Loading summary
Transcript70 lines
- [00:01]
Moraine Ploch
Welcome to the kitesurf 365 podcast.
- [00:04]
Eric
Welcome back to the show. I hope you all had a great weekend. Today I'm joined by Moraine Plok and we talk win games. Honestly, this is an amazing tool. I think it's going to be incredible for your local kite scene and its simplicity is compete, connect and conquer. And we're going to cover all of that today. Don't forget to follow me at kitesurf365 for all the latest episodes. Ladies and gentlemen, my marine Ploch. Moraine. Welcome back to the show, buddy. How you doing?
- [00:38]
Moraine Ploch
I'm doing awesome. I'm in Tarifa. I had a night out yesterday but made it home back in time and feel quite fresh. So it's good.
- [00:48]
Eric
Mate. How's the injury feeling? I mean, I know you are back riding in Cape Town. Are you back to 100% and super comfortable with it now?
- [00:55]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, it's not super comfortable. I still feel daily. It's not pain but I just feel the surgery or like the rope they put in. But I've been having a really good help from Bruce, my physio, who's been giving me the perfect exercises. It's a bit boring. I'm basically jumping on one leg for an hour. But it's helping a lot with daily pain management.
- [01:18]
Eric
Well, mate, I hope it starts to feel better. Are they going to do more surgery to remove the stuff that's in there or that's just going to be left in?
- [01:27]
Moraine Ploch
No, it's going to be left in. So when I went to the surgeon, he said we either put a screw or we put a rope and the screw eventually you take out if you're doing active sports. But the rope you leave in and the rope also gives you straight away the flexibility to start moving like a week after surgery. So it's a way better type of surgery but it'll stay in forever. So I just have to let the muscles in my foot get used to that. There's something there.
- [01:52]
Eric
Anyway, we got you on to talk about Win Games. Let's get straight into it. What are the Win Games and how do they integrate with surfer?
- [02:00]
Moraine Ploch
Well, the Win Games are basically. I don't know how many people that would be listening recall, but we used to do this racy space events with spaces, kite surfing, which would basically be. Yeah, we, we just sent, put a message on Instagram like, hey, if you're close, close by, come and we'll do like a max high challenge in, in each person's skill level or we do like, who's doing the most jumps? And we'd measure that with Surfer and then we just feed it into a spreadsheet and at the end of the day we use a spreadsheet to calculate it. And then the initial idea was to sort of make that into an automatic, automatic system so that we could sync the surf processions. And that sort of escalated into building a full scale app where I was like, it would be cool if everyone could do this without us having to be there. Because we got a lot of emails from kite clubs like, can you also come to our club to do this? And we were like, yeah, but we weren't really. We're not doing it to make money, but we're also like, okay, we need to sort of ask some money to do it because we can't go every weekend to a different place and organize it. So we'd rather, yeah, build something that they could use to organize it. So that's how it sort of came about. And at the moment it's like you could almost see it as like a companion app to Surfer. So where Surfer is the session tracking and sort of the social feed of your friend's session. The Win Games is the competition aspect of that. So if you want to compete then with your friends who's on Surfer, you can invite them. So it's really interconnected. Like you can connect your Surfer account and basically see your friends activity, et cetera. Also in the Surfer app, what they're doing on Win Games.
- [03:35]
Eric
Has kite surfing lagged behind other sports when it comes to digital integration?
- [03:40]
Moraine Ploch
I think in some ways, yes. Like kitesurfing is an individual sport and the fact that you can not. You, you always got kite with your friends, basically with your buddies, but you can't really interact with them on the water other than like waving or shouting at them if they're crashing or whatever. So I've always found that a bit of like something that's missing. And now with like being able to compete on the water and having some interaction or chatting with each other via the watch or whatever is giving you an extra layer of interaction, which I think is nice. And the people who've used the watch mode, for example, really stoked that they're like having another layer of excitement on top of their session.
- [04:19]
Eric
We really saw an action at Lords of Tram. How was the feedback from the riders and the viewers? Because as a company you want to get feedback, right? That's how you improve your product overall. Everyone was stoked with the product and the way it turned out.
