Picking World Challenge Venues- first in a series

This post is the first of several that will analyze the responses to our World Challenge XIX on-line survey; this first one will address the Myrtle Beach venue, and compare and contrast it to our five-year stint in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas offered a number of attractions, not the least of which is the ambiance of an internationally-recognized venue. Fremont Street, with its $100M, five-and-one-half block long VivaVision is an incredible backdrop for the show. Everyday, 25,000 people walk under the impressive canopy, providing us with a built-in audience. Hotel accommodations are literally at the doorstep and the pricing was very attractive. However, Las Vegas is not without its distractions. Specifically, to get to your room, you need an Air-Pak®. There is no place to erect our own Tent City and bunker gear cannot be strewn about, impeding the very narrow corridors for the foot traffic. We work diligently to keep the epoxy-coated surface dry and strategically place “Water Hog” mats to mitigate against the slip hazards.

We are also required to provide the casinos with unobstructed access to their bars and we cannot encroach on the entrances to the casinos. The nightly show takes a almost 10 minute bite out of every hour of competition since we have to shut down our operations while the VivaVision goes live. Getting course helpers is also a major challenge. And then, some people just don’t like the atmosphere.

Myrtle Beach, on the other hand is “family friendly” and far less intense. For a week, we owned a parking lot of some several hundred thousand square feet, thereby allowing lots of living rooms for the small army of day-campers. The infrastructure was the best ever with great assistance provided by Horry County, Myrtle Beach, the National Guard and the Civilian Emergency Response Team. Aside from the orientation of the tower (regrettably placed under heavy overcast), this perfectly flat venue provided a platform for tons of personal and new World Records.

The crowd distinguished themselves from the Las Vegas spectators in that these were people who were invested in the event. They stayed till the end. We had bleachers for nearly everyone. And to prove how dialed in the audience was, when Clayton County set the new World Record, they knew it before we could announce it. While some of you commented that this was just a “glorified Regional,” I would disagree. The vast majority of the respondents greatly preferred Myrtle Beach over Las Vegas.

When people complained about costs, they did not provide any details. I do know that lodging deals were very attractive. Airfare pricing might be what people are referencing. Since 48% of attendees drove (a new high), then the other half took an airplane. Getting way out ahead of the typical escalation of costs is the best way to mitigate the expense. Wherever we are going in 2011, we’re going to give you plenty of “heads-up” time to do some price shopping.

We recognize that we simply cannot satisfy everyone’s first place selection. Some of you will vote with your feet. If due to other factors beyond our individual or collective control your selection is not available, we apologize.

There are a lot of factors involved in selecting sites for hosting the World Challenge, the first being that the host actually wants you. In the context of all the acts in Las Vegas we are a very small event and hence, the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CVB) does not provide any financial support. This is a very expensive event to put on. Myrtle Beach CVB and their partners collectively raised half of our operating costs.

Go to the head of line.

2010 Season Ends

My New Year’s resolution is to provide timely content here on the Blogspot. For starters, I’m going to parse out some postings on the results of our on-line, post WCXIX Competitor Survey. We had an unprecedented 46% return rate- a statistic that validates the interest and enthusiasm of our athletes. Over 170 individuals took the time to write a message about what you liked and didn’t like. I’m going to divide my summary into the following categories. 1. Venues: Myrtle Beach vs. Las Vegas. 2. Site Specific accolades, improvements and suggestions 3) Protocols and Procedures (i.e., how we organize the competition and 4. Rule changes.

One down, 20-something to go...

Season Kickoff and Update

Start System

In the minds of some, the new Christmas tree is a major change but a more careful inspection reveals little has changed. Contrary to what you may have believed, touching the High-Rise Pack was never allowed. The major difference now is that competitors no longer have to depress a pressure switch with their hands. Instead, you stand on the 3’ long pad. We’ve taken out the human element of the start. Every race starts the same way, to the same count. As soon as both competitors are on the pads, the computer automatically stages the race and the lights start the count down. Check out the video posted on our website for more details.

The 2010 Tour

Scheduling an event these days has been a challenge, to use a familiar word. This is a complicated process, made more complicated by the shortage of local sponsorship. In an ideal world, we’d have a national sponsor that would fill-in the void, supporting the shortfall for every venue. This would allow us to post a whole year’s schedule well in advance. Coordinating more than 30 active requests takes hundreds of telephone calls and almost 2,000 staff hours. So, until we can find a new national sponsor, we ask for your understanding and patience.

The Official Firefighter Combat Challenge Forum

We realize that we’ve not spent a lot of effort on our Forum, but this is going to change. Brandon Cunningham will monitor the Training category. Jackie Riedel is the staff liaison and will ensure that everyone’s questions are answered. It’s incredibly easy to use- one mouse click from the homepage. Create a user name/account and in a day, you can be posting. We’re very easy to contact- outside of the forum as well. We pride ourselves in being responsive- returning telephone calls or answering email as soon as possible.

