?

I noticed that nominations for the long final (this is MTBO I'm talking about now because really, who cares about foot orienteering?) for men was at 79 whereas there were 108 in the qualification races last year. Is this because countries know they will have restricted entrants under the new system or are they voting with their bikes, I mean feet?

Schedule means you can't sensibly do Long and Sprint, so unless you have/use 6 different runners before you even start on middle and Relay, you won't have a full team. GBR didn't enter a full team for the first time I can remember.

Stupid.

For what it is worth I have had no problem getting web TV and gps coverage in Duffy ACT - and have been impressed with the service from the other side of the world - must be an issue only with WA and Dunlop in the ACT!! - I simply hit the link on the email I got when I paid 10 euros.

I was at work - dodgy federal government bandwidth!

I see the government's long awaited broadband scheme has been rolled out first in the nation's capital! Maybe the Labor government needs fast broadband to be able to quickly and efficiently look for new jobs.

Actually it was first trialled in Tassie I believe.

We haven't go it at work yet, that's for sure.

I found that the GPS was excellent once I eventually got onto it. Haven't tested the video yet as I was watching the qualification at work (albeit off my laptop and a USB modem rather than an ancient government PC which won't run anything involving Java).

The dodgy IT in lazydave's area has impacts across the Australian elite orienteering community - we have to suffer it every time we do one of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority's online courses.

About the reason for the small start fields in sprint and long, the reason is that it is this year very difficult to combine these two disciplines. The sprint has especially suffered with many potential favourites among the women not being on the start list. But also in long you can see how the start field is smaller due to this.

Is the WOC schedule a Finnish ploy? To stop Simone, perhaps?
;-)

btw: Why is it the IOF's problem that the organizers don't have great live coverage? Isn't it the organizer's problem? Just curious - I can see both sides, but I don't think I would start by blaming IOF

Why is it the IOF's problem that the organizers don't have great live coverage

Because the IOF didn't put a sprinter in for their bonus stage.

@ AZ - ignore Juffy, he's just, well the name should tell you. It's both their problem, but IOF are in a similar position to IOC or FIFA, it's their event, and if the host nation stuffs up they cop some of the blame. IOF's stated aim is to improve the media presentation of orienteering, and this situation wouldn't be helping.

@ AZ - ignore Juffy, he's just, well the name should tell you.

It's true. You should never trust a man whose nickname apparently means "crazy hot wild sex in an airport bathroom."

Unfortunately the organisers' video coverage was worse last night. I'm not sure if anyone got it working. Most people switched over to YLE or SVT Play.

I still can't work out the Sportsground website. I've opened an account, and yesterday I could buy the opening ceremony but not the sprint, today I can't even find the 'buy' page, but the LD final isn't listed as an option anyway.

@juffy which part of your time is as a hippie?

"You should never trust a man whose nickname apparently means "crazy hot wild sex in an airport bathroom."

he's never offered me that it could totally change our relationship!

Master/slave?

I've been looking through the WOC guidelines to see what might be changed/added to make problems like the ones talked about in this thread (other than those involving Juffy, which I don't believe fall within the IOF's responsibilities) less likely in the future. There's already quite a bit of material in the guidelines about making sure your system has sufficient capacity and that your material works on all browsers/platforms in current use; nothing on making sure that registration/payment systems (if required) work, and are user-friendly. Anything else I've missed? (I'm not including things like the results failure yesterday - that seems to have also affected results in the arena so I'm assuming it was an underlying system problem rather than something specific to the online service).

Blair that would seem to cover it, so where is it going wrong? A couple of weeks ago I read somewhere (IOF site I think) that the Finns were especially good in the area of event/media technology, and for this WOC the spectator and online coverage was expected to be very good.

Word on the ground here, was that the coverage we were getting on our wifi devices wasn't that good

I think the problems were ones of implementation not of intention. Dunno how you legislate for competence:-))
1. The website didn't have a big hot button for live coverage, it was like navigating in Australian granite.
2. When you found that there was a paid service for coverage there was no information about what to do next. Turns out it was run by a third party.
3. When the organisers were asked about that they put the name of the third party (Sportsground) on the website. But astoundingly not a link.
4. When you went to the sportsground website with IE9 there was nothing to indicate how to pay. Things that looked like links, didn't work.
5. Sportsground eventually admitted that they didn't support IE9. (The latest IE for my OS.)
But around then, through the chat systems that spring up, links were being shared for things that DID work - like the YLE TV. It reminded me of the Danish (?) JWOC where the real info came from a CoverItLive chat service with a person in the event centre posting snippets as they happened.

Hi Gruver! I queried why WOO did not have the live chat this year, and Jan Kocbach told me it is too expensive for him and WOO. Probably doesn't cost that much though in the context of other coverage media, so why wouldn't the organisers (SSL) do it?