- [04:33]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, the majority of feedback I get is that they really like it, which is nice feedback, but it's not really that useful of course. So I always try to ask like further, like, okay, what if this was there or what if, what if? Like, is there anything you could think of? And like Lewis gave some nice feedback from, from the commentator perspective. We got some nice feedback from the writers, got some nice feedback from the organization because they're also logging into the same system basically getting all the information and the media side. But it's always hard getting feedback from the, from the people watching the live stream. I guess if there's like no real negative thing that they couldn't really follow what was going on, that's a positive because we're trying to bring graphics to the stream that make the, and like the show a bit more comprehensible if you're watching from a remote side like in Nordestram. Now we added this countdown, this 42nd countdown to the attempt, which I think adds a little bit of a layer of excitement because you know, the rider has to perform within that amount of time and, and just I think the graphics should not really be intrusive. Like you should almost not notice the graphics and just intuitively know, okay, this person is reading or this was going on or, and, and sort of can focus on, on the tricks.
- [05:43]
Eric
The Win Games has been active before, right. Going back to Cold Hawaii. It was there, but this was the first time we really saw it in full show. It was sort of running in the background of Cold Hawaii. This is the first time we had access to look at the scores to, to follow along. As you say, if you want to be more involved, you can be.
- [06:00]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, yeah. And it was also like fully migrating the whole system from Surfer to the Win game. So usually we build, custom build something in the Surfer data or into server backends to facilitate whatever competition we were doing. And now we try to build something that is fully built on the Win Games platform so that other organizers in future could do this without us being, being there or needing us to set everything up. Like basically it's built like a copy paste the whole system. Now that if you're wanting to organize a competition and let's say you also have what watches, you can just create an account and do it and that hopefully will like lower the amount of effort it takes to run a competition because it's still like a lot of effort logistically to run a competition.
- [06:48]
Eric
Let's speak about The Michael Shipper vs Lewis Krathan because they spoke about having that little melee challenge and Lewis referenced it a bunch of times. And myself and Colin are, you know, thinking, or we're thinking of doing one in Mykonos. I think this is going to be one of the best parts of it. You know, like you were saying, making competitions accessible. I really, really think that that's really cool because, okay, it's okay to come off the water and look at your jump height, but when you're on the water, there's nothing better than throwing it in someone's face when they see you've jumped higher than them, you know?
- [07:16]
Moraine Ploch
Exactly. It was funny because yesterday I was kiting here in Tarifa and there were two, two girlfriends of mine who beat me. I did a competition with Stino and them and some other people in Tarifa. They were like facetiming me afterwards, straight away, like cheering, like they beat me. And me and Stino on the water were sort of losing sometimes focus on Castino needs to train or when I'm with Cohen or Gil, they need to train and sometimes they're losing focus and just trying to jump higher to beat me or to be someone else. Uh, and also the video we made with Mike in, in, in Cape Town, it was really like I stayed on the water for three hours. If we did the three hour competition, I would only leave the water until I knew I had won or I couldn't do anything else. I was like, it's like, yeah, I don't know, it's. It's addictive.
- [08:08]
Eric
What do you see the impact on the community with this sort of challenge? Do you see everyone doing this and this becoming a regular part of people's sessions?
- [08:15]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, it, it really depends also on if there's organizers at people spots that wanted to pick something up. In the Netherlands, we have a lot of communities are being built at the moment. For example, the Water Sports association of the Netherlands is building a community on basically all the major kite spots. And there we really see like big engagement, like 70 people competing in this competition. And when they go out and then it's sort of a snowball where people are competing and then people are not from the competition, are like, oh, what are you guys doing? And then they see, okay, they're reading and this and this. And the whole idea and why we also built the app and the whole website is that it's like as easy as possible to join. So there's like no sign up or email or whatever. You just download the app, log in with your server and you can join. There's like no registration needed. So I see a lot of potential for it on, on like the major kite spots because it just brings an extra level of fun. And you can also do these other styles of competitions where it's more like how many jumps you do or how many total height you jump, which is a bit more accessible if you're competing with people who are not your level. And then we have like a ranking system that also gives you a bit of. Yeah, if you're not as good as your friends, you can still, if you come close, get a high ranking and improve your ranking, basically.
- [09:32]
Eric
Let's talk about other metrics in a second. But do you see or do you foresee people gaining some sort of notoriety off the SAP? Because if we look at your competitors, they have their own sort of competition which runs over a month and people in that have made names in this industry, you know, I, Kite boarding and Timo Martin, they've become names that people know. And do you sort of see the same thing happening with the Wind Games?
