Meet Director: Bill Luitje

This meet came about after Bill was contacted by Barbara Bryant, Vice President of the International Society for Computation Biology (ISCB), which was in town for a convention and was looking for an unusual ice-breaker event. Never one to say no to a challenge, Bill single-handedly updated an ancient map of the southwestern tip of Belle Isle, and told the ISCG that SMOC would be happy to host an orienteering event for them.

Due to space limitations at Belle Isle on a Saturday afternoon and evening, only one short course could be set. To make it more interesting, Bill made it a Score-O course – with a twist. At each control, instead of finding and punching a flag, orienteers had to answer a question about their location. Points were assigned to each control based on the difficulty of finding the control and answering the question. The ISCB attendees were sent out in groups of three to six people to enable all 142 conference attendees to complete the course. In addition, eleven local orienteers completed the course.

The scoring procedure, developed by Barbara Bryant of ISCB, was based on the number of points earned by correct answers to questions, with a penalty for exceeding the maximum allowable time of 45 minutes. (The course length was about 2 kilometers.)

After the event, SMOC received the following message from Barbara Bryant:

“On behalf of the International Society for Computational Biology, I would like to thank Bill Luitje, Linda Burke, and Ed Robinson for a wonderful event on Saturday. 142 people from our conference participated in the event, which was billed as an ice-breaker activity. We were bussed over from the Renaissance Center in four groups.

”Linda and Ed did a phenomenal job at start/finish, with the result that all the scores and times were in order, with everyone accounted for, by the time the last bus left to return to our hotel. Thanks to them, it was easy to tally all the results.

”Bill was a wonderful partner in putting on the event. He was responsive from the first email I sent him asking about the possibility of putting on such an event. He worked on the map, did the field checking, set the course, and gave a thorough, useful and entertaining instructional talk (four times!).

”We received lots of positive feedback from the attendees, who clearly had a great time in spite of the heat and humidity.

“We will be presenting our top finishers with awards at a ceremony today during the conference. The four people in the first-place team will be given memberships in our scientific society; the six second-place people will get orienteering compasses, and the four third-place finishers will receive memberships in their local orienteering clubs (Cambridge, UK, London, UK, Boulder, CO, and Philadelphia, PA).

”Thanks again!”