The Romain College of Business takes pride in being AACSB accredited, a symbol of quality education for its graduates. Our faculty come from a diverse set of backgrounds, leveraging those experiences in the classroom to provide real-world value to their students. One of those stories comes from Josh McWilliams, Instructor in Computer Information Systems, whose expertise ensured the New York Road Runners (NYRR) was able to put on the 50th edition of the TCS New York City Marathon (NYCM.)
We sat down with Josh to tell his story:
How long have you been working with NYRR?
This was my 11th NYCM in total. Due to a last-minute cancellation in 2012 because of Hurricane Sandy, only 10 have started but I include it (Sandy) as the work was completed to run the event. Of course, COVID-19 delayed the 50th running of the event in 2020 to this year.
How did you become involved with the TCS NYCM?
Upon my return to Evansville in 2009, I joined a local startup called ChronoTrack Systems, which developed and produced the hardware used at the NYCM. My first marathon weekend was in 2009 because of my role at ChronoTrack; it was a startup, so all hands were on deck due to the importance of it being an Abbott World Marathon Major event. Honestly, those first years were both unbelievably exciting and equally terrifying: while each event is important, disaster at the NYCM would have meant the death of the business. We used to talk about each event being like a moon shot as you can’t back everyone up to start the event over once it begins, particularly when it is being broadcast live internationally.
Tell us about ChronoTrack.
ChronoTrack began in 2008 right here in Evansville, out of a desire to disrupt the way that endurance event timing was handled. The process of returning timing tags had created a real problem for events like the NYCM. Athletes would be in line to return their tags and backed up so far that other athletes were blocked from crossing the finish line. The system we built used the EPC Gen 2 Class 1 UHF RFID tag that Walmart placed on every pair of its jeans in the early 2000s. The tags were modified and placed on runners’ shoes, tracking athletes over the race course.
The business initially began as a project for its sister company, Tacit Solutions, to see if it was possible to build a timing system that could use disposable tags as opposed to returning the more expensive timing tags at the end of an event. The proof of concept worked well enough to create ChronoTrack as a spinoff, the initial product became known as the “D-Tag,” and it was the first disposable tag for endurance sporting events.
I began working for ChronoTrack in early 2009, and I believe I was the eighth person at the organization. I was the first non-administrative person to join who didn’t start at Tacit Solutions. In those days my official role was Technical Training and Support Specialist, but a typical week might involve returning from domestic events I supported, working with our software engineer to resolve bugs/feature requests, shipping hardware out to a new customer and then jumping on a plane to Asia or Europe for the following weekend. I think I flew something like 175,000 miles a year for 2 to3 years. By 2012, ChronoTrack had captured 80% of the U.S. running market, timed 12 million athletes worldwide, developed the first disposable tag for the back of race bibs and was acquired by Lifetime Fitness. With the backing of LifeTime, our team grew organically and, through more acquisitions, added nearly 80 people. My role transitioned to Product Manager for the timing business.
Describe your role in the execution of the NYCM.
Initially I would help set up the start line, before heading down course ahead of athletes to ensure each of the timing points was set up and ready to go. The NYRR Scoring group likes to push the envelope, so there are tons of places where athletes are tracked with ChronoTrack equipment, including five pre-start locations, three unique start lines, split lines at each 5K point, split lines at each mile, a split line at the halfway point, a handful of post-race locations and the finish line. In total there are nearly 50 places where an athlete may be tracked. These days, my role is entirely around the connectivity related to the start lines.
The start line of the event presents a challenge as there are three unique start lines that are all temporary structures on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. In order to provide live times for placement and broadcast TV requirements, the starting equipment must be connected to the internet, but there is no infrastructure in place permanently for this purpose and the cellular networks are saturated due to the large number the people. So, I manage the logistics and execution of taking redundant internet connections, a handful of pieces of network gear, the ChronoTrack timing controllers and about half a mile of network cable to get reliable and redundant connectivity to the start line timing boxes.
There is quite a bit of orchestration to get the connections in place at the base of the bridge and then deploy the equipment once the bridge is closed a few hours before the race begins. Making this more complicated is a feature of the boxes to share data when networked together—normally a great feature—but it creates a problem in this unique case. As a result of there being nine boxes, we must separate them logically in the network hardware; otherwise, the result would be the equivalent of a Denial of Service attack due to all the traffic between them. So, race week involves testing the connections, configuring the briefcase full of network switches and then on race morning running, cutting, crimping and connecting nearly half a mile of cable in around 4 hours.
What is the most exciting part about race week?
Two things:
How do you leverage your experiences in the classroom?
Any time I can bring my professional experiences into the classroom is a win. I think using examples that are tangible for our students really cements the concepts for them. In my CIS 201 class, I talk about the NYCM and my work at ChronoTrack as it relates to IT Project Management and how networks work as well as our cybersecurity module. This semester I am also fortunate to teach MGMT 353, which is part of the Entrepreneurship sequence, so certainly it is helpful to have that experience in my back pocket to say, ‘I have done this and here is how we were successful.’