- [09:56]
Moraine Ploch
I'm not sure to what extent the Wind Games itself will do major running events. I think we'd like to sort of make the local legend shine. So we, I, I'm not gonna necessarily push a very big global monthly competition by the Win Games itself, but there, there will be brands or there will be big organizations who will do that and then they will sort of crown their, their champion and that can be, it can be a kite club in Zandvoort with 30 members and they'll have their, from their community, their local legend and it can be a kite brand who is picking the, the most like fanatic writer for their brand who is doing the most amount of competition challenges. And it's sort of, it's not about that. We as Wind Games would crown win one champion. Maybe in the future we will do that but it's that we give the communities that are out there with guiding a tool to sort of engage more with, with their community and with people who want to interact with their brand or with their, with their club or. Yeah. Want to be part of something.
- [10:59]
Eric
I'm always telling people like your local legends or you know, in the industry, the, the key opinion leaders as they call it. I think they're really important in this industry because you know there's a big gap between those top guys and your local people on the beach and you know that there's, there's people you go out kiting, they don't have no idea what's going on. Actually you'd be Surprised how many, how little most kiters know about what's going on at the competition level. I reckon this is a great way to sort of bridge that gap. You know, I think this could really benefit brands as well.
- [11:26]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, we've been talking to, to a lot of the brands and, and sort of trying to see in what way they. They want to approach it. So we had, for example, a big event in, in Holland with Vantage guides. We had some different divisions. And yeah, we also say to Brazier, if you just have a demo day, if you add a competition element to it and you can just test the gear while you're competing, it also adds something extra. And it's like built in a way that in one minute you can set it up and invite people. So I think brands will engage with it as well, but each in their own way. Like, some will create these big global challenges where you can win some gear, like Nash is doing, for example, at the moment, that you can win their new cycle. I'm not sure if the challenge is live yet, but it's coming. And Advantage has been doing those smaller events locally and then north is doing like a small challenge now at Defi Kite. So each brand has their own, has their own approach, but I think it's an interesting tool as well for the brands to engage a bit more.
- [12:24]
Eric
How do I sign up? If I go down the beach, how do I get my friends involved? How long does it take? Let's say the wind's pumping. We all want to get on the water, but we want to have a little bit of fun to see who's the king of the day. How long is that going to take to set up?
- [12:39]
Moraine Ploch
If you just download the app, it should be like five button presses to get a competition going or four. So you sign up with the Surfer account if you have one. If you don't have one, you can create one. And then to invite your friends, it's like a link. So either that if they have the app, they'll open the app straight away and join. If they don't have the app, they'll get prompted to download it. So we've made joining super easy. So that basically within, like one minute, you could set a competition. Set up a competition and then you could choose like 30 minutes or up to three hours and whichever format you want and then get going.
- [13:11]
Eric
You and I are riding against each other. I do a jump, 8 meters and it comes up on the watch. If you do a high jump, it pops up on my watch or someone else beats it. So it's showing the, the top score all the time.
- [13:22]
Moraine Ploch
No, it shows the top three, basically. And then also if you're not in the top three, it shows who's above you and who's below you. So it sort of switches between the two leaderboards. It's, it's basically the same as the watch scoring we've built for the Red Bull and the UK competitions. But then it has, of course, way more changing of the leaderboards because we're getting like, these competitions where there's 100 people joining in the Netherlands there, and they're all doing one jump a minute or one jump every two minutes. The whole leaderboard is shifting the whole time. So it's. It was actually also quite hard to build this infrastructure, but it's built in such a way that, yeah, as soon as someone lands a bigger jump, you'll get knocked down. And you also see like, oh, you're down two positions or you need to try harder or a. This person just joined the competition by jumping 10 meters, whatever. So it's, it's. It's a bit hard to explain it until you've tried it. Then you see like, okay, this is, this is how it works.
- [14:16]
Eric
You mentioned Red Bull. Is the goal to get into Red Bull King of there. Is that an option? I mean, I know, I know that's a pretty tough cookie to crack.
- [14:24]
Moraine Ploch
I think the goal would be that we can facilitate them in whatever way they want. And that's also the approach we, we take to the, to the, to the competitions. Like, we're not a sponsor of the event, or we're not a brand who's going to partner with the event to promote our product. We want to support the storytelling that they want to do for their competition. So we approach. And especially Red Bull, there are a lot about storytelling. GK wants the technology for having as accurate scoring, having as much information Red Bull wants to have as good of a story in the industry, and we facilitate the tools that make that happen. So it's, it's sometimes hard to translate how a brand like Redbook could interpret our data, to present it in a way that's going to enhance the viewer experience. But that's what we tried to do. And we did a pilot, this King of the air, where sometimes there was. Was jump height shown and they really pick when they want to highlight jump heights. So when they feel like, okay, this is an impressive stat, they want to be able to pull it up and we just deliver the data and we have no. The amount of, okay, we want you to show it this amount, this amount of time because we feel like we are just almost like a data service provider and they get to choose when they want to want to place the data in order to enhance their storytelling. Basically.
