Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with teams

Help me determine rate of imprement for my players!

TheManticore — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:28:55 -0800

I coach a high school soccer team. Each practice we go through a routine which involves repetitions of various skills. The number of repetitions accomplished by a player for each skill is recorded in an excel spreadsheet for ranking purposes. I want to determine the rate of improvement so the players can see their progress and who's improving most. Is there a simple excel function that would help me do this?

Water Polo Question

Chele66 — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:34:20 -0800

My son wants to play water polo in his freshman year of high school this August but has never played. Does he have a chance of making a team. What kind of training is done to start this sport... swimming laps? treadmill..??

Making the most of meetings so we don't have to meet again

brandnew — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:08:06 -0800

How do I become a better facilitator / collaborator? I facilitate a lot of meetings between teams of technical collaborators. The majority of the teams are fairly young (under 30), and they usually have great ideas. However, they will often come up with ideas that are way too complex or way too simple. I usually have to step in and judge their ideas and redirect the conversation.

This role feels uncomfortable. I feel like a lot of times I'm squashing their ideas. A lot of times they just go with what I say, because I say it. I don't get a sense that they believe what I'm saying. So, I have to go into detail about things, and it feels like I'm lecturing a class.

To be honest, I have more experience than most of them. I can understand their perspectives, as well as the current conventional wisdom. It's my responsibly to make a good judgment. Just because something is in style, doesn't mean it's a good idea.

However, I don't want to turn them off. I just want to be a good guide. And, I absolutely don't want them to blindly accept my ideas.

How do I become an expert at facilitating collaboration? How do I get more from a group than the sum of their individual controbutions?

What Is It About Soccer?

netbros — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:51:30 -0800

Please help me understand the immense popularity of soccer (football, futbol) worldwide. And ... ... why it still continues to languish in the United States. Like basketball, it seems like a constantly moving, fast-paced game that the American sports enthusiast should enjoy. The rest of the world has certainly figured that out. What is it about soccer that the world knows and Americans don't?

Pick your team (as long as its not the Yankees)

toaster — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:04:26 -0800

For those of you in areas that have multiple teams in the your area, like New York has the Giants and Jets, Chicago has the Cubs and White Sox, and Los Angeles has the Lakers and the Clippers, how did you choose which team to be a fan of?

Technologies in use within your organization?

bleucube — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:33:36 -0800

What technology do you used at your work place to communicate between workers / organizational members? Bonus points if you're on a Virtual Team. I need to collect some information for a school paper. I'm not sure who to turn to, so you're my only hope hive mind.

With your answer to the above question, please include (Short Answers are acceptable):

1. Company Name (can be left blank or make one up)

2. Which technologies have employees/ work teams in this organization used to help them in reaching a decision or accomplishing tasks?

3. Which technologies are available to these organizations (whether or not problem-solving groups are using them)? Do the technologies include the use of telecommuting by members?

4. If cost were not a consideration, which technologies would members of work teams or of these organizations in general prefer and believe would be an asset to meet complete tasks and meet goals?

Managing an Anothology Project

divabat — Fri, 30 May 2008 03:16:08 -0800

What should I take into consideration when spearheading an anthology project? What resources are out there for us? I'm organizing a book project to collect real-life stories related to the Others (non-Malay/Chinese/Indian, classified as "Other" on all official documentation) in Malaysia. This only started a few days ago, so it's all planning at this stage, but currently I've built up a great team and we're discussing issues on content, definitions, research, publication, and publicity.

While some of us in the group have some experience with publishing (as a writer, editor, or just part of the process somehow), none of us really have that much experience in starting, organizing, and managing such a project. I'm doing quite a bit of brainstorming to work out what we need to consider, but would like some ideas and tips in case I left anything out.

1. Publication - I've contacted a well-known socially-conscious (and somewhat alternative, but great for our target audience) local publisher, who is interested in looking at our manuscript when we're done. Their advice was to "just do it". This is great, but I'd also like Plans B, C, D, Etc.

How else can we find possible publishers, what should we look for in a publisher, and what should we ask them? Some in our group have suggested self-publishing - what should we take into consideration about this option? What other alternative options are there? (Malaysians, particularly our target readers, are quite web-savvy, but it is a bit difficult to purchase online due to Paypal/bank restrictions.)

2. Rights - how do we manage rights and contracts with contributors? I would like the contributors to keep the copyright to their works (and give an option for a Creative Commons license), but would this be a good idea overall? We're planning on field interviews (to get stories from people who won't necessarily write their own tales, such as older folk) and may possibly deal with translations - who gets the rights to those?

3. Finances - assuming we make money out of this, what would we do with the money? I don't think we'll ever make enough to pay each contributor individually (though that would be great!!). Donating the proceeds to an NGO would be great, but our topic is in-between niche and general and there isn't a specific NGO for Malaysian Others yet.

