Outside assistance

[Greg Needel]

One of the things I was talking to tyler about on the phone during our call was about outside assistance. With fast communication tools and the ability to ship overnight you could reasonably have people helping you outside and ship things in. Or from a software perspective have people writing code off site to help speed up the development. He said they were still considering options on how to deal with this. What do you guys think?

Greg

[Ruination]

Well, an easy way around that is to fully document your project.  If there is no footage of you working on that code, you didn't work on that code.  Or, if you source out the code, and theres nobody there's nobody there to explain it, then it will probably come across that you didn't write it.  As for people making things from outside, I think that that would slow down the development rather than speed it up.  And again, I think Tyler and his crew are going to be hovering around enough to tell if someone is doing a little outsourcing.  It's not like they're just going to leave us alone for 72 hours.

Matt

[stephen shaffer]

I have an easier solution, give every team member Go Pro Hero cameras
to wear on their head the entire build (plus, who couldn't use one of
those?)

Or course unlimited SD cards and recharged cams would be a must! But I
mention this, because I know Red Bull has thousands of these things in
their other action sports.

On May 16, 2:43 pm, Ruination <stairways.above.airpla...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Greg Needel]

I'll play devils advocate for a second...say outside assistance is allowed. Are their rules that could be put in place to make it fair? Perhaps only phone communication or advice is allowed. Maybe they can only send things with a total value. I know on some teams (not mine) that more than 4 people worked on the project and I am curious, depending on the scale of what we are asked to build how teams will adapt if they are missing key skills. A good example of this might be a team where nobody knows how to weld. To some extent I think we should be willing to help teams, but within such a short time window it will be hard.

Greg

[stephen shaffer]

Really? Some teams had help? I mean, I didn't see any projects that
seemed soo impressive that they'd need help. Although I could see, how
at a good hacker-space you'd have no choice but to let anyone nearby
speak his mind and offer free tips, you know? I still don't imagine
there could be much cheating, though I've been surprised before in
other even more niche competitions. I figure it'll be obvious,
anything overly technical/hard to do in 72hrs will be questioned by
all of us. I personally hope there are enough camera crews to follow
us around new york looking for free stuff to use, I could only imagine
the hilarious footage we could gather. At the very least, we'll have
our own HD camera just to document everything for fun!

On May 16, 9:19 pm, Greg Needel <g...@robogreg.com> wrote:
> I'll play devils advocate for a second...say outside assistance is allowed.
> Are their rules that could be put in place to make it fair? Perhaps only
> phone communication or advice is allowed. Maybe they can only send things
> with a total value. I know on some teams (not mine) that more than 4 people
> worked on the project and I am curious, depending on the scale of what we
> are asked to build how teams will adapt if they are missing key skills. A
> good example of this might be a team where nobody knows how to weld. To some
> extent I think we should be willing to help teams, but within such a short
> time window it will be hard.
>
> Greg
>

[Eric Merrill]

Hello from i3 Detroit!

Our project was completely done by the 4 person team, except some minor help (it is a hacker-space after all), and some video production help, all of which we disclosed in our project description. Wether any of you consider that 'cheating', I'll leave that up to you.

When I talked to Tyler, we talked about having a 'war room' back at our hacker space, to provide information/help/etc, he loved that idea. Don't have any idea about shipping stuff from helpers. I was told that we would be able to order things for the internets and have them shipped in, but what about shipped from a private party? Don't know. I should note that this is for specific items (just like if you were ordering it), not some way around the 200lbs bring with you limit.

From a software perspective, I think that's going to be hard to regulate. I think that outside dev shouldn't be allowed, but unless you impliment a blackout, which I think would not be desired. And I should say, I really hope they don't do the helmet cam thing, it will suck in NYC July heat...

-eric

[stephen shaffer]

Then chest cams!

[Nate Bezanson]

On May 16, 8:48 pm, stephen shaffer <deuploni...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have an easier solution, give every team member Go Pro Hero cameras
> to wear on their head the entire build (plus, who couldn't use one of
> those?)

Except for the whole problem of sweat, I love this idea. Especially if
we get to keep 'em. ;)

I figure there'll be cameras and crew all over, plus everyone's
personal sense of honesty. If there are going to be problems, I
foresee that they'll involve honest misinterpretations of perhaps-
vague rules, rather than malicious circumvention. It would be helpful
if, when someone asks for a clarification, the answer is disseminated
to everyone. But that could also bog us all down and distract from the
building. Perhaps a 12-hourly briefing-and-meal to touch base?

On the overall subject of outside assistance, I feel like it's
something of a non-issue. As long as our own hands are the only ones
touching the final product, what's it matter if the ideas are
brainstormed and refined with a larger group? It's not gonna make the
end product any easier, just cooler. And I'm pretty sure that's in
keeping with the goals...

-Nate-

P.S. Is there anything prohibiting teams from helping each other?
Competition is fun and all, but it's not everything.