I have been wonderfully fortunate to spend a lot of time of late with my two grandchildren, Ivy and Jolyon.
They will be my connection with the 22nd Century and I am their link with the second half of the 20th Century.
Earlier this morning I was thinking about the skills they will have compared to my skills.
My birth year was 1952.
I have travelled into a Digital Age, Ivy and Jolyon will have no understanding of a pre-digital life.
I find it hard to envisage what their world will be.
I do hope that they will develop their skills in a kind, trusting, caring local and global community.
Parenthood and grandparenthood have made me acutely aware of the flourishing of young people. For the last thirty years I have tried to treat everyone as if they were members of my family.
In the last year, I have been awe struck by the abilities of a new generation of performance analysts.
Another remarkable group came to my attention this morning just as I was contemplating Ivy and Jolyon’s learning and environmental futures.
I noticed a link to Adam Reid from one of the LinkedIn Groups I follow. I really enjoyed learning about Kickdex. I have a great interest in real time data, captured over a long period of time and visualised in a way that engages a variety of audiences. This appears to be the explicit goal of Kickdex.
I think Tumblr is a great choice for a blogging platform for Kickdex. I should have picked up on this earlier after reading Chris Lilley’s post about his involvement.
I was interested to learn about Kickdex’s approach to data integration:
Every player has a single Kickdex value that updates every time anything happens on the field of play. This number represents the player’s contribution to their team either by helping them to score or by preventing their opponents from scoring. A player’s Kickdex value depends exclusively on what happens on the pitch. No external factors are taken into account, such as salary or transfer market valuations.
I will follow up on this approach in a subsequent post. It raises some important issues for me and stirs my memories of trying to describe rugby union games in the 1980s in terms of two ratios (passes:kicks; lineouts:scums).
I am not sure if Ivy and Jolyon intend to be performance analysts.
Both have excellent observational skills. Ivy has her own magic wand.
If they ask me about performance analysis I will tell them about my admiration and awe of the present generation and hope to talk about my aspirations to transform the way I see and share performance in the years ahead.
Photo Credits
The Braidwood Times Office (Keith Lyons, CC BY 3.0 AU)
Zac’s Garden (Keith Lyons, CC BY 3.0 AU)
