Challenge Town Hall extended - Concour feedback

In reply to Antihero :

As it should be. 

In reply to Antihero :

I get what you're saying now, but from my limited understanding, making the opt-out even more of a deciding factor than it already is doesn't seem to be in the spirit of accomplishing what the opt-out is intended to do.

Perhaps a straight cutoff could work, where only the top X% of the field after the dynamic events gets judged for concours points?  At least 1/2 to cover all positions in contention for awards/trophies, but something enough less than 'all' that it cuts judging down to a reasonable effort without being too exclusive. 

Driven5 said:

In reply to Antihero :

Wat about a straight cutoff, where only the top X% of the field after the dynamic events gets judged for concours points?  At least 1/2, but something enough less than 'all' that it cuts judging down to a reasonable effort without being too exclusive. 

Interesting idea, but that would really hurt builds like my race van than barely managed 20th of 39 dynamically, but were well worth judging for the car show.

Honestly, I like the current format. Adding more math would just complicate things. As has been said, 3 minutes is a lot less time than you think, and you really need to prepare your pitch ahead of time to do well.

ShawneeCreek said:

Driven5 said:

In reply to Antihero :

Wat about a straight cutoff, where only the top X% of the field after the dynamic events gets judged for concours points?  At least 1/2, but something enough less than 'all' that it cuts judging down to a reasonable effort without being too exclusive. 

Interesting idea, but that would really hurt builds like my race van than barely managed 20th of 39 dynamically, but were well worth judging for the car show.

At just outside the 50th percentile, your van probably would have been included in judging still, so I don't see how this would have hurt your build.  But if your van finished 35/39 dynamically, at that point, what would have been the benefit to judging you for points rather than just sharing your build with everybody there sans points?

stafford1500 said:

ShawneeCreek said:

Thank you guys for your patient and thorough explainatons. Steve, I'd appreciate if you'd share your scores and reasoning for my race van. I (think) that I know a couple areas in which I could have improved, but I'd value your perspective.

Thanks.

-Sean

Sean,

Here are my scores and recollections of the judging: Innovation 9 - There are not many folks that would consider cutting a car to re-body it with a van, The planning for something like this is truly mind-boggling. Execution 8 - From the outside the merging of the car and van was spectacular, but as I looked a little deeper there were some areas that could be made a little nicer (basically the interface of the car to van) but the body work (paint) was amazing and the stance of the van was spot on. Presentation 5 - the way you presented the build along with its history at previous challenges showed the effort and skill required for the project, while making it all easy to see; the display board helped cover the build history and summarized the complete project and the banana bread (in three varieties) tied in nicely with the subtext of the grocery getter "sponsors".

I hope that helps.

Steve

Thanks Steve. I can agree with everything that you said. I left a few points on the table between the rough merge lines between the two vehicles and the dirty engine bay. The van also didn't have much innovation beyond the body swap. It's essentially a G6 GTP with a higher center of gravity and swapped rear springs.

poopshovel again said:

Huuuhuh-huhhuh-huh-huh. “Taking the 12.”

Is that a guy math 12?

how many points do you get to opt out of the drags.    

how many to opt out the autocross

   if you give 12 for not showing you should give 17 to sit out each of the others,

you could win the drags sit out the rest and have 29 points in the bank.

  I spend a lot of time on looks and finish, not to burden the judges  but to strengthen  weak drag times.  

In reply to GTXVette :

My take from this year is that to move from 13 last year to 18.8 this year was 90% presentation.  Yeah the paint helped a little but showing the judges everything we did and getting that information to them was more important.

In reply to GTXVette :

17+17+12 = 46 points and 38th place

Skipping the dynamic portions gets you a ZERO for that segment. The Concour can't make up that kind of point loss. Since the competition is about cars that do multiple things for cheap, it would be best if the cars can actually do car stuf and not just show upto look good, with a good story. Those are called car shows.

Skipping any dynamic event actually gets you an arbitrary time. This year it was 1000.

I suppose what I was getting at is if you decide to opt out of a segmint you get no points.

  this Fiero is a Racing car with no interior dressing, seat's ,guages, a mirrior not much else, I think that takes it out of  AM  Also, but it is painted and detailed.

So im very late to this party apparently. Christopher and I would appreciate any feedback o; the #16 Miata... essentially a Gastropod before the class was created. 

Id also suggest that judging *could* be broken of into 3 teams of 2 judges for the 3 areas, giving each competitor more time to tell their story. And maybe we could opt out of, say, innovation judging taking a 5, for a stock build, but talk with the judging crews for presentation and execution. 

Would that make things easier on the judges? Just a thought..... it seems to me it might help. Not trying to over complicate things, but make them more streamlined. 

With the cars parked the way we were, each judging group could start in their own row of cars...

In reply to Greg Smith :

Judges vary. 

Its gonna be really hard to get consistent scores with multiple teams of judges (it’s been discussed). 

In reply to stafford1500 :

Steve, we’d really appreciate the breakdown for #16. Many thanks from the Birthday Boyz....

In reply to SVreX :

I think you’re missing the point of what I was proposing.... the presentation judges would review the presentation of every car who doesn’t opt out of presentation judging,  focusing on that aspect.. innovation and Je Ne sais quoi judges would do the same. Each set of judges could start in one row and circulate through all the cars. But by being more focused, they would have an easier time of judging their area, across all cars, and each competitor would be able to tell their story in 3 different ways, to the 3 sets of judges. 

