Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format

[Citrus Dad]

Since no one else has started a new thread to prepare for the discussion at Champs about the future of FRC, I have stepped up here. I am not advocating a particular position, nor will I be involved in the actual preparation and presentation. This thread is NOT about complaining about FIRST's announcement--it IS about constructing positive proposals.

I strongly urge that many of you who are concerned about this organize yourselves to make a set of coherent alternative proposals to present at the town meeting. Given the likelihood that the locations are contractually locked in, keep those sites in your proposal structures.

Use this thread to organize this presentation, and select specific presenters. Also prepare presentation materials, and even budget and manpower estimates. The more professional and complete, the more seriously it will be taken.

We should take Frank at his word (see below) and engage in constructive discussion.
To meet our lofty goals, though, we will need your help. As Don said in his video, we want to engage members of the community in coming up with the best solutions possible to the challenges presented to this two Championship approach. The concerns you’ve expressed are valid. Over the next several months you will see a number of initiatives intended to engage the community in helping shape what these Championships and activities surrounding them will look like. As an example, we are currently planning a town-hall style meeting at the 2015 FIRST Championship that will allow the community to engage directly with Senior FIRST Leadership on this important change. In all of this, we need your help in doing what you do best – solve problems. I’m personally very interested in hearing your ideas about how we may be able to arrange for final matches between the winners of FIRST Championship Houston and FIRST Championship St. Louis.

Let’s work together to make these future Championships great.

Frank

[AGPapa]

I’m personally very interested in hearing your ideas about how we may be able to arrange for final matches between the winners of FIRST Championship Houston and FIRST Championship St. Louis.


Personally, I believe this is the wrong point to discuss during the meeting. The issue isn't that they're two championship alliances, but rather that the whole FRC community will be split. I think the focus of the meeting should be see if there is a way to have only one FRC championship at one of the locations, and have the other be for FTC.

[Sunshine]

FLL and FTC at one location. All FRC teams at the other. Vendors, speakers, workshops can be more specific to age and needs this way.

[Anupam Goli]

FLL and FTC at one location. All FRC teams at the other. Vendors, speakers, workshops can be more specific to age and needs this way.

The one thing i don't like about this proposal is FTC and FLL teams won't get to see FRC teams and the "big kids" and their robots. The other thing I loved to see at champs was the lower programs and how excited and inspired they were.

However, I suppose if we have the two venues, that may be the best compromise to keep one championship for FRC teams.

[Siri]

Personally, I believe this is the wrong point to discuss during the meeting. The issue isn't that they're two championship alliances, but rather that the whole FRC community will be split. I think the focus of the meeting should be see if there is a way to have only one FRC championship at one of the locations, and have the other be for FTC.Agreed. A final showdown would be nice and all, but it's really not the issue. At a meeting like this, it's just a distraction from the far more important and difficult to resolve problems.

Part of me is a little bothered that it was the only issue to make the blog post. It's mostly a red herring compared to the real and far more intractable challenges these contracts created.

My first suggestion: cross-event switching, e.g. where a Houston-bound team can trade places with a Detroit-bound one.

[safiq10]

FLL and FTC at one location. All FRC teams at the other. Vendors, speakers, workshops can be more specific to age and needs this way.

I agree with this idea. FLL and FTC have grown beyond belief and the programs are getting better and better. I believe that they have reached the level where they can expand out and have their own location for a combined championship. I believe that Houston should be for FLL and FTC and Detroit for FRC. So that we can continue to have all FRC teams in the same housing but in a much larger venue.

[dag0620]

For those concerned about the other programs not seeing FRC, you can always have an exhibition tournament at the FLL/FTC championship, and the same thing with FLL and FTC at the FRC Championship. Just an idea at least.

[tStano]

One of the big concerns I've seen is that the "Championship experience" no longer happens in a stadium except for opening and closing ceremonies. With how the cities are laid out, there doesn't seem to be a way around this, but if anyone can think of some sort of alternative...


I think that qualifying teams could easily sign up to switch places under the current geography plan.
Create a list for Houston teams who want to go to Detroit/St Louis and a list of Detroit/St Louis teams who want to go to Houston. As soon a team qualifies for their championship event they can put their number at the bottom of their respective lists, and as soon as a team exists on both lists, the affected teams will be notified and will be swapped.

Once they had been swapped, this decision would be set in stone, but until a partner shows up, a team can cancel their request and go to their originally scheduled championship event. It sucks if you're qualifying near the end of the tournament, but its at least something.

[philso]

FLL and FTC at one location. All FRC teams at the other. Vendors, speakers, workshops can be more specific to age and needs this way.

It is not as simple as that. Some of us are involved in FRC and one of the other programs. Two road trips on two successive weekends will be very difficult to make work. Many FRC teams have these two other programs as significant parts of their outreach (think Chairmans) so their team members may have to choose between being with the team they are coaching or abandoning them to participate in the FRC event. We have already seen this happen when an FLL tournament was scheduled for the same day as the FRC Kickoff. Lastly, many families have students participating in programs other than FRC.

