07/05/2024
Inside ODCN: Tytus Szczepaniak
Meet Tytus Szczepaniak, Senior Training Administrator at IMG ARENA. Tytus began his journey over five years ago as a Data Collector for golf at FlightScope Tennis. His role evolved significantly after he joined IMG ARENA, where he took on the responsibilities of a Training Administrator for the Official Data Collector Network (ODCN). Recently promoted to Senior Training Administrator, Tytus now manages a broad range of training activities across the organization. He uses his extensive experience from data collection and training to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of the data collected.
Can you describe your journey to becoming the Senior Training Administrator at IMG ARENA?
My adventure at IMG Arena, actually started more than 5 years ago – first as an employee of FlightScope Tennis, where I was Data Collector for the Golf project, and also held the position of Training Specialist there. Two years ago, already under the IMG Arena banner, I decided to try something new and take on the challenge of becoming a Training Administrator in the ODCN (Official Data Collector Network) project. This required a lot of changes in my life, but I believed that my three years of experience could really come in handy here – I had been providing training in golf data collection principles and applications for two years and knew the hardships of the job. As you can see, I wasn’t wrong, and as of last month I can now boast of being promoted to Senior Training Administrator, working on a wide range of areas of the ODCN project and others under the IMG Arena banner.
How do you ensure that the training modules for soccer are both effective and engaging for new Data Collectors?
The key to success in this field is to know not only the rules of football, and the other sports for which we do training, but also to have a proper understanding of the application. At IMG Arena, we strive to make the tool we give our Data Collectors as user-friendly as possible – this also requires clear and transparent training, which is mainly based on the handling of the application and a description of the workflow that suits us and our customers.
Regarding your role as Training Administrator, what would be most surprising part of your duties, that most people are not aware of?
Most unobvious to outsiders may be the fact that our participation as Senior Training Administrators is our part in the development of the application and its testing. The smallest mistake made in live matches is analysed by our team in order to help or prevent the Data Collector from making this mistake again through the application. These are hours of discussions and later testing of the implemented ideas by our team.
When developing training content for soccer, how do you incorporate real-world scenarios to ensure the sessions are practical and relevant for our Data Collectors?
From the data collector’s point of view, one thinks all the time. I’m a huge fan of the Premier League and watch games whenever I have time. If the match I’m watching contains situations that carry didactic value that a Data Collector can benefit from, I try to get footage of it to share with our Data Collectors later – so all Final Assessment matches are Premier League matches that contain a number of situations that can happen in a live match, where it’s easy to make a mistake and which need to be looked at much earlier. Similarly, from the angle of the author’s Most Common Mistakes module – most of the situations are matches that I have seen live or have been specially researched in collaboration with Team Quality.
Could you share a particularly memorable challenge you have encountered in your Training Administrator career and how you turned it into a learning opportunity?
Learning the rules of cricket and ice hockey was certainly such a challenge. While I still knew ice hockey and there was no big problem with it, cricket, which is not at all popular in our country, was simply learning from scratch – both in terms of understanding the game itself and their rules. This was essential for creating training and understanding the application. At the moment, cricket is not yet available in our portfolio, but if it is – I will also contribute to the development.
Considering the progress of the ODCN (Official Data Collection Network) project, how have your training methods and data collection evolved over time?
Training methods have evolved on every level – the entire process has changed both internally and externally. Each update in the application requires considerable description and often involves an innovative presentation. I think the Data Collectors who have been with us from the beginning recognise the changes. The key here is the MCM module, which takes a look at every match situation that a Data Collector might encounter in a live match, with inserted buttons from the app. By assimilating the material, no live situation will cause much interpretation trouble in the future.
In what ways has your personal passion for sports influenced your professional approach to training development and application refinement?
As I mentioned earlier – most of the match examples whether from the new modules, final assessments matches or examples prepared for the Mentoring Programme – are matches/actions from matches that came to mind while watching the game at home, in my spare time. It is the same with in-app solutions – watching a match, being in that environment, sometimes you automatically translate that into the app – sometimes it is even annoying!
What piece of advice would you give to new Data Collectors who are just starting out in the field of soccer data collection?
Primarily, I recommend assimilating the applications outside of training on a dedicated Training Mode – click through each function several times – there is no better learning than practice. And also, just have fun – working as a Data Collector is first and foremost a job for people with a passion and love for the sport – if you have this, you will be working on what you like, and this is probably the most important thing and makes it fun.
What are your passions outside of the ODCN project?
I have a great deal of general knowledge when it comes to a wide variety of sports – from football to biathlon to cycling to tennis or golf. In my spare time, I am developing a golf podcast project with, among others, one of our Data Collector Managers – Jakub. In addition, every spare moment from work I play amateur football, squash, and try my hand at a new sport – tennis. Otherwise, I travel, the more often the better, play chess and see friends – to be honest, I have extraordinarily little free time, there is always something going on, and that suits me just fine.
You have mentioned an interesting podcast project that you are doing with one of our Manager – Jakub Breś, can you tell us a bit more about it?
Yes, together with Jakub and two of our friends, we came up with the idea to use our knowledge gained as Data Collectors for IMG Arena and start a Podcast about Golf, which we fell in love with, and which is one of our interests. We want to promote this beautiful sport in our country, so in addition to recording Podcasts, and we are slowly starting to appear at national level tournaments. In addition, we have started to run a channel on Instagram and Tik Tok, where we add memes and short films about the game of golf – mainly challenges, but we have a lot of ideas.
If you are interested in such topics, please follow RoughBros – however, we mainly operate in Polish, so we know that it may be difficult to understand us – but maybe at least a short, social media form in English will appeal to you. Stay tuned!
Imagine you have VIP tickets to any sports championship; which event would you pick to experience the thrill and glory up close?
Without a second thought – Barcelona’s match against Real Madrid at the newly refurbished Camp Nou! (in Barcelona supporters sector of course!)
Interested in becoming a data collector like how Tytus Szczepaniak started? Click here to read more about our ODCN team, or view our current vacancies.
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