Biggest Fan Award

[James]

Hello All:

I guess I am going for the WGC 2012 biggest remote fan award. I am on
Soaring Cafe, both com and net (I believe), and also on the WGC 2012
Site. I think it might be better if they had a WGC Main Site with the
WGC 2012 event as a sub-site of it (if it isn't). It would be nice if
that had a way to link up with friends (if it doesn't) and also
Soaring Cafe too. I have been looking for discussion to read on the
2012 WGC and not finding much yet. That is about it for now. Have a
good day everyone.

James

[WGC Group Moderator]

James,
Glad you are looking for things to start happening (I think you
have found the WGC 2012 site at wgc2012usa.com), and so are we. Things
have been a little slow on the "front end", but behind the scenes
things have been moving forward like crazy. As you probably know to
setup a contest of this scale, even the Pre-Worlds, takes much
planning and execution before everyone else sees the results. We hope
you can bear to wait just a little longer.

Things will start cooking at that site as far as the "rest of us" are
concerned during and after the Pre-World competition. Since all the
organizers and some of the gliding folk are just now descending on
Uvalde, with the first practice day this Thursday, much more in the
way of updates, pictures and stories to report on will be happening
then. We even hope to have some live streaming video of the pilots
meetings in the morning, the launch line and when the ships are coming
back home.

The live webcam streaming will be occurring on ustream.tv website and
search for WG_Championships. You get a rolling ad when you first go to
the page, or the stream is just starting, but they can be minimized
after the first 30 seconds or so. It will also start playing a
featured video when the channel is off line, but hopefully it will not
be too painful to watch with the ads, but it would cost upwards of
$500 to gobs more to broadcast with out ads as the cost is based on a
multiple of viewers watching and for how many hours. For now, free
access and free band width are a good thing.

From a technical point of view, as to how the websites are hosted,
each host country has taken that on themselves. The logistics and cost
become quite steep at the level of traffic that occurs during the
contest. Multiple mirrored servers and the band width (boy the band
width) to feed everyone are required. Once again the cost and
contracts to do this get very expensive, very fast. We will do the
best with what we have and I think we now have in place what is
needed. But someone like you, and all the rest of us, will certainly
be the judge of that.

As for a discussion group, this is the place. To cross post in the
other sites such as Soaring Cafe and rec.soaring.aviation, and
moderate it accordingly bring a level of complexity and resource time
management that we do not have. So here is the place to come for open
discussion, information and connecting with friends and fellow glider
enthusiasts. You will also see that the Discussion area on the
wgc2012uvalde.com site will contain postings from this group.

Thanks and keep watching,
Andrew Dignan
WGC2012 Webmaster