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

Uhhmmm, what can we do better to make it possible?

Absolutely it is. Bar none. And there is a lot of value in that - value that could be extracted to help find sponsors etc.

Disagree a bit.
Yes, the expense is hard, the ASO charges are incredible, (so much so that I chose to drive an extra hour or two a day to use wifi in the nearest town instead), and the controls they place over content will ruin your chances of having live footage, or footage even aired on the same day from each stage. that barrier is not insurmountable, but you will have to pay through the nose.
However, having someone on the ground means getting people physically walking up to each tent in the bivouac, interviewing, transcribing, writing a story and uploading. I was doing it for six people (only the Aussies) in 2010 and 2011, and it took me about 4 hours each day. Given that most of them roll in at different times, you end up usually just waiting for the last guy and then it's all finished 15 minutes after that. You could cover a lot more stories if you focussed only on storylines, not individual people. You could save a lot of time by purchasing the ASO bandwidth, and uploading audio instead of video.
What I did this year with Storify was a bit of an experiment, but basically Twitter, Facebook etc are telling a lot more of the story these days. Your best bet coverage wise is to put one/two people on the ground for interviews which flesh out the stories, and one person compiling from the day's run of F5, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and Facebook traffic.

Not very, but that's why you should put in an actual media accredited person. Don't forget, anyone with a team can't go to places like stage finishes or anything. That is only practical some of the time anyway, but my best interviews I took at stage finishes, not in the bivouac.

Not without a helicopter of your own!

Finally, on the funding thing. Looking for a sponsor is a good option. The other option is click-through ads or even view ads, but from memory the latest going price for internet ads is $US28/1000 unique visitors.

That means with three ads on each page you need just under a 300,000 unique visitors to hit $25,000. << That's hard if run in a forum format. You would need to branch out to a separate site, with SEO and everything else.

I'm not a well-known person on F5 so I hope I don't sound like an upstart. I have been on the ground twice at the Dakar, and I was the editor of speedtv.com.au, so I feel like I can talk on this subject.

Next year:

I like to see who is riding together at wp cp ass points
We know starting times, WP CP times.

How can we make that visual?

Any idea?

Even live tracking would be great, we are going to see it at many of the rally's this year and whilst there is a several minute delay it's still pretty good solution.

There can't be too much money involved if they do it through the year and having the public following some 3-5 minutes behind is hardly going to influence the rally, and if it does, well good luck to any competitive rider who could actually turn it into an advantage, personally I thing they would lose time trying

If I can find the time, I'd love to map the course again (with help from BlueBull and others). With that, we can have a Google Earth or Google Maps type map image, with the WP & CP exactly marked along the course. With a bit of creative programming, we can place rider icons on the map at the WP & CP when their timing shows they arrived there. Then, given each rider's average speed (based on previous stages and current CP/WP times), we could "predict" ahead where along the course each rider should be at any moment. In this way we could have a great visual representation of where each rider is, as well as what type of terrain they are going through at any given moment. In escence, we could follow the race as if each of us were in our own helicopter chasing riders. And we can do it even without ASO providing it!

If the tracking was all access, then the ASO couldn't take care of their friends.

This would be great! A graphic representation of the riders on the ground, basically a one axis graph with the latest "Stage Hours" would be enough to understand at a glance who is riding with who.

Mischa already integrated the overall stage results graphics, I am sure he could produce something like that for "Stage Hours" that would represent "riders on the ground". The thing is that he does if for free, he should consider charging something for advanced features.

Anyway, after these graphs, the next step would be to animate them ! An animated version (depicting the staggered departs at DSS, and the stage hours at each WP and CP, ending with Hours at ASS would be a fantastic way to understand how a stage went.

You geeks might be going to far.

Animated depictions. Re-enactments?

I'm just picturing an anime Cyril Despres with the soul patch and the Red Bull headband... oser

With english subtitles, of course.

Any CGI pros in the crowd?:eek1

Fully understand the anomalies that seem to occur, but even amongst the elite there is often a lack of consistency, or things which are "missed"

I think we all agree that it is now totally a 2 tier product, not that there should be differing rule interpretations, but perhaps there shouldn't be the level of paranoia over what it ostensibly cheating - the risk is totally theirs and a bit more F5 fun in looking for it

Fly us all down there and have rental bikes to watch the race in person!

As I mentioned before, during the race even drivers of trucks are texting, they get wp and cp times of competitors.
So some nearly crashed this year because of that, lost there front screen.

The problem is the combined stages, bikes drive first, set track, single person during the race no time for text reading or texting. The problem lays by the cars/trucks, now knowing the bike route.
When dakar was only a bike race, the irrtrack visual was on.
or the split stages car then truck, car set track. same problem advantage for trucks.

Are there some possiblities by phone tracking?

2015 is past, .................less viewers did we do something wrong?

Don't you f5#¤%in' ever sleep Myway...????




Take a break mate, we can link this to the bivvy thread in a week or so... after everyone's got som rest and flushed the salt out of their ovaries...

For now, be content with a job well done my friend... for it was that - the 2015 f5 Dakar was a big success, now it's time to relish the taste of the champagne.


Back to work on monday...

I stumbled over this thread looking for the view list and I just got up eating my bread slices.
Just give it a bump. Finding a tread later is more difficult.

Hoped the OpenRallymap got more body this year, but you can not push, let it happen.

As a long time lurker, is actually my first time following the Dakar via F5 and its been great, infos/backstage etc.
I want to see a specific sub-forum for next year as many suggested but what i really want to see is a Q&A style thread, or something like this that explains that basics of the race (Category, stages, bivouacs, liaisons, penalties, slang terms etc) as a first timer following Dakar that would help so much.

Thanks for the experience i look forward for next year.

One might need a whole sub-forum for that, with a variety of threads in each. Maybe all locked?

For example, here's "Rally University", which is exactly the TYPE of thing you're asking for, only it's specifically for RallyMoto type events (with cars, a la WRC) here in the US:

http://www.nasarallysport.com/main/Rally-University

You'll see there are about a dozen categories, and over a hundred different technical articles. In short... "you could write a book on it".

So the trick is that often new guys think they just need the the two page FAQ. There's no way to know that's only the table of contents. *grin*

I'm certainly for the idea... but I think one should aim higher than "a thread". To fully execute would be a bigger project and why not aim for that? Honestly though, it will take two to four years to build such a thing. (Speaking as someone who's done it.)

Anders