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Messages - Jason Cochran

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News / Position Posting: vZMA Events Coordinator
« on: May 30, 2024, 01:58:55 PM »
The virtual Miami ARTCC is seeking applicants for the vacant Events Coordinator (EC) role.

REPORTS TO: ZMA Deputy Air Traffic Manager

Responsible for the coordination, planning, and execution of events and community engagement at the VATSIM Miami ARTCC.

Event Coordinator Role Duties:
• Create, plan, and execute events to generate pilot and controller participation according
to the vZMA standards and policies.
• Create, curate, and manage event rosters and position assignments, including changes to the roster and assignments when the availability of rostered members changes.
• Coordinate with neighboring facilities to arrange support for events, and arrange vZMA
support for events held by neighboring facilities.
• Maintain an active relationship with VAs and ATOs.
• Conduct event briefings.
• Interface with the VATUSA events team and the vATCSCC team, as required, to plan and execute events.
• Act as the leader of the events team and coordinate the action of junior members of the events staff.

Community Engagement Role Duties:
• Manage vZMA’s social media presence and engage with the broader VATSIM community.
• Build interest in vZMA amongst the VATSIM community through outreach.
• Participate in moderation of Discord activities to encourage Code of Conduct compliant collaboration amongst all vZMA home controllers, visitors, and other guests.
• Maintain an active online presence on TeamSpeak, Discord, the VATSIM network.
• Meet minimum controlling requirements per vZMA policy.

Required Qualifications:
• Effective, diplomatic, and tactful written and verbal communication skills.
• Minimum S1 rated controller (for S1 and S2 applicants, a commitment to earn an S3 certification within three months of hire, and a C1 certification within six months of hire)

Preferred Qualifications:
• S3 rating or higher, with commitment to earn a C1 certification within six months of hire

Interested applicants should send a letter of interest, and a current VATSIM and/or real-world resume, to the Deputy Air Traffic Manager by email at datm@zmaartcc.net.

The application deadline for this position is 5 PM Eastern (21:00 Zulu) on Friday, June 21, 2024.

2
The Flight Deck / Re: Controllers Don't Respond to Text
« on: August 17, 2020, 05:53:22 AM »
I don't intend to hijack this thread. /r makes a lot of sense for the reasons mentioned above. Sorry this happened to you, I hope it wasn't me; I haven't controlled that airspace for a while, so I doubt it was. If I ever ignore a text message, it's because I got distracted and it's never on purpose.

In my opinion, in 2020 (when every computer has a sound card, headphones are dirt cheap, and bandwidth is not as scarce as it once was) there is not much excuse for /t. The only valid reason for /t would be a hearing or other disability that prevents /r operation.

Text-only pilots increase workload for everyone and kill the realism for both controllers and fellow pilots. I believe VATSIM would do itself a favor by formally restricting /t to only those with a need.

I am required to say that my opinion does necessarily represent the opinion of the Miami ARTCC or its staff (except me, I guess).

3
Events / Re: [07/31/2020 2300-0300z] Florida Citrus Haul FNO
« on: June 07, 2020, 11:04:03 PM »
Uhhhhhh-mazing.

4
News / Re: Cleveland's New FE!
« on: May 22, 2020, 06:49:38 AM »
Saraang,

Remember the words of Earl Nightingale: "We become what we think about." Soon, you will morph into an actual sector file. Good luck and welcome to the FE club.

Jason

5
News / Re: ZLC Hired a New FE!
« on: May 22, 2020, 06:42:34 AM »
Welcome to the elite FE club.

6

LOL.  :)  This post has caused some significant confusion around ZMA. There are now apparently two Jason Cochrans within VATUSA.

I'm replying here to make sure everyone knows there's two of us.

8
Executive Summary
A few weeks ago, as a hobby endeavor, I created a new Amazon Alexa skill to report which controllers are online in a specific ARTCC. It is rough around the edges, and I am inviting VATSIM members to participate in a beta test. Participation will require that you supply some source data for whichever ARTCC interests you. Participation details are located down below in this post.