I've heard about the YLE TV coverage, but haven't seen a link - can you post it please?

think this will be the link here to the coverage on yle... it says it starts in an hour. and will be more than likely in finish like jukola but better than nothing... http://areena.yle.fi/tv/1955269/#/play

Dunno how you legislate for competence:-)

I think you need competent legislators, first.

And fewer cell phones in the arena apparently.

Average TV sport viewers expect more than just a Video footage and Finnish or Swedish commentary. After all this is WOC. It wouldn't be any harm if anyone (Finnish WOC volunteer who is keen on sport journalism) is able to watch TV coverage and transmit English audio commentary. If we don't have access to English audio from the Arena or English commentary....

I remembered that I was watching WOC a few years ago with English audio voice from arena and I think SVT TV coverage (audio switched off).

That's exactly what I'm doing now kofols, but now they're speaking almost entirely in Finnish in the arena too, so it's pretty poor. Glad I didn't get it two hours earlier!

Wow, what's the betting if WOC was in Russia the crowd would have cheered Ryabkina into beating Minna? The silence there was incredible!

Oh, that might have been the massive delay of the arena stream versus Finnish TV.

Not so sure about the TV side of things, but from the 'live results website' point of view the IOF do very little to help. There's a document that says what you should really be aiming at but beyond that there's nothing. No funding, little guidance, definitely no continuity. Each WOC organising team is left to fend for themselves with whatever budget they can scramble together, which is why little has changed over the last few years.

Still not sure why the implications that IOF is at fault. What are you suggesting they do? Provide money (I doubt they have any). Provide expertise (but what expertise would they have that isn't available to organizers). The one thing they could do is provide some "guidelines" or "best practices" as a way of continuity - but these will rely on previous organizers putting them together and will quickly be out of date so unlikely to be much use to future organizers.

In North America we have a gang of techies doing some kick-ass arena production / live internet coverage. They have developed an expertise that is hard to match. If I were organizing a major event in North America my first thought would be to ask these guys to handle those aspects. The skills are too specialized to try to duplicate, and the experience too rare. The worry I would have is whether I could afford it or not.

In other words, I think a good way to go about fixing the problem is to develop some specialized teams that can work at different events. (This is how much of the Olympics are organized - the same organizers moving from country to country). But I don't think that is the job of the IOF. And I'm not sure it would be practical.

AZ you're absolutely right. Without major amounts of cash the IOF have to rely on the country putting on WOC. If a country comes along without such knowledge then they will have trouble.

Ideally a group of these talented individuals would get together and produce a system that could be used at every major event, but I don't see that happening as it would end up being too much work for one group. I was impressed by what the US team had produced a few months ago and asked a few people about it but didn't get much in terms of response. I know all too well how hard it is to balance time spent on 'hobbies', which is what this type of thing often has to be.

It only "has" to be a hobby if the consumers of the output are too cheap to value their experience adequately enough. Which is the case with orienteering.

Normally I'm on board with the T/D orienteering/value things, but there are a crap ton of championships you can watch for free with decent coverage, from the lightly attended US 10000 m championships in Not a Major Area, Iowa, two weeks ago to any of the bigger sports. Other than fighting and fake wrestling, which sports regularly get $$ for viewing?

I was impressed by what the US team had produced a few months ago and asked a few people about it but didn't get much in terms of response.

Let me know what event you are referring to, and perhaps I can put you in touch with a more responsive party. :)

There were technical problems with the website that I think were resolved, today everything worked fine. GPS worked very well. Arena video was okay, it would probably be nice to have another camera in the woods somewhere and have fewer interviews of rock stars but then maybe it was good for the atmosphere.

Really? I'm not convinced 'everything worked fine.' I only found the GPS tracking by using google to search woc2013.fi for sportsground. Thankfully that name was mentioned above. There's no link from the GPS page. I didn't find the organizers' video, only the yle broadcast eventually. I admit this was at 2am so I may not have at my most alert, but it should not take 20 minutes to find the GPS tracking.

Well, I agree the website is a disaster.

Everything else is okay :)

Yes, there must be at least 3 different "results" links, some of which are blank pages. The English version of the events schedule comes and goes with the tides. Now I navigate the WOC pages via direct links in these AP threads.

On the plus side, I've learned a bit more Finnish out of necessity.

Fin organizers put together a huge budget to finance the TV production. They have prepared a great WOC, mainly for home spectators over TV. If they are happy to cover the costs in this way that is great. So they did it 95% everything OK, but miss those 5% to be user friendly also for international spectators if they have intention to spread the signal (IOF task), not just to simple sell the raw TV signal to a few broadcast TV stations. And this 5% of the process should be in hand of IOF to control and fund (English commentary, paying service over IOF website if necessary, fund specialized teams or hire IT/TV production company, etc)

At least this is how it works in other sports....who have money. If IOF doesn't have money than maybe it would be better to decide to stop writing a guidelines and ask each organizer: How we can help you and what we can do for you beside guidelines?