- [15:42]
Eric
What are the metrics? Does the win games give you obviously jump height? Everyone knows that one. Does it, does it give you more metrics as well?
- [15:50]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, of course. We have every telemetry information about the jump. So we are like looking also more into the moments in the jump, like when they reach the highest point, when they've got a downloop that brings them further like their travel distance, other information about the jump. We're looking into ways into like how we could present that as well. But we also feel like jump height is the major thing that people want to know. Also if there's a competition without jump heights or there is a jump without jump heights, that was super high. People often are asking like they want to know because they also want to correlate the trick score with the jump height and just know what's going on. Like a lot of people are fixated on height. So this is the major, major one that we deliver. But if we see a demand for other information, I'll try and look into ways into, into presenting that as well.
- [16:43]
Eric
When we saw it in Lords of Tram, a few incidents come to mind. Why does the watches all turn off when there's a big crash? Isn't that favoring the person who's crashed? Shouldn't it be the other way if you crash, it's your issue.
- [16:56]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, we've, we've thought about it a bit, but we also don't want to put any pressure on the athletes for crashing and make. Of course you don't want to crash as an athlete, but especially like if you say, okay, if you crash only you don't get scores and the rest do we put like an other, in my opinion, unnecessary pressure on the rider and the reason it actually goes offline is that when you start body dragging and this is my hand goes underwater for more than five to 10 seconds, the radio signal just disconnects. So like a quick in and out is fine. And we've actually, we're also in touch with the hardware dev behind the Apple watch to try and get like, how can we make this better? And actually in a recent update the watch does automatically reconnect after five minutes. So in Lortotran and, and also in, in Red Bull we saw the watch reconnect itself. But that's, that's the only crux of what we have. And I don't want to put too many intrusive like you. You could put a phone in your wetsuit like what we had before, but it's not super comfortable for the athlete. And, and no less intrusive it can be for the athlete the better. And we also decided we're going to turn off scoring for everyone if someone crashes, because we don't want to necessarily put that pressure on the rider that crashed. Like they're the person that's responsible so they don't get scores and the rest do.
- [18:21]
Eric
But isn't that what you're doing? Because especially for example, like if you're in that three spot, right, and you're looking to upgrade to get into next round, you know, you need to know where you are. You need to know. And if someone crashes now, then. Then you're riding blind. Look, I understand you have to ride tall. The end. You have to ride till the end of the heat. I mean, are these all things you guys are considering and you're working on? And I mean, I'm sure you guys are thinking about this as well, right?
- [18:44]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, exactly. And I also ask a lot of rider feedback for it. It's not always super clear what the riders want because they don't really think about it. But until we have like a clear message from the rider, like, hey, we either do want it or we don't want to keep the scoring life, I'm going to keep it like this also, because this is what we agreed with the organizations. Like, this is what the most organizations want because they also don't want to run in a scenario where one writer says, hey, I had my scores and the other one did it. So we were like, the organizations also have this preference. So until I get like a clear message from riders that they'd want to flip that, I'm keeping it this way. But in most situations, they still have the opportunity to go back to the beach and check with their caddy. Of course, it's not ideal, but it's. The option is still there.
- [19:32]
Eric
Always take away the radios. Because we started to see radios working in the casati is using it. Do you think this will take that away? Because surely riding with, you know, something on your head is extra weight.
- [19:43]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, I think what they primarily use the radios for now is not necessarily the scores, but they'll say, okay, Finn did a trick which like the 8.5 he scored was this trick. So maybe they can say, okay, if you can do that trick, but better, then you'd improve that score and maybe they wouldn't, wouldn't have seen that trick because they were riding upwind. So I'm not sure. I don't think we'd replace the radios. But I'm also looking because you can do this voice communication with the watch that a rider could actually speak back, because now they're just here, they don't really talk back. But if you could have the watch to talk back and maybe even have this like, that the audience could also hear what they're saying. Like it's Formula One. Feedback could be interesting.