Good To Go (G2G) Program

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and we certainly wouldn’t warrant that there’s only one way to prepare for the Challenge. We want to make everyone’s first event a success. It’s amazing what a few hours of hands-on training, under the tutelage of the likes of a David Bowmen can do for your first attempt. In a perfect world, we’d prefer to see everyone do a Tandem first before attempting a solo run.

The Keiser

It’s an established fact that the coefficient of friction of the Keiser sled changes with temperature. For this reason, every effort is made to establish a N-S orientation to keep both sides of the course in the sun. Like every sport other than say- bowling and pool, weather is a factor- and I’ve written on this topic numerous times before. Over the winter, we explored the use of heating elements that would keep the tray at a constant temperature, or at least at some standards number of degrees above ambient when temperatures were below 70°F. What we learned is that 110v is not going to work because we’re an all-weather event and electrocution is not an option. So, we’re going to have to explore the use of 12v as an alternative. In the meantime, as a multi-season, outdoor event, the elements will be a factor. Sorry.

Rules & Protocols

We’ve been fielding a few phone calls about the boot rule. This is not a change- only in enforcement. Regrettably, we have been lax and will be no longer. With the addition of the Over 50 Relay category, Jostens will provide Championship Rings, but rings for the Tandems will be dropped to offset the costs.

2010 Is Upon Us!

It was 20 years ago this month that the first ever Firefighter Combat Challenge was held at the University of Maryland’s Fire Rescue Institute in College Park. WTOP, the local CBS affiliate covered the event and the five municipalities that fielded teams. The winning time: 3:40!: posted by Lloyd Jackson of Prince William (VA) County. Just about everyone who participated has retired. Fire Chief magazine devoted a four page story and several full page color shots. The news piece was the springboard for DuPont to step up and fund our first national tour in 1992. FETN covered our World Challenge I the next year in Anaheim, CA, coincidental with the IAFC’s annual meeting. It’s sometime hard to believe what’s happened in the interim. All of the props from the first year would have easily fit into the back of a pickup truck. This season, we’re rolling out four towed trailers and a brand new drag-race style Christmas tree starting system. The fun goes on and on. New people and new places add to the pleasure of meeting some of the greatest people who walk on the face of this planet. Thanks for playing!

Have You Been Watching the Olympics?

Originally, the Olympics were about the athletes. The ethos of sport- higher, faster, stronger was easily understood by all. However, the Olympics have lost some of their allure, as member nations are not unlike major sports franchises: athletes giving up citizenship for a berth on a foreign county’s team. The Olympics were supposed to be about the individual athletes, but that’s not going to pay the huge production cost, so countries like Greece go bankrupt to put on a show that they can ill-afford. Long ago, the hometown team was comprised of local guys who had roots in the community. Now, it’s about the highest bidder.

In a nation where sports figures assume near god-like stature, one has to reflect on what is really important. Millions of people badly in need of exercise watch athletes badly in need of rest. Salaries bear sad testimony to our inverted value system. In a perfect world, first grade teachers should be at the top of the pyramid. Or as Lee Iacocca said, “Only the best would be teachers and the rest would have to settle for something else.”

But whether it’s a visit to the Dallas Cowboys palace with Mark Gist or Disney World last week, there are lessons that can be learned and transferred to make the Firefighter Combat Challenge better and better. Many Olympians have trained intensely for four years to get their 12 seconds in the limelight. Listening to the NBC commentary, I was making the comparisons between these world-class athletes and our own FCC Competitors.

Some of this stuff is heart-wrenching. A single slip and it’s all down the tubes. Things that are outside your control. Skiing down the side of the mountain at 60+ mph and catching an edge; inconsistency in the ice; white-out conditions; blizzards, melting snow, broken Zamboni’s and so on and so forth. And it’s not just at the Olympics. How about NASCAR’s premier race the Daytona 500? Having to stop the race for more than two hours to round up all the Bondo® in the universe to fix a pothole on the course. That cost NASCAR 17 million Fox viewers and a lot of prestige.

Just about all of the sports that happen outdoors have weather-related issues. Track and field will negate any wind-aided records. In golf, if you play in the morning, the greens are wet. Rodeo is animal-dependent. We all know about the NFL and their “go in any condition” policy. Plus, the kicking game becomes very much a crap-shoot with winds aloft having a huge part in the outcome. And speaking of outcomes, what about a blown call changing the winning team- a factor that occurs with annoying regularity.

Baseball calls it quits as soon as it starts to rain, but again wind and temperature have a lot to do with what happens with the long fly balls. So, outside of bowling, curling, billiards and a few other hermetically-controlled indoor sports, weather, time of day, etc. are a part of sport. Even in drag racing, a pretty much, straight-ahead, reaction-time activity has their preferred lanes.

So what’s the take-away? We carry close to 200,000 pounds of stuff over 35,000 miles each year and set-up more than 20 times the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge with a consistency that sees a guy like Joe Horton come within seconds of his PR at each race. We strive mightily to tweak the rules to be unlike basketball; i.e., “keep the officials out of it.”