For the Je ne sais quoi judging, I would think that at least one judge should be the a GRM magazine editor or senior staff as this is also the area where ‘editorial content’ becomes important, I think...

I see how what I wrote could be interpreted as the 3 physical rows, but what I intended to communicate was the areas of scoring for the concours. So each team would see every car looking to be judged in their area (innovation, execution, Je me sais quoi) ... and maybe a lot of Miatas would skip ‘innovation’, but want judges to score the other two areas. Likewise, maybe a team with tremendous innovation, but falling short in execution, might want to skip that part of judging. 

Does that make my suggestion clearer?

In reply to Greg Smith :

Gotcha. 

So, for 40 cars you are suggesting 120 individual judging presentations, each of which would not exceed 1 minute with 3 different teams of judges?

Or, 120 presentations that each take 3 minutes (which doesn’t reduce the wear on the judges at all, but requires 3 times as many judges).

Either way, sounds like a stretch. 

SVreX said:

In reply to Greg Smith :

Gotcha. 

So, for 40 cars you are suggesting 120 individual judging presentations, each of which would not exceed 1 minute with 3 different teams of judges?

Or, 120 presentations that each take 3 minutes (which doesn’t reduce the wear on the judges at all, but requires 3 times as many judges).

Either way, sounds like a stretch. 

40 cars - 2 minutes with each set of judges, but also smaller judging teams (of 2, I was suggesting)

2 judges for innovation/engineering. Start at 1spot

2 for presentation / appearance, starting 1/3 of the field ahead of them

2 for je ne sais qoui / the "it" factor, starting 2/3 of the field ahead

Option to opt out of any judging phase for 4 pts/10 pt score or 2 pt / 5 pt score (opt out of all, get a 10)

This gives competitors twice as long to tell their story, and keeps judging teams focused on a specific definable area instead of trying to get an overall whole. 2 judges for each crew. Total judges would be 6 compared to this year's 5. Maybe we could get a NASA engineer from Canaveral as a guest judge for innovation, for example? 

It sounds like anyone doing this well is already telling at least 2 stories to the judges if not 3, pointing to key factors in each area. This would reduce wear on the judges by allowing a tighter focus on each area, and more straightforward  for competitors, because they would know what area they have 2 minutes to talk about.

So, in a sense, yes - 120 presentations, but only the same content per team, in 2x the time overall. More time to tell the story,. only 40 per judging team (or less if competitors opt out of a phase of judging. With 2 minutes instead of 3, that might no longer be necessary anyway. Each set of judges would use 2/3 the contact time they do now. 

It feels doable to me, because the concours score is already broken up into the 3 categories, so why not break up the judging as well? It would make the event easier to scale to 50+ cars...

 - 

I’ve read through half of this thread before making this reply...

I took the 12 last year because it was a stock Miata with a different transmission in it. If I scored my car it might have gotten about a 9. I would have been hurt but then again after hearing and talking to Paul and dusterb13 prior to the banquet, I was quite content on taking the 12. After last yrs concourse bitching thread and those quick words at the banquet, I think I got it and it’s plain sight obvious how to make a good score. Take your 180 seconds and make a coherent public speech that hits as many points, there are 10 in total, that can’t be seen. The judges have eyes, ears, and fingers, use that to your advantage. If you can’t, you always will end up having a lower score.

I just hope my cam truck can get 12. It’s just a plain Jane v8 lowered mini truck.... 

Greg Smith said:

In reply to stafford1500 :

Steve, we’d really appreciate the breakdown for #16. Many thanks from the Birthday Boyz....

Greg,

It is now getting a few days on from the event and my memory of each car is getting more cloudy as the days go by, but here is what I gave you for scores: Innovation 2, Execution 6, Presentation 3. So the car must have looked clean and neat, and the story at least average. It would seem the build tended more toward a 'stock' car with effort put into the prep/cleaning for the concour. I hope that helps, but if you want more infor drop me a meassage and/or post a picture of the car to help jog my memory. Edit: Just double checking my notes and your car was the last in a line of rough;y 10 miatas in a row, there may have been some tougher juding a tthe end of that strecth. Also the Justang was next up and there was definitely a bit of a push to get to that car. Who you are parked next to may have an influence on your judging...

On the suggestion of seperate judging groups and splitting the segments apart: the judging group is sheparded by David Wallens to help handle time management. Seperate groupd would require extra shepards. The judging group is a large enough group to help alleviate any extreme scores (my scores were generally lower than the other judges). Having 'specialists' judge the segments would likely reveal lower scores across the board since the story of the builds is difficult to break apart (there is always energy carried from one part of the story to the others, making it a complete story). I spend my working days with pro built racecars and see alot of room for improvement in Challenge builds based on my several decades of dealing with competitve professional builds, that may qualify me as a specialist in that respect.

Later,

Steve Stafford

In reply to stafford1500 :

Thanks for your input and, yes... being the last Miata of 4-5 and right before the Justang was not an ideal location. This was Christopher's first time doing something likt this and yes, the build is intended to become his daily driver once he has his license. I wanted to see him do the presentation and hopefully come out with >12. your 11 score is fair, but glad there were others in our case to help the average.

Thanks for your input on my idea - David did a great job getting the 3-minute session started and a "not talking very much" teen to tell the story of his car.