- [20:29]
Eric
Imagine that on stream. We're going into some rider conversation. I think that'd be awesome. I'd love to. By the way, I'd love to hear the Cosadis. I mean, speaking of the Casadis, we had a. Interesting incident with Lorenzo and Baby Shark. A lot of little problems that built up into something big. How is that not going to happen in the future?
- [20:45]
Moraine Ploch
I think we, we give so many, so much information nowadays to the athletes, which I think is really good. Like, the more information we can give, the more they can strategize. And what I've also heard from most of the riders is that they have so much more tools to really plan their heat. Where a few years ago you just, yeah, you'd go and you not really know what's going on, you're just full send, which also really entertaining. But now there's much more information. Like everyone's really calculated and especially in a competition like Loyal Tram, where you have all this time to talk to your caddy, strategize, see every single trick straight. It is as it comes in, have all this data, it brings way more visibility to the little mistakes. Not that there's been never little mistakes, but they're becoming more visible, which I think is good because when they are tackled, it's only improving the sport. So this situation we had with Lorenzo, there was just a mishap of, of the trick, calling the trick naming, which resulted in the trick name shifting after the heat, flipping the position, which is an unfair situation to Lorenzo because if, if he gets information like I'm second, I don't need to do anything. I'm the last person to do a trick in the heat. Basically, that was his argument. I have no, I have nothing to lose. I want to be second because I don't want to be against Leonardo, then that's misinformation from the. The scoring system side. And then there's a. There's an unfair result for him and we have to make a decision following the rule book to validate a protest like that. And. And that's how that situation happened. And I think it's, of course, not good that it happens. Like, there shouldn't be any mistakes, but there's just way more pressure on the judges. There's always pressure on the judges, but there's way more pressure on the judges to get it exactly right. And you have to imagine that they're scoring 28 tricks and they have to get it exactly right. And all of these guys are doing board Moses flips, contra met five, six rotations. You know, like, it's almost hard to keep up. And you have to. You sitting in that tower for 11 hours a day.
- [22:57]
Eric
I honestly believe they're the unsung heroes of all competitions. It's incredible what the judging is doing now. And they're getting better, right? The judging's getting better, yeah. And this is going to make them even better again.
- [23:08]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah. I still think there's so much to improve in the tower, bring technology in the tower, bring information into the tower. And I think there's just a bit more need also for the riders to really instigate that, because I don't also want to be. I don't think it's healthy as I'm. If I'm the only person really pushing for innovations and pushing for ideas, because then it's still. I'm. I'm trying to be as objective as possible, but only one person driving change is not healthy. And there should be a. I think, more and more riders and hopefully when we see this transition also, that we're seeing basically now of more and more younger writers coming into the. Into the competitions, maybe the older riders who either they choose, okay, I'm going to exit, or they can't get into the competitions anymore, will put effort into seeing ways that we can improve judging and also hopefully make with GKA or World Sailing Judge courses, that you can really get educated as a judge so that there will always be educated judges available for any competition. Now you're basically scraping to get five, six judges for the biggest competition in the world. For example, for Mykonos. Now I'm having to try to get, like, a really solid team, which I have now, but it's hard to. To find qualified people because there's also no, like, entry. Like, how do you become a judge? Like, basically, I didn't do anything. I just started judging and that's what all judges did. So it would be great if there's something that. That can happen that will. That will improve that, you know, can
- [24:41]
Eric
the writers game the system by using this technology. And you know, we speak of younger writers, you know, as younger writers come in right there, you know, they can use technology better. Let's be honest, these younger kids are much, they've been born with technology. Are they going to be able to use this to improve their writing and competing and game the system to make themselves a better competition writer?
- [25:04]
Moraine Ploch
I think they can use. Because I'm also, I'm also in the works of bringing this a bit into the wind games. It's very specific use case. Most people won't want to use it. But that you could sort of do practice heats and you could say I'm going to do a competition of 15 minutes against my friends. And then people watching could like pull up their phone and score whatever. I want to bring this in so that people could do that. For example, Max, Max Weldahl was, was, was also watching these competitions and I spoke with him like it could be cool, you know, if, if I could practice each and I could say, okay, I have 10 minutes and I do with one friend and we do this one v one. And I would really like to also improve on that. That they could do that and that they could, if they're here in Tarifa with three guys and they could just run a little, few hits, they could really practice that. And in that way I think it could game a bit, but it would just train their stress level to be able to perform a certain amount of tricks within a certain amount of time. Until we take any metric into scoring, there's no way basically to use the technology to, to advance yourself. I mean you still get judged by what the judges see and the technology is only there to give you information back and not really put any, any scores in. Basically.