Hang on, there was GPS you didn't have to pay for at the long final today?! I assumed it was paid only so didn't look for it. I probably should pay the €10 but as I'm at work during the races thought it wouldn't be worth it...
The website is useless, although I am warming to the professional TV production route as the way forward, you need the other services to work seamlessly too or you lose all the spectators who don't have access to (or the language for) the TV production

You can find all the gps tracking at www.tulospalvelu.fi/gps (ie the gpsseuranta list of gps tracked events) and get to them that way. The tracking only becomes available right at the first start time.

The WOC website certainly does not make it easy to find the various services provided primarily by 3rd parties. Annoying but they do exist and do generally work well once found.

I found the gps tracking for the women's race this morning very poor in that about half of the tracks we're working for at least half the race. It was funny to hear the announcers ask people in the arena to turn off their cell phones as it was clogging the airspace and preventing gps signals to get through.

It sometimes helps to reflect before bursting into print. We have come a long way with international coverage and our expectations are shaped by the best we have seen - not the sustainable average. Some more thoughts about simple things.

1. First up I love to see the map/course, and posting that on the website is presumably a one-off operation that can be done as soon as all competitors are in quarantine. (The hill-shading versions from JWOC were nice - wonder if we could have those to run on:-))
2. During the race, the numbers (splits from the forest) presumably take less bandwidth than pictures. The problem has been to display a mass of splits in an understandable way. I thought the "smart follow" option in the long distance was great -somehow ordering runners based on both finishers and those still going.
3. I like to control my own refreshing. The JWOC results were set on 10s refresh and it took nearly that long to do - and while refreshing I couldn't move up and down on the page to see the people at the bottom. I clicked on "no refresh" but that setting disappeared when I went off to other windows. There will always be some people with slow internet so let us drive it.
4. Next up in terms of data volume is presumably audio from the event centre. I was stymied with the pay service and was disappointed to miss out on this. (Assuming the speaker is Per Forsberg quality.) This is language-dependant of course but the official IOF language is English isn't it?
5. Next up (perhaps) might be tracking. Now while its interesting following the dots in real time, in an interval race I get almost as much fun with a post-event replay with the simulated mass start. And this technology is mature isn't it - there are people running free RouteGadget things all round the world. Must be simple to wait until the last runner is in, then post the files once.
6. Lastly TV. We are lucky to be able to piggyback onto something intended for Swedish followers, and I don't mind that I can't understand the commentary - the visual material makes up for it.

Finally let me mention the online conversations that spring up around events such as this. When you are trackside, much of the pleasure comes from conversation with your companion(s). Same thing with followers on the other side of the world. And this is something completely beyond the organisers, that we do for ourselves.

3. I like to control my own refreshing. The JWOC results were set on 10s refresh and it took nearly that long to do - and while refreshing I couldn't move up and down on the page to see the people at the bottom.

At the risk of actually contributing to this thread, there is also much better ways of doing this than forcing a browser page refresh.

5. Tracking: ... I get almost as much fun with a post-event replay with the simulated mass start

Actually I think they were doing a simulated mass start with the dots, at least some of the time. I am pretty sure at one point I saw Bertuks' dot touching the tail of Gueorgiou's. The tail was one minute - so I though it was all over for TG. But in fact Bertuks had started six minutes later than Gueorgiou so it couldn't have been real time - I figure it had to be the mass-start simulation. Which, I agree, is way more useful than live dots

Gruver - 'That's for sure'!

Thats what they were doing pretty much all the time (on yle). You can do it yourself on the gps by clicking on 'from start'. It shows your chosen runners racing head-to-head at the furthest point of progress of the lastest starter among your chosen runners

Gruver - the speaker is nowhere near Per Forsberg quality. That's essentially all you pay for (given visuals are better with Yle) and it's definitely not worth the money.

Per in a studio speaking English with the Yle production - worth a lot more than 10E. There's a bunch of guys in GBR who I'm sure will do a good job, language obviously helps - but I'm hoping to be watching from the field and not the computer that year :)

Robplow, the simulations are great, loved it when they introduced them in Norway a few years ago.

Per is commentating at Moray 2013 / Euromeeting and I believe has the WOC2015 dates in his diary, not 100% sure. So you can look forward to a multitude of languages being spoken in the arena

That's right Andrew, make me even more annoyed that I can't be there ;)

News on the WOC website. "Swiss men finally rose to the top in men’s Long Distance Qualification."