[MrRoboSteve]

To those making a proposal, observe that you are engaging in a classic product definition exercise.

Prior to thinking too much about a proposal, it is worth spending some time thinking about what attributes a proposal might be judged on. Here are attributes that were discussed in the other thread:

. Cost of attendance for teams, including travel
. Presents FRC as entertainment
. Venue availability
. Event volunteer availability (both key and regular volunteers)
. Team mentor availability
. Team member availability
. FRC staff availability
. Fits between New Year's Day and AP test day
. Number of teams participating
. Avoiding events developing persistent easier/harder reputations
. Equipment (field) availability
. Economic feasibility
. Every team has the opportunity to attend, at a minimum, once every four years / number of students inspired by event
. The result of the annual competition is a single champion alliance
. Capacity of event to inspire students
. Ability of teams to decide where they compete
. Ability to inspire FLL/FTC teams via co-location

Ideas for others?

One might then consider building a House of Quality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Quality) to compare various proposals on these attributes.

[bduddy]

For those concerned about the other programs not seeing FRC, you can always have an exhibition tournament at the FLL/FTC championship, and the same thing with FLL and FTC at the FRC Championship. Just an idea at least.Even more time, money, and school missed? Sounds like a fantastic solution!

[Kevin Sevcik]

FLL and FTC at one location. All FRC teams at the other. Vendors, speakers, workshops can be more specific to age and needs this way.I recommend you take Citrus Dad up on his suggestion and start working out a proposal for how this would work. FIRST has tentative plans for and knows how a 400 FRC team Champs would work at each location. You're going to have to convince them that either:
1. An 800-FRC team Event can work at one of the locations.
2. A smaller FRC Event can work at one of the locations and is in the best interests of the program.

If you show up and all you have is a demand/suggestion that we split FLL+FTC and FRC because you really want a single FRC Champs, that's probably not going to get as far.

[Citrus Dad]

I recommend you take Citrus Dad up on his suggestion and start working out a proposal for how this would work. FIRST has tentative plans for and knows how a 400 FRC team Champs would work at each location. You're going to have to convince them that either:
1. An 800-FRC team Event can work at one of the locations.
2. A smaller FRC Event can work at one of the locations and is in the best interests of the program.

If you show up and all you have is a demand/suggestion that we split FLL+FTC and FRC because you really want a single FRC Champs, that's probably not going to get as far.

I agree with Kevin. Start with the premise that (1) FRC will have an 800 team championship level (remember that Frank already noted last year that FRC was going to quickly outgrow the 600 team field when they announced the field expansion) and (2) none of the contracted cities (nor anywhere else) will be able to accommodate a single 800 team field. Start structuring your proposals from there.

You can create a separate proposal that shrinks the Champs field to fit into 1 stadium but understand that you will have to develop a full season proposal.

[jimbo493]

The problem of splitting FRC and FTC/FLL is that you make it highly unaccessible for a lot of teams, because now the Championships aren't centrally located. If our team got invited to Houston we would have a much harder time than we are with St. Louis. One way we could have a top winner is to work a little like the NCAA March Madness where Midwest/West and North/South never meet until the title game, So the winning alliance would come from Houston to Detroit/St. Louis, maybe with some FIRST sponsoring, for the final matches, since the two events take place on two weekends. Not sure how cost-effective and time consuming this would be, but the team would really only need to be there Saturday. And to keep it fair they wouldn't have much time to work on their bot between the two competitions.

[Sunshine]

It is not as simple as that. Some of us are involved in FRC and one of the other programs. Two road trips on two successive weekends will be very difficult to make work. Many FRC teams have these two other programs as significant parts of their outreach (think Chairmans) so their team members may have to choose between being with the team they are coaching or abandoning them to participate in the FRC event. We have already seen this happen when an FLL tournament was scheduled for the same day as the FRC Kickoff. Lastly, many families have students participating in programs other than FRC.

I'd like to see the actual numbers on how many this would really effect.

[Alex Webber]

It is not as simple as that. Some of us are involved in FRC and one of the other programs. Two road trips on two successive weekends will be very difficult to make work. Many FRC teams have these two other programs as significant parts of their outreach (think Chairmans) so their team members may have to choose between being with the team they are coaching or abandoning them to participate in the FRC event. We have already seen this happen when an FLL tournament was scheduled for the same day as the FRC Kickoff. Lastly, many families have students participating in programs other than FRC.

As stated on the FRC Blog, the dual championships would be based off of their regions. This being said, as long as your second program is located in the same region as your FRC team, then you should be good to go.
I support multiple teams across various FIRST Programs. Will they all be going to the same Championship?

In addition to qualification based on performance or ranking, FIRST will determine what teams attend which event based on geographical location of the team and by balancing team capacity at both events. Hence, it is highly likely that the geography for FTC teams at a given Championship will align with the geographies for FLL and FRC teams at the same event. However, we are still in the process of determining those geographic alignments for each Championship.