- [26:21]
Eric
I'm really impressed by these young kids coming in Max and Martin. I mean they don't even seem to be worried at all. You know, we used to, you know, we used to have time these young kids would come in Moraine and we've seen over the years, let's be honest, that would always struggle. You'd struggle for a while till you got your confidence up and you had these guys are coming in riding high level comps and they just seem to be like it's water off the ducks back to them. It's crazy.
- [26:43]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, yeah. And I think also there's of course the world class kites academy, but there's also coaches like Nico Delmas and, and, and people in the sport that really build a foundation for these kids to prepare themselves to compete. And these kids all look up to these big names in these big competitions and the big riders. But once they're there, I'm really impressed by how well they step up. And also Aya Casabova, for example, like she's riding here in tariff and just so impressed. I'm all, all the time so impressed by how quickly they pick things up. I'm like so jealous. Like, okay. They have like no single, single grain of fear in their brain and they're just, okay, they see that trick. Ah, they're gonna do that trick. You know.
- [27:26]
Eric
You know, going back to what you're saying, it's like, you know, to, to gamify the system. It's a small use case, but like even to give you an example, on my boots, right, there's a bunch of guys who use surfer and at the end of the day they all come in and they're always looking all standing around looking at their watch. Ah, you know, I won. I think that's going to be its strength, right? You know, those guys can go out on the water all at the same time. That little Adrian's in the lead again. You know, I, I think that's going to be a lot of fun because it's instant gratification for a big jump.
- [27:54]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, exactly. And in a way also I hope that if this will catch on majorly in people who usually already do that, compete with each other. I also hope that it brings a little bit more traction to the competitions themselves. And I also, I'm building a way that you could in the app follow the major competitions and really get like notified when the live streams goes live. Because most of most people are interested in watching all of this, but they don't really follow it enough to know, okay, it's all now or the heats are starting now or this person is riding now because you really have to proactively follow these events to watch the live streams. And I think there's a bit, this is part of me is guessing, but I feel like there's a bit of a decline in the amount of interest there is in these big air competitions by the general public. I think the passionate K are still watching everything, but it's hard for some kiters to keep up and to, to know what's going on exactly when and hopefully when, when they'll be used. If they're using the Win Games app, we can give them a bit of extra information, like if they're following certain athletes on the app. Okay, they're following co on us. He's going live now so I can just watch his heat and maybe I stay because it's interesting and I hope that also elevates a bit of the amount of interest in, in the major competitions.
- [29:18]
Eric
By the way, I think notifications are really great. We did that on the original fantasy app, doing the notifications and I think generally people like that. Do you know how many times mate, I've sat in front of my computer? It's like next call, 15 minutes. I just want to put the computer down and just wait for my app. I've sat for hours. But I am one of those people who's highly invested in it. So I feel like, you know, I'll just keep sitting here waiting because, oh, it's going to be the next one. They're going to call it soon. And especially like you know, if you're a Andrea fan or a Jeremy fan or Steno fan, it's great when hey, Steno's hitting the water now or five minutes till Steno's in the water. I do think that's an awesome idea as well.
- [29:53]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah.
- [29:54]
Eric
What watches do you guys recommend? What watches work best and is there a certain level of watch that is best for Surfer and the Wind Games?
- [30:02]
Moraine Ploch
At the moment the Wind Games is supported on all Apple watches and Android watches. We're also working really hard on Garmin to get all the features that we have on the, on the Android and iOS watches to that it just takes a bit more time since Garmin has its own programming language but we're almost there. But my preference is at the moment the Apple watch since it's just the easiest also to connect. You have this ESIM possibility for most of the Apple watches and in my experience that's the easiest to set up. The Android watches, a majority of them have it as well but then you get really a separate SIM for the watch and in my. Yeah, I, I have also the Samsung watch here. It's some. Sometimes a bit hard to set it up but it also works. It's just for like for the user, whatever you have. If you have an iPhone I would say get an Apple watch. If you don't have an iPhone I would say get an Android watch or Garmin watch. The Garmin is also measuring the height but you can't yet see like the scores live on your watch.
- [31:08]
Eric
Do you need a certain level of watch? Can with a base watches go like for example this garment. I tried to load my garment up the other day but it's, it's not Compatible. Is there a certain level of Garmin that you need?
