2012 Festival de Robotique FRC a Montreal Regional

[smurfgirl]

Time to start the thread for the Montreal Regional - only three weeks left! I'm glad to see some familiar team numbers on the list, plus a lot of new ones.

I was hoping to find someone to coordinate travel with. Will anyone from around the Boston area be driving and have an extra space for me? Alternatively, I can drive and you can come with me! I just don't want to drive by myself for six hours. Let's work something out!

[BradyP4]

Hi

I coach Team 1517 and have several family members at MIT (what Course are you?). You are welcome to ride up with us. Please email me directly.

[BradyP4]

Team 1517 is also supplying the live video feed for the event. The feed will be at
http://www.bbrobotics.org/mul_liveStream.aspx

I can also email any team information about posting the feed on their own team website.

[smurfgirl]

Thanks, I just sent you an email!

[AcesPease]

A few words about the Montreal Regional:

Thanks to the Event organizers. The spirit at this event was amazing and everything seemed to run smoothly. The bilingual model worked well!
Thanks to all the teams for making us feel so welcome, the environment in the pits was hectic but always positive.
Special thanks to our alliance partners 3360 and 3550 for taking us all to the finals. We were a great team.

Congratulations to 2626 on winning the Chairman's Award.
Congratulations to 296's John Carlton on winning the Woodie Flowers award (this was long overdue).
Congratulations to the winning alliance 2590, 3990, 3981 and 3530. Consistent shooting ruled the day.
And Special Congratulations to all the rookies at the Festival de Robotique, you made it exciting and now we will be looking forward to more great things from the Quebec region.

It was a lot of fun, and Montreal is a great place to visit. My only regret here is I do not know enough French to post a translation.

[Koko Ed]

Not sure if anyone could get a good look at the awesome lighting setup but this pic shows it pretty well.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7181/7040202191_7bb7533ab9_b.jpg

[gyroscopeRaptor]

That looks incredible! Any other pictures? Was the rest of the venue done up this well?

Probably one of the better event lighting setups anywhere, period.

[AcesJames]

That looks incredible! Any other pictures? Was the rest of the venue done up this well?

Probably one of the better event lighting setups anywhere, period.

I'm sure there are a lot of pictures around. One of the coolest things about the MTL Regional was that there were professional video crews, light crews, and camera men EVERYWHERE. Out of all of the events I've attended, this one felt like someone was actually filming a movie. When we arrived Thursday morning, a lot of us had some concern about the smoke that filled the air (it was used to reflect the lighting for a rave-like effect) especially given the fact that most of us were using LED rings to sense feedback from the hoops. Fortunately, this didn't seem to be a problem for anyone. One small issue we did have though was that, as you can see in the above photo, the area immediately around the field was completely dark! The field and stands were completely surrounded by large black curtains, and the house lights were turned off completely to enhance the dramatic field spot lights.

Here's a picture our friend Karthik took.

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u186/jamesman32/423311_10150588325206507_507886506_9402543_1176619 292_n.jpg

[Koko Ed]

That looks incredible! Any other pictures? Was the rest of the venue done up this well?

Probably one of the better event lighting setups anywhere, period.

The best I ever seen. It even surpasses the one at the Boston Regional and Battlecry @ WPI who pride themselves on their dynamic lighting.


More photos are here. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fusionjeunesse/collections/72157629573815525/)

[Racer26]

I really didn't like the Montreal regional's venue. It's not very well suited to an FRC event.

http://www.stadeuniprix.com/tennis_canada/Pub/DisplayPage.aspx?enc=WqmHTIXb3hZBDLgekBXg/mNp/6G6x1oL8kLPY+8IfjUxWMSz4DhBLoA1ZwIAKkfEdKhfM4skPxr Z8WHzisjUxg==

It was held in the indoor tennis centre part of Stade Uniprix, which has no permanent seating. The temporary seating brought in was horrid, lacking any real semblance of vertical rise. What this meant was that anyone standing in front of you (including on the floor below the seating) obstructed your view of the field. Truly, even the scoring table was obstructing the view of the field. I expressed my concerns to Mark Breadner (Director of FIRST Robotics Canada), and he agreed, and said that the seating would be improved for next year.

The stadium part of Stade Uniprix is actually the 11,500seat open-top stadium adjacent, formerly used by baseball's Montreal Expos.

Parking was ATROCIOUS. I'm not sure where they park cars for the 11,500 seat stadium, because just the few thousand people in attendance for FRC had Stade Uniprix's lots full, AND the surrounding streets were full of cars parked on-street. To add insult to injury, as we were leaving, we saw Montreal Parking Authority police officers ticketing several vehicles parked illegally since there was nowhere else to park.

Truthfully, I can't believe a better venue in the city of Montreal can't be found. Why not make like Ontario and go for a university gymnasium or a QMJHL hockey arena, complete with its own permanent seating?

All of that said: The bilingualism was flawless, despite not being the advertised "as anglophone as Waterloo is francophone". The MC did a fantastic job keeping the anglophone and francophone teams separate and introducing them accordingly. It made alliance selections a little interesting, what with francophone teams calling out anglophone teams and vice versa, but all-in-all, it went quite well.

I'm not sure if it was just the MC in particular doing this, or if this was a francophone thing, but I noticed the MC calling out francophone teams by individual digits (un zero sept cinq), rather than grouping pairs like is common in anglophone regions (dix soixante-quinze) [one zero seven five, vs ten seventy-five]. I think it was just the MC, since francophone teams tended to group the numbers as in English (3386/3387 called out 1547 as quinze quarante-sept at GTR East)

[mregimbald]

Here are "some" pictures from the Montreal Festival de robotique:

Photobooth
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fusionjeunesse/sets/72157629697212081/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fusionjeunesse/sets/72157629697212081/http://)

Arena

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fusionjeunesse/sets/72157629337647812/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fusionjeunesse/sets/72157629337647812/http://)

Ceremonies

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fusionjeunesse/sets/72157629362214894/

Autres - Others

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fusionjeunesse/sets/72157629361387716/

merci Thanks

[JamesC]

Parking was ATROCIOUS.

I take it you've never visited Montreal before... Parking for this venue was better than parking for most others in Montreal, simply because there WAS a parking lot.

Despite the fact that the temporary seats were a little low, I think the venue was quite well suited for the robotics festival that they decided to have there. The FRC event was merely one part of it.

If you had a look around the rest of the venue, there were three other robotics events going on at the exact same time, all under the same roof. For me, this is the true spirit of FIRST, inspiring young minds to look to higher levels, and something I hope they keep for next year.

I'm not an expert in knowledge of the City of Montreal, but I can't think of any other venues in Montreal that can house an entire robotics festival, not only in the same venue, but literally steps away from each other.

As for the temporary seats, I'm sure its lesson learned for next year.

Tl;dr for a robotics event, especially being a rookie event, Montreal was incredible. If I had to choose between the four different Canadian regionals I attended this year, Montreal is my #1 choice.