So, what can we do better next year -- Dakar Coverage?

[Jadon]

A few years back there was a scheme afoot to fund one of the inmates to do the Dakar. How about rather funding a newsman? We all score then, instead of just the guy that gets to do the race, and we can also be certain that we get our money's worth for the full number of stages.......

[Robear]

I also really enjoyed Teds updates from the bivouac. I was captivated by what goes on there that most of the world doesn't get to know. Some of Teds observations of Gordon and how his crew interacted with him were priceless. I figure there are lots more juicy bits that Ted is holding back for the book. So anyway we could get another seat on the truck for more of this inside info next year would be awesome. Maybe Ted would be willing to go back?

[Dano 407]

Originally Posted by Robear

I also really enjoyed Teds updates from the bivouac. I was captivated by what goes on there that most of the world doesn't get to know. Some of Teds observations of Gordon and how his crew interacted with him were priceless. I figure there are lots more juicy bits that Ted is holding back for the book. So anyway we could get another seat on the truck for more of this inside info next year would be awesome. Maybe Ted would be willing to go back?

I missed what Ned had to say about Robby.....


I continue to believe that this site is one of the most refreshing places on the web. I cannot think of anything more that would have made the rally experience any better for me.

Thank you to all who posted.

[Robear]

Feels right weird in the bivouac without the bikes....good thing we have the Robby Gordon show next door to keep us company. That dude is a work aholic, he has a staff of 20 or so and they are all standing around watching him wrench on his vechicle. Saw hime ask a mechanic to tighten something, the dude just stares at him so) grabs the wrench and puts it on the bolt then grabs the dudes hand and puts it on the wrench. Tells a photogrpaher to take a picture and the "mechanic" does a cheeseball pose. Seriously that RB guy is insane. The other day he had zero sleep as he was dealing with aso officials about some bogus ruling thenhe turned wrenches until it was time for him to leave. Crazy.

[ian408]

The calls and Ted's updates from the bivouac were icing on a cake.

I'd love to have them back again but the thing that's really cool about following is the organic nature of the contributors. Sure, there's the usual cast of characters but then as the rally goes forward, others pop in and bring their wares or opinions, etc--that's the best part and I'd like not to lose that.

[hilslamer]

Originally Posted by Smithy

Of course, the ultimate solution is to get a Rally Radio 4x4 van set up for 2 weeks of expedition, w/a motorcycle on the back hitch to roam and grab video coverage from multiple angles, edit in the biv, get interviews, and beam it all up via satellite link on a daily basis.

Agree wholeheartedly! Athough, the ASO media folks might have a thing or ten to say about such antics...

Perhaps Jonah could come out of retirement for something like this, eh? Otherwise, it's looking for me personally like for the next two Dakars, I could be able to commit to one of the duties of this crew if even half of my expenses were covered. And I know how to live out of a Jetboil and sleepingbag(although, the roving cameraman/interviewer appeals).


Another thought would be some sort of live feed, from a camera simply mounted pointing at the RiffRaff camp somehow. Simple to set up, addicting to watch, and as long as sponsor's stickers were visible, paid for easily.

[snatchy]

Thanks to all those that contributed. It was great to be able to stay informed.

Here are some suggestions;
- the official Dakar 2012 Media Thread - Pics and Videos Only thread had a few people commenting and discussing. Deleting non info posts would be nice to keep it on topic

- i was very suprised by the agressive anti French or ASO (or anti whatever) of some posters. For me It detracted a bit from the good info being posted, but that is what you get in open forums... no suggestions on how to deal with it.

- Agree with Country Doc that a topic somewhere between a "cliff notes" thread and the main F5 thread would be usefull to reduce the volume between usefull posts. A wild suggestion would be a elitist thread open only to those who are known to have a clue or are on site in the thick of the action. How you work out who to include would be difficult. Its a suggestion to provoke some discussion.

Thanks again to those that took the time to post info during the event

[ian408]

Originally Posted by hilslamer

Perhaps Jonah could come out of retirement for something like this, eh? Otherwise, it's looking for me personally like for the next two Dakars, I could be able to commit to one of the duties of this crew if even half of my expenses were covered. And I know how to live out of a Jetboil and sleepingbag(although, the roving cameraman/interviewer appeals).

One of those giant tundra buggies. Half seating, half sleeping accommodation. Ought to be enough room for all the accoutrements of civilized camping and a rally bike or two

On a serious note, I like your idea of "crew". Just not sure how to guarantee it would work out?

