At F3Pittsburgh, we use the homegrown tool PAXminer to enter our backblasts post-beatdown. PAXminer is used in conjunction with Slack to get the backblasts entered but to also parse them into a database, where reports and dashboards can be generated. Thank you to Beaker from F3 St. Louis for the countless hours he has poured into the creation and maintenance of PaxMiner. PAXminer expects that the backblast be written in the following format. There is no wiggle room here, so if a field is not correct, PAXminer will not take the backblast.
Format/Template:
Backblast! <<Give your beatdown a creative name>>
Date: <<Day, MM/DD/YY>>
AO: <<AO Slack Name, like #ao_the_playground>>
PAX: <<Tag every PAX in attendance with @NAME>>
FNGs: <<Total # of FNGs. Number only, no text>>
Q: <<Tag Q and co-Q if applicable with @NAME. Q first, then Co-Q second>>
Total: <<Total # including Q, PAX, and FNGs. Number only, no text>>
Conditions: <<How was the morning? Get colorful>>
Warm-Up:
· Exercise 1
· Exercise 2
· …
The Thang:
· Describe your BD.
Mary:
· Exercise 1
· Exercise 2
· …
Announcements:
· Announcement 1
· Announcement 2
· …
Count-o-Rama
Name-O-Rama
Q took us out in… <prayer? poem? meditation? Silence? His why? …>
Things to Note with this Template:
- Backblast field, make sure the first word of the message is Backblast with NO SPACES before it.
- Date field, the format is pretty flexible, you can use 05/05/2021 or Wednesday, May 5, 2021. If entering on your phone, make sure your phone doesn’t turn this into a telephone# hyperlink like seems to happen. sometimes… if the date turns blue, your phone made it a hyperlink and it will break.
- AO field, use the channel name if possible like #ao_wet_willy.
- PAX field, make sure they’re tagged/blue. If not on Slack, just list their F3 name.
- FNGs field, the expected data is a number, so if there are 2 FNGs make sure you put “2”.
- Advanced: Beaker added the ability to add the FNG names by adding a comma and then the names formatted the following way number, name1, name2, etc. The important thing is that you have the number there.
- Example: FNGs: 2, fng1, fng2
- It is very important to have the Backblast, Date, AO, PAX, FNGs, Q, and Total fields populated correctly so that our metrics can be computed.
- Get creative with the rest of the template! Make it fun and keep the mumble chatter hot in the BB!
- Replace all text contained within the brackets << >> in the template.