[Billfred]

For those concerned about the other programs not seeing FRC, you can always have an exhibition tournament at the FLL/FTC championship, and the same thing with FLL and FTC at the FRC Championship. Just an idea at least.

This is what I've been advocating since the announcement. You can do two FLL/JrFLL events without any strife, because winning a championship tournament never was a golden ticket to World Festival. Some years, you are playing for a bid to an Open. So we'll roll with that.

Make one city the FRC Championship, make one city the FTC World Championship. At the FTC site, you hold the Good Guy Frank Invitational with 60-100 FRC teams. Some will opt to do it because it's closer, or the date works better, or they've got FTC teams that want to go, or maybe we invite some teams whose district points bubble burst--but you hold a full-fat, top-flight event there so you've got all four programs represented there. Do the same back for the FRC Championship, and you have an undisputed champion and four healthy programs with room to grow.

[Johnny]

FLL and FTC at one location. All FRC teams at the other. Vendors, speakers, workshops can be more specific to age and needs this way.

Honestly I feel this would be the best course of action. I believe the community as a whole DOES NOT want to have 2 World champs, BUT it seems that FIRST HQ has already booked the venues. So just split up the events. One venue for the FLL/FTC and the other for FRC.

It's understood that some teams are part of multiple programs, but honestly no matter what we do, decisions will have to be made by teams. I feel it would be easier to organize the split of the FLL/FTC and FRC to different venues rather than organizing 2 splits at 2 venues...

Teams will just have to decide where they will allocate their resources as far as sending students to these events. Its just like the Olympics...you can't compete in every single event. You may physically be able to, but time does not allow it.

[tStano]

The problem of splitting FRC and FTC/FLL is that you make it highly unaccessible for a lot of teams, because now the Championships aren't centrally located. If our team got invited to Houston we would have a much harder time than we are with St. Louis. One way we could have a top winner is to work a little like the NCAA March Madness where Midwest/West and North/South never meet until the title game, So the winning alliance would come from Houston to Detroit/St. Louis, maybe with some FIRST sponsoring, for the final matches, since the two events take place on two weekends. Not sure how cost-effective and time consuming this would be, but the team would really only need to be there Saturday. And to keep it fair they wouldn't have much time to work on their bot between the two competitions.

I agree. I think splitting FTC/FLL and FRC is a poor decision. There are teams which participate in both/all three and that would be just about the most taxing, most expensive situation one could find themselves in. Having successful FTC/FLL team(s) and successful FRC team(s) should not be punished. Also, the inspiration people see from seeing other leagues is awesome.

My post above describes a way to combat region lock and theoretically one being weaker than the other. This post describes one way to crown a true world champion.

Play out the semifinal rounds at each 'championship' and take the finals rounds to this 3rd location. Immediately after the last semifinal match, the winning robots and necessary tools are bagged and shipped(on FIRST's dime) to a one day, televised "true world championship" which would be done on a third weekend in a different smaller arena that is a huge airport hub(Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, Denver, LA, NYC).

There would be just 4 alliances to make it to this final level. The teams(a skeleton crew, maybe just drive team and elims pit crew) would be flown out for a single saturday, on FIRST's(or hopefully the broadcast sponsors') dime. You could of course bring the whole team, but it would cost you, and they wouldn't be allowed on the field except for pictures at the end (as is usually the case for elims pit crew). This whole event would take less than 2 hours, and could be easily televised, with interviews with drivers and whatever.

Highest seeded north plays lower seeded south, Lower seeded north plays Higher seeded south, winners of those play each other. This final championship is one day, so shouldn't be TOO taxing on everyone. Its free, and awesome, and you would assume anyone would go. Because FIRST has the robots in their control, you could hold this at any time, the next weekend, or even the summer, and the season is essentially frozen in time. Don't allow any witholding allowance for superchamps. Allow minimal time to work on robots so they are in a very close state to how they were at the end of their championship.

It also could be an intimate place to roll out a red carpet and really schmooze some sponsors, as well as bring FIRST more into the public eye.

This idea is way too specific. I just had to make some arbitrary decisions to write it out coherently, so it of course needs tweaking.

Also, its not my idea, I put it together from reading that super long thread

[marshall]

This is what I've been advocating since the announcement. You can do two FLL/JrFLL events without any strife, because winning a championship tournament never was a golden ticket to World Festival. Some years, you are playing for a bid to an Open. So we'll roll with that.

Make one city the FRC Championship, make one city the FTC World Championship. At the FTC site, you hold the Good Guy Frank Invitational with 60-100 FRC teams. Some will opt to do it because it's closer, or the date works better, or they've got FTC teams that want to go, or maybe we invite some teams whose district points bubble burst--but you hold a full-fat, top-flight event there so you've got all four programs represented there. Do the same back for the FRC Championship, and you have an undisputed champion and four healthy programs with room to grow.

