Archiving as a Scouting Tool

... and how to read the mumble-jumble I publish.

This blog is archive. At least, I intend it to be.

What does this mean for you, the reader? You can expect to read relatively abstract insights on football – such that you can test them in whatever endeavor or track you find yourself in.

What does that means for me, the writer? I have to find the sweet spot between what-you-know and the insight we're archiving, lest the blog would only be relevant to me. It also means that I owe you a how-to-read-or-use manual.

So, for this post, I will – in one sitting – evaluate what makes a good archive and the relationship between scouting and archiving.

Scouts as Archivers?

Yes.

The entire premise of identifying talent and projecting potential is grounded in principles of archiving. Scouts take in new information – a player in a specific environment – and retrieve historical or heuristic references to map their prospects. This process is typically facilitated by a multi-modal archive: physical notes, memory – however infallible it might be –, intuition, and references.

Hence, scouts, whether consciously or unconsciously, are archivers.

They have a library-esque mop of trends. A place to file that new talent. The new flavor of the market. They remember and account for that player who didn't make it. The young lad who only spoke French and wasn't afforded time to show his worth in the foreign setting. That one talent thriving in the obscure league on the coast.

For the good ones, where their own knowledge fails, they have and are willing to ask their network for information.

Hence, scouts are fundamentally archivers. Good scouts are good archivers.

What makes a good archive?

A good archive is, first and foremost, dynamic. It can be updated, relet, and has iterable elements.

A good archive is retrievable. You can access it within short notice.

A good archive endures. It maintains relevance across time, languages, and settings.

A good archive, at least in the sum of its network, is sufficiently abstract. Its ideas can be applied to other, aligned practices by any shrewd user.

A good archive is networked and interwoven. Its elements are codependent and enable each other.

A good archive is honest about its deficiencies. See more below.

What does this mean for the blog?

All posts, including this one, are susceptible of updates. The typos, however glaring they are, will be smoothened silently. New ideas or incorrect facts will be LAYERED AGGRESSIVELY inline and, when necessary, in a subsequent post.

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