Also, I've heard a lot about how we shouldn't pay to get something published. If we're getting published through an established publisher, are there any costs we still have to look out for? We're thinking of possibly getting sponsorship - is it worth it? Would we need sponsorship? (Perhaps to cover costs of research and compilation?) Where would be good resources for money?

4. Timelines - what's a typical timeline for this project? I was thinking 6 months - get the Call for Submissions and guidelines ready within 3-4 weeks, get submissions for about 3-4 months, edit and compile and get everything ready for publication by Month 6. Is that realistic, or too short? What's normal?

5. Team needs - currently I'm scouting people for editorials, research/field interviews, publicity/promotions, website management, and logistics/finance/publishing. What other skills and roles would we need for a project like this?

Are there any resources for managing a project like this? I've seen plenty of books and articles on non-fiction writing, but those tend to assume you're the sole writer. Any resources on managing anthologies?

Thanks so much!

Where to find software developers looking for creative joy?

brandnew — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:41:04 -0800

Help me find sites where I can meet up with other people interested in developing software for fun or for profit I've been developing enterprise business software for about 10 years and lately really feeling the burnout. But, over the years I've been filling a mental bucket with interesting, useful, or just experimental software ideas. Unfortunately, I've never found the time, energy, or knowledge to turn most of these ideas into reality. I don't have a good network of colleagues to

I need a team of people, a team of unpretentious hackers (or business-types, designers, artists, etc.) with similar crazy ideas. Just some people who don't mind brainstorming and experimenting together just for the whole pleasure and art of it.

There has got to a ton of sites out there like this. But, what are they?

Also, open source projects don't really fit the bill - because I'm mainly looking for the people not necessarily the projects.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is team leader

yerfatma — Thu, 11 May 2006 08:41:16 -0800

"Managing" the development of an application: I'm the lead developer on a project that has swelled to 6 people. How do I smartly break tasks up into discrete chunks, assign them to people, get accurate estimates of how long it takes someone else to do something and track their progress? I realize each piece is a Holy Grail of development unto itself. I have trouble enough providing accurate estimates for my own work, let alone that of someone junior to me I've never worked with before. I'm just hoping to get ideas on how other people have managed to herd a bunch of other developers while maintaining a consistent project vision and writing some code of your own.

The project is being written in C# in Visual Studio 2005 if that helps. There's an object model and I've tried to use that as the foundation of breaking things into discrete pieces ("discrete" here being a stand-in for "something someone can work on without interfering with someone else"), but I'm doing a lousy job of it.

Also, should I feel guilty about not writing enough code? The overhead to this is way more than I imagined, so I don't know if I should concentrate more on making everyone else write good code or trying to lay enough foundation in front of them they can't fuck it up too badly. I don't want to be The Architect who thinks great thoughts and never gets his hands dirty, but I don't know if doing both is feasible either.

What should my volleyball team be named?

orange swan — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 08:46:45 -0800

Help me name my (soon-to-be-ex, I fervently hope) volleyball team. I figure that after the way I caused us to be defeated three times last night, the least I can do (besides recruiting another player who doesn't suck as much as me) is supply a great name for our as yet unnamed team. Right now we're known by the uninspiring "Wednesday 7B".

Do your worst, MeFites. Wordplay and puns are welcome. Don't bother getting too off-colour though, as the league officials frown on that.

Set 'em up, sport.

box — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:07:11 -0800

Which sports-team names are references to drugs or alcohol? I already thought of the Durham Bulls, Milwaukee Brewers, Purdue Boilermakers and Philadelphia Phillies. I'm interested both in teams like the Bulls, which were named after a tobacco company, and the Phillies, where the name only became a drug reference after the team had been around for years. What other examples are out there?

Hello, my name is...

nelleish — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 12:56:33 -0800

Get-to-know-you games you actually enjoyed playing? I'm the program coordinator for one of the volunteer services on my campus. We have a training day next Saturday where the new volunteers will be sitting around listening for a good part of the day but with chances for half hour to hour breaks in between speakers. We want to play some good meet-and-greet and teambuilders that aren't too contrite or dull or over done. I'm sure everyone has played enough of these. This is a volunteer commitment for the year, so we'd like to start off on a good foot with hopefully jump-starting some friendships or at least friendly feelings amongst the group so folks enjoy coming in for their volunteer shifts.

So what meeting games have you played (in whatever context, although these are university students of diverse backgrounds so the games must be "clean") that you didn't feel annoyed at being made to do and maybe you actually made a connection with someone while doing? I can acquire props if they might be needed!

Sports team owners

nyterrant — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 04:14:03 -0800

Could someone point me to a list of current professional sports team owners, especially owners of NFL and NBA teams? Googling keeps bringing up fantasy football sites. I want to learn more about some of the personalities behind the big leagues, so any sites with links to biographical information would be most helpful.