This is actually a reasonable proposal... It ain't great but it does use both venues and could maybe be a solution.

[Kevin Sevcik]

How many teams are you planning on for your FRC-only Champs? You can only cram so many into a venue. I'm pretty sure Houston can host 400 teams in style. 600 teams and 8 divisions would start to get crowded. Any more than that, and I think you're going to be disappointed in the results. I'm pretty sure 600 team capacity is necessary, since regionals this year could generate 336 champs slots. So unless you're eliminating some of those slots, you're going to have to have 600+ teams at some sort of championship event come 2017.

[Siri]

How many teams are you planning on for your FRC-only Champs? You can only cram so many into a venue. I'm pretty sure Houston can host 400 teams in style. 600 teams and 8 divisions would start to get crowded. Any more than that, and I think you're going to be disappointed in the results. I'm pretty sure 600 team capacity is necessary, since regionals this year could generate 336 champs slots. So unless you're eliminating some of those slots, you're going to have to have 600+ teams at some sort of championship event come 2017.I'm not directly arguing for the proposal, but isn't 2017 also the deadline to roll out more Districts? I wouldn't expect to have 56 Regionals in 2017, not with Texas, Minnesota, NY, Capitol Region, California (however they do it), etc, switching over. Or is this not happening/not definitive?

I like the Detroit FLL/FTC+Exhibition strategy. I'd actually suggest switching it so this is in Houston, only because that keeps FRC Worlds centrally located in St. Louis a year longer. That means only 3 years of a Detroit Championship are set in stone, not even a full high school career. Just a thought.

[EricH]

I've got a "different" proposal. I'm not going to discuss 2 Championships with 800 combined teams, or 1 with 600+ teams.

I'm going to counter with: "When (not if) does this become 4 Championships, with a combined 800+ teams, with/without a single World Championship Final Event? And, what does that look like?"

I'm early, I know. But if you really want to make things "easier" on teams, why go north/south when you can go east/west (or even all 4 directions)?

So let's think about this a moment. Say you have 4 championships. North, South, East, West. South is (generally) held somewhere in TX/LA/FL/Ga. North tends to migrate towards MI/IL. West is somewhere on the West Coast (we do have a few venues out here big enough); East is, obviously, somewhere on the East Coast (but biased towards the Northeast). Each championship is fed by teams from a defined area, by some defined set of qualifiers. (For simplicity: the standard 6 teams/event will do, at least for discussion.) Each championship gets at least 200 teams, probably more (200 is too small and too big to work with what's next).

As a side note, you should be able to get a 400-team event into any of those regions, somehow. For a 2-championship system, this allows some rotation between cities--and said rotation offers a different batch of teams a better chance to slide in as volunteers or spectators if they don't make it.

Per championship event, you will have either 2 or 4 divisions (leaning towards 4, each with 60-70 teams, rather than 2 with 100). See "previous years' championships" for play style. Each event will also have a feed from the other championship events for viewing. At the end, you send all the winners and certain other designated teams to one location--let's just say about 60 teams in all, to St. Louis, because we can. And then... they play for the World Championship. (For some reason, venues that can handle a 60-team event are much easier to find than venues that can handle a 400-team event...)

Or you come up with some other way of naming a World Champion--computer simulation, FRC Top 25, highest total points, best win-loss record as an alliance...

[gblake]

Folks it's almost amusing to see just how deeply many of us are stuck in the rut of thinking that FIRST Championships (now that there are going to be more than one) will only occur in North America (a few years from now).

Discuss ...

Blake

[EricH]

Folks it's almost amusing to see just how deeply many of us are stuck in the rut of thinking that FIRST Championships (now that there are going to be more than one) will only occur in North America (a few years from now).

Discuss ...

Blake

Where are the vast majority of teams and events located currently?

Or rather: Name the 4 official regionals that have taken place outside of continental North America in at least one year. (Hint: Brazil Pilot Regional only lasted 2 years; the other 3 are going strong.)

That being said, I can see in the far distant future having one or more outside of North America. Exactly where is an open question, though...

[cadandcookies]

I'm not directly arguing for the proposal, but isn't 2017 also the deadline to roll out more Districts? I wouldn't expect to have 56 Regionals in 2017, not with Texas, Minnesota, NY, Capitol Region, California (however they do it), etc, switching over. Or is this not happening/not definitive?

While at this point I've heard even the most ardent regional supporters are now saying "when" about Districts in Minnesota, whether we'll be in Districts by 2017 has yet to be seen. Certainly there hasn't been a public announcement or any obvious planning.

[Anupam Goli]

I'm not directly arguing for the proposal, but isn't 2017 also the deadline to roll out more Districts? I wouldn't expect to have 56 Regionals in 2017, not with Texas, Minnesota, NY, Capitol Region, California (however they do it), etc, switching over. Or is this not happening/not definitive?


