Audio Interview with Jon Tiomkin

[Craig]

This is the first of a number of audio interviews that Serge Timacheff from FencingPhotos conducted for publication here on Fencing.Net.

Jon Tiomkin Interview

It's a 6 minute interview set to stream from fencing.net. I'm setting up the apple account to load the podcast since there will be a few more interviews to load up.

If response to these is good, we'll be doing more audio interviews at other events.

Craig

[RebelFencer]

I liked it.

[Timacheff]

We're definitely interested in your thoughts and feedback.

I tried a few different angles among the interviews, so as they come in please let us know among them which you liked, which you didn't, and why. Of course I can always count on the Fencing.net community not to mince words

We're also working on making audio quality better as we move ahead ... I'll be doing more audio interviews this weekend in China, where I'm here to cover the women's saber grand prix.

And, since a few of you have already asked, photos from all these grand prix events (Monal/Paris, Cairo, Tianjin, Vegas) will be available as a fencingphotos.com feature around the end of June.

[Craig]

One tidbit picked up from Jon Tiomkin's interview and later confirmed by our "man on the street" - The Italians did have a new foil point that was being used to allegedly "beat" the new timings.

The FIE put the ban in place so I don't think we'll see one of those points, but I'd be interested to see how they approached the engineering of the point and if it matches up with some ideas that have been kicked around with some other people about ways the tip could be engineered to affect the debounce time.

Craig

[peet]

Serge-
Nice job with the interview! The questions covered lots of different areas of interest. Some of Jon's answers could have been elaborated on some though. Maybe think about asking followup questions in those cases?

One tidbit picked up from Jon Tiomkin's interview and later confirmed by our "man on the street" - The Italians did have a new foil point that was being used to allegedly "beat" the new timings.

The FIE put the ban in place so I don't think we'll see one of those points, but I'd be interested to see how they approached the engineering of the point and if it matches up with some ideas that have been kicked around with some other people about ways the tip could be engineered to affect the debounce time.

Craig

This I would love to hear more about!

-p

[RebelFencer]

It might be cool to ask them more questions about how they are thinking tactically in different situations. I'm kind of a sucker for that kind of stuff. And Craig should reverse engineer that Italian tip and remake it so that it's FIE legal....and then pay me 10% of the profits.

[Craig]

Serge-
Nice job with the interview!

I'm going to post the interview with dos Santos soon (I've got more audio-cleansing to do with it). His take on rolling out wireless is interesting - he pretty much says "yeah, there have been some problems, but you should expect that when new technologies are rolled out".

Did he work for Microsoft?

Craig

[Timacheff]

FYI, Eduardo Jose dos Santos (POR) is the president of the FIE SEMI commission (Commission de la Signalisation Electrique. du Matériel et des Installations). He's an electrical engineer, very active at a high level in the FIE, and has been responsible for evaluating, critiquing, and acquiring much of the wireless technology. He also acts as the official FIE "observer" at some events (this was his role in Cairo) to give feedback to the federation about the event.

There are a number of systems over the last few years that have been evaluated and tried. Currently the S+M system is most widely in use, but others are out there are in the wings. At the Monal in Paris, recently, dos Santos was working with some Russians who had come to test wireless epee with a more portable technology.

He explains this and more in his interview. I also have photos of the new Russian system being tested in Paris that will post with the Grand Prix feature in a few weeks.

[Timacheff]

Serge-
Nice job with the interview! The questions covered lots of different areas of interest. Some of Jon's answers could have been elaborated on some though. Maybe think about asking followup questions in those cases?

This I would love to hear more about!

-p

I will work on getting more elaboration. The interviews are short and the athletes often don't have too much time, but I'll do whatever I can. And I'll try to get their insights into tactical and strategic thinking on the piste.

[Capt. Slo-mo]

Serge: What kind of microphone and recording format are you using? That was actually pretty good audio, for venue sound.

[Timacheff]

An RCA handheld digital voice recorder and about a $30 mini-plug microphone. I've had troubles with the connections staying tight and noise-free, which I will solve when back in the U.S. before I go to Vegas.

[Craig]

Serge: What kind of microphone and recording format are you using? That was actually pretty good audio, for venue sound.

And using Audacity to clean up the audio. Great little program - fast, free, and easy to use.

Craig

[Craig]

The transcript is now posted also for those that didn't want the audio

Craig