Demonstration
Here's a recording of a demonstration from after last night's Miami TGIFNO event:
https://soundcloud.com/jason-cochran-54904634/alexa-zma-miami-fno/s-Lze5B


What does it do?

You say something like, "Alexa, ask Control Freak who is controlling in Miami?" and Alexa responds, "Currently, in the ZMA ARTCC, Bob Smith is on Miami Tower in the Miami CAB, John Doe is on Lakeland Low in the Tampa TRACON. That's all." You get the idea.

Who created it and how much does it cost?

I personally created this skill as a hobby activity and it is not a commercial venture. In fact, I pay for the Amazon AWS hosting that supports the skill, so this is a bit of an expense for me. If it becomes too expensive in the future, I may choose to discontinue the skill.

How can I participate?

Send me a message. I will need the e-mail address that is linked to your Amazon Alexa device. This will allow you to enable the beta test skill. The beta test ends April 20, 2019 by Amazon's mandate. After this period, I will either publish the skill or discontinue it.


Are there any known issues?

Sure, there are a few things to bear in mind:
  • Due to my limited knowledge, skill, and ability, Control Freak is sometimes slow. I will work on optimization in the future, both for improvement of the service and cost efficiency of the AWS compute resources required.
  • Control Freak does not report observers.
  • Control Freak reads out the controllers in the order they are encountered in the VATSIM data file; though there is a plan for custom ordering later.
  • Only US ARTCCs are supported, there are no immediate plans to expand.

I am a nerd, how does it work?

The Alexa skill consumes an AWS Lambda function (that uses the Node JS runtime). The Lambda function gets raw source data from a VATSIM data mirror, caches it in S3 to prevent slamming the VATSIM server, and performs custom (and very inefficient string parsing in Javascript) to produce the results.


Does it work with all ARTCCs?

The skill will recognize any US ARTCC as input (including some slang like "Minnie Center" or "Indy Center," however, currently the skill doesn't support retrieving data for any ARTCC except ZMA (because that's the one I care about). If you would like it to support an additional ARTCC, configuration data will be needed to identify approved position names and map them to Alexa's voice output.

What data is needed to support an additional ARTCC?

If you are planning to beta test the skill, and you would like to provide data to enable the skill to speak the approved positions of your ARTCC, please prepare a JSON document in the following format.

[
  {
    "SortOrder": 1,
    "ARTCC": "ZMA",
    "Position": "MIA_46_CTR",
    "Unit": "Miami Center",
    "PositionTitle": "Miami Center"
  },
  {
    "SortOrder": 2,
    "ARTCC": "ZMA",
    "Position": "ZMO_63_CTR",
    "Unit": "Miami Center",
    "PositionTitle": "Miami Oceanic"
  },
  {
    "SortOrder": 64,
    "ARTCC": "ZMA",
    "Position": "OPF_TWR",
    "Unit": "Opa Locka CAB",
    "PositionTitle": "Opa Locka Tower"
  }, 
  {
    "SortOrder": 14,
    "ARTCC": "ZMA",
    "Position": "MIA_V_APP",
    "Unit": "Miami Tray Con",
    "PositionTitle": "North Final"
  }
]


Sort Order
Not yet implemented. This field will define the order in which Alexa will speak the results, so that you can control whether she speaks the positions in a top down manner, bottom up, or some other sequence you prefer.

ARTCC
Obviously, this is the three-letter identifier for the ARTCC that owns the position.

Position
This must exactly match the position name as reported by VATSIM. This is the position to which the controller connects using his or her client.

Unit
An Alexa text-to-speech friendly grouping of positions used to clarify the position's location. For example, "North Final" may not make sense unless you know the position is in the Miami TRACON. Please note that this is spelled phonetically, as Alexa doesn't know how to pronounce certain words (like TRACON), but typically does fine with place names (such as Opa Locka).

PositionTitle
An Alexa text-to-speech friendly name for the position. See note above regarding non-obvious phonetic pronunciation.



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