Districts are going to sweep across the country in the coming years from what i've been seeing and hearing. Virginia, the Capitol Region, Minnesota, even Georgia and North Carolina have been in talks of transitioning over in the next few years. I feel like the transition to districts in so many more regions may be enough to circumvent any overpopulation issues at championships.

[gblake]

Where are the vast majority of teams and events located currently?

Or rather: Name the 4 official regionals that have taken place outside of continental North America in at least one year. (Hint: Brazil Pilot Regional only lasted 2 years; the other 3 are going strong.)

That being said, I can see in the far distant future having one or more outside of North America. Exactly where is an open question, though...

Eric, your post just happened to be the one before mine. Mine wasn't written as a comment about yours in particular.

My counterpoint to your specific points quoted here is that I'll bet a cold Mountain Dew that China jumps into FRC with both feet very soon.

Regardless, how long do you suppose it will be before there are 100 to 200 decent teams in a cluster somewhere on Earth, who make a good case for not having to travel halfway around the planet to participate in one of the multiple North America Championships? And instead justify having one of their own?

If you want to plan for the future, it makes sense to include that scenario in the possible futures you assess.

Blake

[zinthorne]

Here is my proposal:

Since Houston and Detroit are probably required for use because of contracts, the plan needs to be formulated around each. To achieve this, I think that the current form of Districts and Regionals needs to be changed. I think that everybody should move to districts. What this would then allow is a fair way to seed teams to worlds. (For out of country teams, regionals would have to have a format set up) FIRST would then use the same method they use now for district teams to worlds. (In PNW the top 30 or so teams seed to worlds) What this would then allow is a 400-500 team championship event hosted in a single city. This would get the best teams from each event to worlds. We could have the "Everyone is a winner" mentality at the District championship level. This means multiple chairmans winners, but only the winners in the top 30 seed to worlds. (Using 30 as example for each district) This would be the same for all the awards that would normally seed you to worlds. So even if you win an award you would have to be in the top 30 to seed to worlds.

This model of all districts would allow for a fair way to seed teams to worlds. It would ensure the truly best teams go to worlds, and allow for there to be one true winner. This would I think also unite the FIRST community and give everyone a legit shot to seed to worlds. With the regional system there are truly good teams that do not make it to worlds, because they just arent on the traditional number one seeded alliance with the 2 teams that always pair up. I think we can all think of the teams in our areas that win every event in our area for as long as we can remember. And I am fine with there being powerhouse alliances that happen every year, but this system would allow for team who are not on those to still go to worlds. (For me personally my team has gotten second place to the same team for 3 years running and still has yet to beat them)

I hope you guys consider this idea for a FIRST championship.

[EricH]

My counterpoint to your specific points quoted here is that I'll bet a cold Mountain Dew that China jumps into FRC with both feet very soon.

Regardless, how long do you suppose it will be before there are 100 to 200 decent teams in a cluster somewhere on Earth, who make a good case for not having to travel halfway around the planet to participate in one of the multiple North America Championships? And instead justify having one of their own?

I would suspect that it might be quite a while. Other than possibly China, nobody's been able to field more than about a dozen traveling teams to North America, and certainly not for long (China has a bunch of rookies right now; we'll see how they go next year). Brazil folded, mostly, as far as events and most of their teams. New Zealand/Australia is probably the leading candidate in my mind--before Australia got going, NZ was seriously considering having a regional but dropped out. They also happen to be "relatively close" to China and Hawaii (who also have a long trip regardless of where they go--logistics are a touch easier to the U.S. as far as "still in the same country" goes).

Once that happens, I would suspect that for the World Championship, you'd simply redistribute the numbers per Region Championship to include the "International" Championship. (Something like the Little League model, give or take a few stretched analogies.)

[Rachel Lim]

Warning: very long post ahead. These are the issues I can see that will come up organized as well as I can at 11pm. (And I thought I was done with pros/cons list after build season...)

Issues FIRST tried to resolve:
Size:
There are currently about 3000 teams competing in FRC[1], and that number isn't going down. If each team went once every four years (which seems to be FIRST's goal so that every student that joined a team as a freshman and stayed got a chance to go to worlds), that would be 750 teams/year. Then there are teams that definitely going to be going more often than that (prequalified teams as well as top teams). Not to mention that the number of teams has been going up every year. An 800 team event may work for the next few years, but not forever. At some time, either champs has a smaller percentage of teams, or it splits.

Location:
Finding a location that can deal with 800+ teams is difficult, specifically:
- A building that has enough rooms for all the fields and pits
- A city that has enough hotels for all the teams (and restaurants, other activities, is easy to get to (i.e. a airport hub nearby), etc.)

Time:
AP testing starts in early May[2], so all competitions need to be ready by then. Week 7 events end in mid-April. That gives about a two week period to fit in champs / split-champs / super-regionals / other competitions.