[kaia]

i think this year that things went beautifully. we had a great staff of people, and awesome discussion, and even a few events to wildly speculate about... which is part of what the F5 crew does.

next year, i think that... having someone in Deadly99's position (even sponsored by the F5 crew @ adv; his trip was self sponsored), but have the person who goes be more of the reporter-type, with the means (sat phone / internet) to do so. i'm not sure if it's kosher (with ASO) but have them doing person-to-person interviews / chats with competitors, encode & upload to RallyRAIDio. allow competitors to use said person as a "post this info for me" and get it out to the proper channels. we could set up automated stuff for them to post to the F5irehose without having to load it into a browser (ie: email-to-post or something similar).

i'd like to see a way to get the eurosport broadcasts (live & highlights), either by encoding / re-publishing, or possibly a deal with eurosport or something... ie: we already have a "relationship" with carlton, let's see if we can take that relationship a step further... and get legit broadcasts from eurosport (or time-delayed and we can host them ourselves) (i know... pipe dream, but we can dream). if i could have my way, i'd love to be able to get an authorization to archive & re-broadcast of both eurosport broadcasts daily, and host them on SmugMug... but i don't think that'd be possible without rights / permission, and my gut tells me that IF it's possible, it's going to be expensive.

it's not just about the US, it's about the ADV community, and outside of europe, the coverage for dakar is crap. we don't want the toned down coverage, the "i'm going to read off a script with nothing unique to say" coverage (which we got from ABCSports), we want the whole shebang.


i think Mischa's site(s) were invaluable... it'd be nice to get carbon-copies of said code on multiple servers for failover, and load balancing. (ie: us.trackingdakar.com, eu.trackingdakar.com. sa.trackingdakar.com),


i think that the technical know-how is here within the F5 crew... we just need to leverage it.

[vander]

Originally Posted by Country Doc

The Eurosport coverage this year (especially according to my wife, a die-hard Dakar fan!), was worse than previous years. No Gerhardt wandering around the bivouac digging up stories, only the same helicopter shots time after time, with essentially NO coverage of privateers this year. Nobody out on stage actually shooting from the ground and getting stories in the field. Disappointing. That has nothing to do with the coverage here on ADV, but highlights how good it is here compared to Eurosport.

dc

True. This years coverage lacked of something. As you say, heli shots look all the same.

I also felt a big lack of dune images this year. We are lucky the race was so tight, otherwise we would have seen nearly two weeks of procession in the same type of mountain roads, not exactly what I have in mind when thinking Dakar.

[Hay Ewe]

this was my first time on the F5 fire hose, it was awesome, took a fair few hours of my time but worth it.
I started out following the cliff notes.

I don't think you can put anything specifically together to improve it, for me it was all there.

I do like the idea of a specific forum for other rallies, I would like to know more about the dubai, Rallye des Phaeros, Optic tunisia etc, but keep them the same, a thread for a few months before, the actually rally and thats it. The dakar, Silk route and the FIA / FIM rallies. shouldn't be come polluted with general other conversation.

Keep the cars and bikes together, to have two threads would be too hard, what about when a car hits a bike etc, would that be in the car thread or the bike thread?

thanks for the opportunity

Hay Ewe

[CBVRacing]

Originally Posted by PackMule

While it's fresh in your minds, what can we do better/different/more next year?

Create your own F5 Community Website with the ADV forum capabilities at its core and side menus for inmates interviews, embedded video coverage etc to cover the people that are doing it tough but whose stories are much more powerful than watching the same two motorbikes and the same 3 cars over two weeks (e.g. that rider and motorbike photo who is totally under water is a story that needs to be told).

Live stories from people on the ground to report on those inmates.

Perhaps there is enough interest for some advertisers to pay for the space and along with some donations pay for the entry fees / transport of TSC or Doyle or yourself to be on the ground. I was going to say BlueBull as well but my little finger tells me he will be racing

If you find a way to transmit live, i am happy to feed videos from within the cockpit of my single seater buggy in 2013 if a deal can be sorted with ASO so you can watch it as it happens, this with BlueBull google genius capabilities is as close as one can get!

[Flood]

I love some ideas here, thanks all!