- [31:20]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, there's a whole list of garments that are compatible on the Surfer website. I don't know off the top of my head, but it takes the. Because we, we are reading the sensor data at a certain frequency per second. If we can't read it at the right frequency to apply the algorithm of Surfer, we don't support the watches because we don't want the inaccurate results. But majority of the more popular watches on Garmin support it. If you have the really pro, like the battery saving ones with the Instinct serve for example there with the solar panel. These are really made to last like three months. So the computing power in them is not good enough for us to run to run the algorithm on. But there's a whole list on the Surfer website to get like all the watches you can get.
- [32:09]
Eric
Moraine, where do you see the win games in the next five years? How do you see it influencing the community and where do you see its potential sort of ceiling in the community?
- [32:20]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, the goal is in the next five years really to facilitate any community that wants to run events and also really we've pre made certain event types or event formats, but really enable any organizer to run any type of event. Also scoring events like with judges and that is the major goal. Like at the moment we, we're keeping all of our statistics on the websites so you can see how many riders we have, how many competitions we've supported. And my goal is actually to bring bring that number up as much as possible. So wherever there's an organizer who wants to run events, whether it's for five people or for 5,000 people, I want them to be able to do that without any hassle and without not do like I want them to decide to do it because it's so easy and not decide not to do it because they have to configure all these spreadsheets and signups and whatever. So there's no real number goal or financial goal. My goal is just to get as as many organizers as possible to be able to run smooth events without, without struggling. And that again is from the most amateur competition until the most professional competitions.
- [33:32]
Eric
Is there a maximum number of people that can be riding at any one time? Have you tested up to a certain amount of riders?
- [33:40]
Moraine Ploch
Well, the biggest competition we've had is around 100 people in the Netherlands, which all went smoothly, but we've built a system to scale. So if we get a competition with a thousand people, we've done tests not with actual People but like with some dummy data with up to a few hundred and it didn't really budge our system. So if we see the platform increasing, the platform itself will scale automatically. And yeah, it would be great if there's thousands of people at the same time competing.
- [34:13]
Eric
Ben and I were speaking the other day and when we get to Mykonos we're going to load up and have a bit of fun just to, you know, just for some fun and just show people what you can do. I mean, if it's going to be pumping, we're not going out. But if it's going to be, you know, let's say sensible winds, we, we're going to go out. But can I just ask you about judging for a second? I mean, I think you are the premier judge in the industry. Does AI have some space in judging moving forward? And if so, how would that work?
- [34:39]
Moraine Ploch
I think if the, and I've said this a lot because I've had a lot of either dads of riders or riders come to me to see if we can make the system more objective, which of course is the goal. Any, any athlete wants to have an objective as possible system. And I think there's possibility for AI to come in and give the judge more information. It's just really tricky to get it right because if you take a single metric from any jump, let's say you take the kite, the power in the kite, or you take the, the forward momentum in the kite. In the kite. The angle of the kite, the height of the jump, the. Yeah. Speed of rotation, all as a single metric. Say, okay, the jump was 25 meters high, so it should score high. Or the kite was low so it should score high. None of that applies because the judging is about the whole trick. And this is what I always, every single skipper meeting emphasize. It's like never about a single metric. We check everything about your jump and if we like everything, we give a good score. And before we can build a system and we are looking into it, but before we can build a system that can encapsulate what's happening in the air in a way that the judges eyes can. I think judges are crucial to be in the tower. And I'm seeing a lot of efforts being put into making these improvements. But I also think that there should be a lot more effort into educating judges more and getting more judges and getting a system that gives them just way better focus on what's happening on the water, but maybe building environments for them that are, that are easier to focus. And I Think it's both ways. So if we can find, if we can build a system that can do it. We see in Jiu Jitsu. Jiu Jitsu is in one example that they have JSS scoring. That's the most advanced use of AI. So they have like telemetry cameras capturing what the athlete's doing and the judge can revisit that and rebase their score based on what the system analyzes. It's the one of the only like major applications of AI, but then you're in a super controlled environment. You can put four cameras around the person who's doing the moves. You can capture everything, 100% accuracy. If you're in Denmark and it's raining and there are six meter waves and these cameras are getting washed or the sensors are getting mucked about. Yeah, it's a hard setting to, to build something that, that I would consider as, as reliable as my own two eyes, you know, so there is potential for it. But I'm also investing time and effort into seeing how we can make the, the atmosphere in the tower better for the judges to really be able to focus. Because if there's, there's, there is enough judges that if they're really focused and, and down. And for me, the results, the bigger results in the competitions I've been judging in with the team I've had, I'm, I'm never disagreeing with any of the heat results. At the end of the day, speaking
- [37:49]
Eric
to you and Chris over the years, I know how tough it is and you know, I know that Red Bull, King of the Air have got more judges than they need and they can bring people in and out and give them a break. And I do think that's really important. Right. Because you can, if you sit down all day and watch a competition, especially gka, which is long form heats, man, you need to be on the ball for 8, 9, 10 hours. You make one mistake, it could, could cost someone.