Cost:
Many teams are already unable to get the funding to travel to champs. Having district events -> district champs -> super regionals -> champs is unrealistic in my opinion. Having super regionals replace champs may be one option--teams will get the opportunity to compete with more teams than they would otherwise, and hopefully it's closer than champs--but for teams that eventually qualify for champs, that may again be an issue.

Distance:
As I said above, doing district champs / super regionals and champs will be two events that are likely not nearby. Even for the top alliance(s) that will have to travel to another location to finish competing, more traveling = not good.

Inspiration:
FIRST wants every student to get a chance to go to champs in their 4 years in high school. It's a method to inspire them, to make them feel like they've succeeded, to let them see the best (even if just part of it), to make it easier to explain to everyone what they're spending time on, to justify to schools about time missed, and to use to help get sponsors. They're trying to aim this to as many teams as possible, which is generally the average teams that don't normally get to champs.

I'm sure they know that mentors on powerhouse teams wouldn't like this idea. But it appears that they've decided to aim this not at the top, but at the average team. Whoever is presenting needs to keep this in mind. Ideally there will be students/mentors from non-powerhouse teams to explain that they too dislike this new idea and so that FIRST understands that it's not just "top team" problem. (Or maybe it is...or a "CD problem"--it's hard to know exactly how most teams think about this)

Other possible solutions:
Splitting FLL+FTC and FRC:
Have FLL+FTC champs at one location and FRC champs at the other.
Pros:
- Deals with an expanded champs for the short term
- Allows all FRC teams to see each other (and FLL/FTC to do the same)
- Allows for a single set of winners
- Doesn't require extra traveling / time away from school
- Everyone has the opportunity to see the final matches for the competition in person
- Uses both locations that FIRST has

Cons:
- FLL/FTC can't see FRC and vice versa (counterpoint: have "outreach" teams--teams that didn't qualify / can't afford to travel / etc. display at the other event)
- FIRST can't have their 25% of teams at champs (counterpoint: see district champs / super regionals)
- Mentors/students who work with teams competing in both events will not be able to help/watch both


District champs / Super Regionals:
Have all areas convert to districts to have a smaller percentage of teams at champs, and have district champs or super regionals be the event more teams can attend (25%+)
Pros:
- Deals with the expanding size of FRC
- Gives teams who won't qualify for champs a chance to meet more teams
- Easier for those teams to get to (likely nearer)
- Already sort of exists as district champs, and a few districts could merge theirs into super regionals so it doesn't add another competition
- Both keeps a single champs and gives everyone an opportunity to compete at a higher level
- Depending at what size champs is kept to, it could leave FTC/FLL with FRC
- Could be held at multiple locations including the ones already booked
- Teams can be inspired at this level too
- Possibly even more teams can get to this than would get to champs otherwise

Cons:
- Some teams will get to champs (actual champs) very, very infrequently
- Will require more traveling for those that do qualify
- Will require teams who are not in an area that is likely to convert to districts to either travel far for two events (this one + champs) or have another way to qualify
- May still have to be combined with the previous idea to keep a champs to a size that a city can support and to a percentage of teams that can qualify so it's not just a very small elite group


Final matches for Houston vs St Louis:
Pros:
- Keeps the split champs
- Could be expanded for more areas later if needed
- Allows for FTC/FLL/FRC to be together
- Less missed school / traveling for most teams

Cons:
- Most people can't watch final matches in person (which is arguably the most inspiring part of champs)
- More missed school / traveling for those teams
- Would require another competition, another location, and more volunteers
- Extends competition season even more and starts cutting into AP / finals time
- If areas are geographical, it may end up as Canada+Michigan+east coast vs Texas+south+west coast always...


My opinion:
I'm personally in favor of both splitting FTC/FLL and FRC, as well as converting all of FRC into districts and then having district champs / super regionals as that intermediate level. Champs should be able to support 600 teams, or even possibly 700-800, which will probably work for quite a while more. Districts could either just have their own district champs, or combine with other one to get super regionals, just ideally not both.

If they're doing the second idea, they can either do several (~7?) that are just a few states together (e.g. CA+NV+AZ (+HI?), OR+WA+ID (+UT?), TX+OK+NM, LO+AR+MO+MS, etc.) or fairly large areas (west coast, east coast, south, midwest)

It would mean that most teams would get the chance to see the elite teams in their area fairly frequently and then have that to push towards, with champs being the ultimate goal for everyone. It would add more competitions, but probably not much more than what districts are already having. If there are teams willing to be "demo teams" for FLL/FTC, that could solve that issue. If the two events are already booked for different weeks, it gives the opportunity (and unfortunately this is the point that I don't know how to address properly) to travel to both, although it would be very inconvenient.

I hope this gets resolved somehow.

