Meeting 2021 11 02

Title: Virtual Meeting Open Athletics

When / Where

26 attendees

Nicolas L. presented the challenges, as a follow up of Zadar's conference in September.

Data exchange:
- What data standard
- All parties to use WA IDs
- Matching athletes
Global calendar
- EA uses Opentrack calendar -> how to alight with WA
- Creation of an API
- Visualization of the global calendar
Comprehensive database
- How to retrieve athletes performances (PBs/SBs)
- How to get these performances.

Carlo DA and Andras S. presented a webinar on Data Exchange and Journey towards a Global Calendar

Andras introduced the technical aspects of the World Athletics' view:

Standardising Data Exchange
Stakeholders involved:
- Member Federations, service partners --> send competition results in a standard format.
- Challenge: matching of athletes with the distributed dbs
- WA will share the data with the providers as well
Data provided by WA
- Events in the data feed
- List of athletes competed in recent years with the WA athletes codes
Matching of athletes is the main challenge.
- There are various databases and this matching should happen in the two ends (member federation/supplier and WA)
- WA could perform the matching.
- 1000s of athletes per federations.
- Newly matched athletes to be included in the WA update
Standardize additional entities:
- Events
- Rounds
- Age categories
- Date formats
- Result formats
- Country codes
- Other taxonomies
Submission of competition results
- Dedicated API for the member federations and service providers --> based on the WA standard
- Using competition IDs --> World Ranking competition project (with identifiers)
- JSON as preferred format but also some other accepted (e.g., XML, CSV, …)
- WA to provide a template
- New athletes will be created in the WA database
WA will maintain the database (qualifying process, rankings, results…)
Correction of results --> to align amendments from the member federations/suppliers.
Next steps
- Required JSON format for result
- Template for alternative results
- Other entities and parameters.
- Access to their athletes, including WA codes

Andy R: Any estimation of the roadmap?
Andras: We have the first draft of the format.
- For the standardization, we need some discussion.
- For instance, we need to handle all the languages differences.
Eddy V.: When the results should be sent? Live, a few seconds after the race, or AFTER made official (during the event)?
Andras: When we consider that the results are more or less stable. At least a couple of hours, to avoid too many amendments. 24h would be still a good time.
Andreas W.: Is WA interested in every result/competition? For example some masters competition from a local club (Where there will be for sure no record or "interesting" result)
Andras: Still to decide the competitions that will be involved.

Challenges related to unique IDs and matching of national IDs
Data exchange -> the data would need a kind of agreement between EA/WA and the national federations. (Stefan F. mentioned this also)
Where the athletes qualify? what competitions (domestic competitions)?
Standard threshold but with the collaboration of the national federations.
Vision: one fundamental principle
- Results only if achieved at pre-selected and identified competitions
- One source of truth calendar centralized by WA
2022: pilot year. 2023: compulsory for recognition of results for WA statistical purposes
Future landscape:
- Application to include: Date, venue, programme, commitment to abide by WA rules…
- Open and transparent
Principles:
- Global centralised competition application platform
- Standardized protocol (time to send results, to apply for the permit...)
- Centralised results processing.
- Required global co-operation.

So far, if anyone is interested in formalizing the agreement, you can use the email (WA's statistics).

ACTION: World Athletics to share a sample of the JSON format for the results and the template.

There are some challenges that can be solved in the scope of this Open Athletics Community Group, including:

Athletes ID
- Document the minimum data to identify the person.
Standardisation of the entities
- We already discussed some of the entities discussed today (Events, Rounds, Age categories, Date formats, Result formats, Country codes, Other taxonomies)
Standardization of the competition results
- WA to provide a template that could be used as the baseline.

ACTION: Martin A to coordinate with Andras and Carlo to start the technical discussion within the community group before next meeting.

Dec 7th, same time (09:00 UTC)