- [38:12]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, yeah. And especially for me, the GK events are also really hard because those heats take so long. If you have a 10 minute heat or 8 minute heat. My favorite competition is Megaloop because you have an eight minute heat. You exactly know the first. Yeah, but the trick the first rider did is so on top of your mind. And you can compare that so good to the trick that's happening in the last minute. And if someone does a trick at 1am, 1pm and then the last trick of the heat is at 2pm, there's an hour between those two tricks. So you have to so proactively remember the average of those tricks. And that is such a big challenge. And the GK system does really give the rider the opportunity to put the tricks they want. And really we. We put the families and we. I think it's the most equal, it's the most fair system, but it is the hardest for the judges because they. I mean, you have to be so proactive watching that. I drink about 15 coffee on a
- [39:07]
Eric
day like that, you know, Jamie's 10, was it a consensus rule? All the judges at that was a 10.
- [39:14]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, yeah. I've. I've always said that you can ask the athletes about it, but I never. I've always said I never give tens unless there's one scenario, which is the final trick of the final heat. And it's a fucking insane move because if you. If you. If you score that, of course it's an incredible trick, but if that's the first trick of the heat, you scored a 10 finger, he's going 10 meters higher, then what do you do, you know? But it was a general consensus, like, this is this has to be a 10. Yeah.
- [39:42]
Eric
The only other trick I thought should have been given a team was when Leo Liam beat Hill with the same trick on the buzzer. Unbelievable kite angle, by the way. I don't know why that wasn't a 10. I mean, I think Chris Ball tried to make it a 10, but the scores got shoved in. But, mate, it was a perfect way to end for Jamie as well. Right? I mean, what an unbelievable. And it's kind of a mockery when I look back. How is he not in King of the Year after that performance?
- [40:05]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, yeah, no, I have some questions about that, but I'm. I'm 99.9% sure he'll be in this year. If it's up to me, he'll be in.
- [40:15]
Eric
I mean, the Wind Games had a great Lords of Tram. We're going to Mykonos. Have you guys got upgrades for that or. It's going to be the same optics as we saw before.
- [40:23]
Moraine Ploch
There's most likely going to be an upgrade in the. In the streaming, a bit in the way the graphics look and potentially some extra graphics, I think, for the riders and for the way the scoring looks on the website. I don't want to change anything because they're getting used to it and every time there's change, they have to, again, get used to it. And it's like the more they know the system, they kind of have to think about it when they read this course so I'm not going to change anything there unless there's like a rider, multiple rides that come to me to make adjustments. But for the streaming side I always want to push the boundary. So we are looking into what we can do there.
- [41:01]
Eric
Well, look, Moraine, I'm super excited about this. I know we've been talking a lot about competition, but actually guys, the biggest advantage of this is going to be your local community. So definitely go check out the Win the Win games. I'm going to put the link in the bio. Ryan, thank you very much for your time, mate. I'm really excited about this. I think it's awesome for the community. I'm always big on community and people should get and get involved in this. It's going to be cool.
- [41:22]
Moraine Ploch
Yeah, thanks Eric. It was nice chatting and I'll see you in weekend or so.
- [41:25]
Eric
Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed that episode. Don't forget, if you want to support the show, the easiest way is to support us for free. Rate me on Spotify. I'm loving those five star reviews. Share them in your local WhatsApp or kite surfing groups or just simply tell your mates. And if you want to support us more regularly, head over to portraitkite.com what is portrait? Portrait is an independent media company trying to tell the stories of kiteboarding the way we believe they should. These projects are funded by people just like you. And if you believe in what we do and you want to support us more, head over to portraitkite.com and check out all the madness there. At the moment, we're up to part three of Road to PO Japan. Part four comes out this Friday and then we're going to have the final showing in two weeks time. The podcast guys will always be free and if you want to find more episodes just like this one, use the search button at kitesurf365.com to search your favorite writer or topic. And we're going to be back this Thursday with the Megapod.