[1] Wikipedia
[2] College Board

[Andrew Lawrence]

I see a lot of people shooting down ideas because of less than ideal trade offs. This is an engineering challenge, and in engineering you have to deal with trade offs. The hand we're dealt is two championship events in two different places. While we'd like to have it a different way where there is no downside, that's simply not the case. Sometimes you gotta make some sacrifices to play the best hand. This may involve splitting up a team's FRC and FTC teams, or limiting the reach of inspiration by separating FLL and FRC students (or dare I say it, including less teams in the championship). If you want to build a strong proposal, you need to recognize what trade offs you're going to be making, accept that sacrifices will need to be made, and provide sound and valid justification as to why these sacrifices are the best course of action for the program overall.

[philso]

I'd like to see the actual numbers on how many this would really effect.

So would I. Other posters on this thread have also mentioned this issue. Depending on the real numbers, such a split may be acceptable or not.

My position comes from watching Chairman's Award videos and reading Chairman's Award presentations from around the country. Most of these were from HOF teams. It also comes from my observations of the Houston FIRST scene. I see many of the same faces at the FLL and FRC events, including many of the key volunteers that make these events possible. I suspect that this split will affect the larger, more established teams the most. The driver for a Houston area team that has won 3 regionals this year was a co-coach for his younger brother's FLL team. They run one of the best FLL events in Houston and sponsor something like 5 FLL teams. A team member from a past World Championship team is one of the mentors for an FLL team going to the World Festival this year. A third local powerhouse team, that has also won 3 regionals this year, used to run some of the FLL tournaments until they switched to VEX-IQ as their feeder program.

[philso]

I see a lot of people shooting down ideas because of less than ideal trade offs. This is an engineering challenge, and in engineering you have to deal with trade offs. The hand we're dealt is two championship events in two different places. While we'd like to have it a different way where there is no downside, that's simply not the case. Sometimes you gotta make some sacrifices to play the best hand. This may involve splitting up a team's FRC and FTC teams, or limiting the reach of inspiration by separating FLL and FRC students (or dare I say it, including less teams in the championship). If you want to build a strong proposal, you need to recognize what trade offs you're going to be making, accept that sacrifices will need to be made, and provide sound and valid justification as to why these sacrifices are the best course of action for the program overall.

I have heard the FIRST programs called "engineering competitions". Lets do some engineering.

Those of you who are practicing engineers probably have to make difficult choices between several less than ideal solutions in your day job. You probably also have to deal with less than ideal initial conditions, resources, constraints, etc. Sometimes you can turn those less than ideal starting points around and end up with a superior result. Often, putting aside one's emotions to look at the numbers and the facts leads one to arrive at the superior solution, a solution that one's emotions would lead one to reject.

I am not happy with the direction that FIRST seems to be taking but they have said that they are open to dialogue. It is also likely that FIRST is not happy with some of the choices that they have had to make so far.

What is inspiring to me and many students is seeing the many ingenious solutions to the same problem (game) that many of the great teams (and some rookies too) come up with every year, even if we only see them in a video. As a community of some of the brightest and best minds, we should use this opportunity apply the same ingenuity to make these programs better than they were.

[MrRoboSteve]

Generally, you'll want to avoid making logical fallacies (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/) in your argument. Good decisionmakers (Dean, Don, and the board fall into that category) are adept at sorting fallacies from facts.

Instead, you should say "when trading off goal A vs goal B, I think B is more important, and here are my reasons." That recognizes A as a valid option, and presents an argument on why B is better, all along admitting that the choice is based on your value judgment. That's the best route to persuading people to come to your point of view.

Rachel Lim's post is well though out, does a good job of examining the tradeoffs, and is persuasive. Others thinking about making a proposal should read hers carefully and emulate her style.

Please don't take my feedback below as "your proposal is bad," but more "here are questions or facts that you need to consider to make your proposal better, or observations about your persuasive arguments." Well-argued proposals based on facts will be the most effective way to adapt this decision to team needs.

I'm not directly arguing for the proposal, but isn't 2017 also the deadline to roll out more Districts?

2017 is a goal, not a deadline. There are a bunch of conditions (e.g., volunteer base) that must be present to transition.

I believe the community as a whole DOES NOT want to have 2 World champs

You'll need some data, gathered from the complete base of teams (i.e., not those who participate in a poll on CD) to be persuasive on this point. Otherwise Frank and others will hear "I think everyone agrees with me," which won't go very far. This is the "anecdotal" or "bandwagon" logical fallacy.

I'll bet a cold Mountain Dew that China jumps into FRC with both feet very soon

China is very suspicious of NGOs (http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=8183). It's probably more likely that China will create a new China Robotics Competition, patterned on FIRST but located domestically.

If you will switch to cold Dr. Pepper, I will take you up on the bet ;>)


Location:
Finding a location that can deal with 800+ teams is difficult, specifically:
- A building that has enough rooms for all the fields and pits
- A city that has enough hotels for all the teams (and restaurants, other activities, is easy to get to (i.e. a airport hub nearby), etc.)


You should also address the availability of volunteers, as it's often a bigger constraint that facilities. For larger events, normal volunteers, not key volunteers, are the constraint.