We were a bit late organizing the coverage this year, so there's still a lot of room for improvement. With 2,3 more people helping out with the cliff notes thread, we can try to tell a story there. This year, I had only time to click through 30 pages of the big thread, and copy/paste stuff that looked like good intel - I couldn't even read a lot of it. I'd love to hear from people who only read the cliff notes thread: did it make any sense?
With a bit more manpower, we could post daily briefings and standings and index them in the first post.

Originally Posted by kaia

next year, i think that... having someone in Deadly99's position (even sponsored by the F5 crew @ adv; his trip was self sponsored), but have the person who goes be more of the reporter-type, with the means (sat phone / internet) to do so. i'm not sure if it's kosher (with ASO) but have them doing person-to-person interviews / chats with competitors, encode & upload to RallyRAIDio.

That would be a dream. There are a lot of dunes to cross in order to get there, though. Fielding an official press car costs €18,000 including 4 journos. And you need a 4x4 with rollcage and everything.
Of course one could try to share the car with 2,3 other outlets.

Doing it like Ted would be another way, just tagging along with a team. Taking a free seat in a team car isn't much cheaper, of course. But it doesn't get you into the press tent. If you carry a press accreditation, you are not allowed to help a competitor in any way, not even wash his bike. Maybe a "new media" outlet could get extra rulings from the ASO though.

Originally Posted by kaia

i'd like to see a way to get the eurosport broadcasts (live & highlights), either by encoding / re-publishing, or possibly a deal with eurosport or something... ie: we already have a "relationship" with carlton, let's see if we can take that relationship a step further... and get legit broadcasts from eurosport (or time-delayed and we can host them ourselves) (i know... pipe dream, but we can dream). if i could have my way, i'd love to be able to get an authorization to archive & re-broadcast of both eurosport broadcasts daily, and host them on SmugMug... but i don't think that'd be possible without rights / permission, and my gut tells me that IF it's possible, it's going to be expensive.

Getting legit ES coverage on the web is a pipe dream, I'm afraid, for licensing reasons. ES have a web player themselves, limited to paying customers, IP blocked to Europe. NBC pays licensing fees to broadcast in the US, this would be useless if we were allowed to stream the stuff ourselves. Of course the pictures are all the same and get released by the ASO on Youtube. If we are unhappy with NBC's or ES's voice over, someone could take those and do an ADV/F5 voice over with the info we have collected during the day.

Originally Posted by kaia

i think Mischa's site(s) were invaluable... it'd be nice to get carbon-copies of said code on multiple servers for failover, and load balancing. (ie: us.trackingdakar.com, eu.trackingdakar.com. sa.trackingdakar.com)

Good idea

Originally Posted by CBVRacing

Create your own F5 Community Website with the ADV forum capabilities at its core and side menus for inmates interviews, embedded video coverage etc to cover the people that are doing it tough but whose stories are much more powerful than watching the same two motorbikes and the same 3 cars over two weeks (e.g. that rider and motorbike photo who is totally under water is a story that needs to be told).

Live stories from people on the ground to report on those inmates.

Perhaps there is enough interest for some advertisers to pay for the space and along with some donations pay for the entry fees / transport of TSC or Doyle or yourself to be on the ground. I was going to say BlueBull as well but my little finger tells me he will be racing

If you find a way to transmit live, i am happy to feed videos from within the cockpit of my single seater buggy in 2013 if a deal can be sorted with ASO so you can watch it as it happens, this with BlueBull google genius capabilities is as close as one can get!

Love it!

[mountainboy1974]

Originally Posted by BELSTAFF

Elevate JMLATVANAFAN to F5 god status & make sure he is on board for 2013

-personally, that made all the diff from past years coverage, together with the radio interviews.

cant thank JMLATVANAFAN and other contributers enough.

My first exposure to Eurosport and I loved the behind the scene's stories -more of those would be oober great!!

[klb555]

Lurker alert......

As a first time follower of the Firehose and the coverage on ADV....I have no constructive or for that matter intelligent suggestions for improvement.

I would like to say THANK YOU to all who provided the information. It was a blast. Sadly for most of the second week I had limited time so I never caught up again on the Firehose, even scrolling past the glue manufacturing there was no way to keep up. That in turn made the Cliff Notes a lifeline. I plan to continue reading the main thread through till the end because after the fact is worth it...that thread is awesome.

OK so I also got caught up in the Nedro frenzy and support and used most of the limited time I had to follow Ned, Ted and Tim's excellent adventure......

Sorry for the spam but I wanted to be sure and get a thanks in here somewhere for you folks to read.

THANKS!!!