Weather, especially rain can impact traction. As a parking-lot based sport, we are held hostage to the surface that the host can provide. Sometimes, we’re square in the middle of downtown, between the curbs on Main Street. Or, under the $100M VivaVision on Fremont Street in Las Vegas. We walk a balancing act between providing the viewing public with a great show or sequestering ourselves to obscure locations with great traction. Difficult choices sometimes. We are well aware that the coefficient of friction of the thermoplastic gliders on the Keiser Forcible Entry Simulator, i.e., “the Slammer” changes with temperature. We are driven by our relentless pursuit for perfection in an imperfect world. In the grand scheme of sport, we run a pretty consistent and professional contest.

“Everyone’s a critic” is an epitaph that is frequently heard in all walks of life and certainly has applicability in sport as proven by the sports pages. There are a lot of gainfully employed reporters who make a pretty good living criticizing. But, we’re looking for solutions. Our search for perfection is not driven to make things easier; it’s to make them the same. The “level playing field“ is a reference that is based on sport and it’s a part of our mission.

Your dedication does not go unnoticed. Similarly, in fulfillment of our obligation, we invest thousands of dollars and man-hours to continually improve the platform. We just want to provide you with the stage that you deserve to showcase your talents to our stakeholders: the taxpayers who foot the bill for the best fire protection that we can provide. As the Olympics came to a conclusion, I couldn’t help but reflect on how so many of you train with the intensity of the world-class athletes that you are. I’m sorry that there are not million-dollar endorsements awaiting your successes. But I believe that there are great rewards that transcend the receipt of a medal. There are actual people walking around today that would not have been able to do so without your intervention. That’s something that you can live with.

FFCC.TV

We have an incredibly visual sport. I’m not sure that I fully appreciated how visual until picking up a video camera this year and attempting to create video shorts from each event. We need more cameras to capture all the action. This has been a lot of fun putting these clips together for these first four events. I marvel at the technology that allows you to do on a laptop computer what used to take a $250k editing suite. We’re employing some very talented videographers and will continue to improve the quality and interest of each of the postings. We’re spending a lot of effort on this project because we believe that there’s an audience for what you do. Speaking of which, the opening remarks by Chief Rich Collins of the Osceola County Fire Department were the most inspiring ever. He’s now on YouTube and will be incorporated into our newly launched TV website: FFCC.TV. Everyone needs to hear Chief Collins and we’ll do our part.

Our next step is to begin the daunting task of capturing and cataloging all of the Firefighter Combat Challenge video at one location. We invite all of you very creative amateur video producers to put a short feature together and bring it to the rest of the Challenge competitors. Watch the Hot News for details on how you can add value to our sport.

Part 1: Firefighter Combat Challenge and TV

Part 1: Firefighter Combat Challenge and TV

In 1992, at our inaugural championship, FETN did a 30-minute special feature that was distributed to their satellite customers. In 1993 we were on ESPN and stayed there for 10 years with a one-hour show. For a variety of reasons discussed below, our show was not renewed and we have subsequently moved to Versus.

The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with an overview of how television works, how we fit into the equation and what are our plans for the future. As always, every Challenge competitor is solicited for his or her opinion and suggestions on how we can grow the sport. So, here goes.

TV comes in two flavors; network and cable/satellite. Advertisers pay for production costs and content is freely distributed with the hope that viewers will purchase their product. With cable, the subscriber pays for content with some channels also subsidized by commercials.

Sport on TV is an interesting model. Because some sports are so attractive to the masses, sponsors will provide lots of money to associate their product with those qualities that we hold so dear- strength, speed, etc. Professional sports attract varying levels of paid attendance. The rights-holders (team owners) can command large sums of money to control access to their events. They do this through ticket sales as well as broadcast rights. The Firefighter Combat Challenge does not have sufficient general, or even special market appeal to command a gate (the money you pay to get in). Until we are able to demand that people pay to see our act, we’re going to be severely limited in what we can do on TV.

Academic sports as differentiated from professional sports are actually the farm system for the majors; ergo they command a gate. Minor sports (wrestling, track, etc.) are able to sometimes collect a fee if sufficient friends and relatives come to watch the event and are held hostage. This simply analogy to other organized sports and the Firefighter Combat Challenge should help your understanding as to where we are when it comes to bargaining for visibility in an already cluttered field of entertainment. Said another way, while our Challenge competitors may have the fitness of world-class athletes, there are insufficient numbers of people in the general market to command an entrance fee.

If you saw the first Firefighter Combat Challenge appearance on ESPN, I doubt that you would have been impressed. We’d like to think that we’ve come a long way. But, the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge is not in a category where the viewing public will pay to attend or even pay to watch it on VOD. So how can we change that? Well, as always, we’re open to your thoughts on what you think that the masses- not your family or friends would like to see. Keep in mind, TV is about audience appeal, and audiences vote with the remote at the speed of light. Don’t like this program?, no problem, there are hundreds of others to surf through.