Splitting FLL+FTC and FRC:
Have FLL+FTC champs at one location and FRC champs at the other.
Pros:
- Deals with an expanded champs for the short term


You should provide some evidence that the Houston or Detroit locations could support FRC events with >400 teams.


- Doesn't require extra traveling / time away from school

You should address teams that run FLL, FTC, and FRC programs.


- FIRST can't have their 25% of teams at champs (counterpoint: see district champs / super regionals)


I would phrase this more that "fewer teams have the opportunity to participate." FIRST's goal is not about FIRST's growth, it is about growing the opportunity for teams to participate.

I have a thought exercise for you. Your team has attended champs based on merit in 9 of the last 10 years (congrats on Chairman's this year, BTW!), has a larger than normal membership, is from one of the wealthiest areas in the US with average family incomes well above the national average, and has a dream list of sponsors, so you're going to have an unusual perspective, compared the more common team profile. It can be hard, but please try to think about this from the perspective of a team without your resources and track record of success. Look at the record of this team (http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/2890/2015) (randomly picked as about halfway between 0 and the highest team number on TBA), and think about what your statement means to them. Imagine making a presentation to them, justifying your statement. That is what the leaders of FIRST will be thinking and doing.


Champs should be able to support 600 teams, or even possibly 700-800, which will probably work for quite a while more.


This statement is unsupported by facts. Posters that are proposing 600 or 800 team single location FRC events should consider these important facts:

1) the only people who know today whether a 600 team event is going to work in St. Louis are those at FIRST

2) the people "in the know" felt so strongly that the event needed to be split that they proposed something they knew would be very controversial. Specific facts that support this statement:

a. They added a location to St. Louis in 2017. That is likely the earliest date that they could engage another venue, and in the convention business is a fairly short lead time for our size of event.
b. The announcement is signed by Dean, Don, and the co-Board chairs -- the top decision makers in FIRST. A trial balloon would be a blog post by Frank. This is not a trial balloon -- it is a decision.
c. It is accompanied by an announcement video, which only accompanies big announcements.
d. It was done 2 weeks before champs, so that they would have an opportunity to talk to the community face to face about the change and why they think it is necessary.

[gblake]

...
I'll bet a cold Mountain Dew that China jumps into FRC with both feet very soon
China is very suspicious of NGOs (http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=8183). It's probably more likely that China will create a new China Robotics Competition, patterned on FIRST but located domestically.

If you will switch to cold Dr. Pepper, I will take you up on the bet ;>)
...
My hunch is based on strong Chinese student/team participation in the VEX Robotics Competition, and on the presence of those new Chinese FRC teams putting their toes into the water.

Dr Pepper if you win? - Agreed

Blake

[Kevin Leonard]

This is what I've been advocating since the announcement. You can do two FLL/JrFLL events without any strife, because winning a championship tournament never was a golden ticket to World Festival. Some years, you are playing for a bid to an Open. So we'll roll with that.

Make one city the FRC Championship, make one city the FTC World Championship. At the FTC site, you hold the Good Guy Frank Invitational with 60-100 FRC teams. Some will opt to do it because it's closer, or the date works better, or they've got FTC teams that want to go, or maybe we invite some teams whose district points bubble burst--but you hold a full-fat, top-flight event there so you've got all four programs represented there. Do the same back for the FRC Championship, and you have an undisputed champion and four healthy programs with room to grow.

This is my favorite proposal so far. One event is the undisputed FRC Championship with 600 FRC teams, as well as an FTC Open Tournament and an FLL Festival, and the other is the undisputed FTC Championship with however many FTC teams, with an FRC Open Tournament and an FLL Festival.

This is not a perfect proposal whatsoever- teams with world class qualifying FRC and FTC teams have to choose which of their programs deserves the true championship, and which gets the lower tier Open tournament.

However I think this is byfar better than both programs getting a lower quality championship.

[Chris is me]

Personally, I believe this is the wrong point to discuss during the meeting. The issue isn't that they're two championship alliances, but rather that the whole FRC community will be split. I think the focus of the meeting should be see if there is a way to have only one FRC championship at one of the locations, and have the other be for FTC.

Agreed. While the "two champions" thing is a valid complaint, it's not like the problem is solved if everything is the same except for one "ultimate championship" match between these two alliances. Ultimately, it's the permanent fracturing of the FRC community that is the biggest and most obvious problem with this plan.

[grstex]

This is what I've been advocating since the announcement. You can do two FLL/JrFLL events without any strife, because winning a championship tournament never was a golden ticket to World Festival. Some years, you are playing for a bid to an Open. So we'll roll with that.

Make one city the FRC Championship, make one city the FTC World Championship. At the FTC site, you hold the Good Guy Frank Invitational with 60-100 FRC teams. Some will opt to do it because it's closer, or the date works better, or they've got FTC teams that want to go, or maybe we invite some teams whose district points bubble burst--but you hold a full-fat, top-flight event there so you've got all four programs represented there. Do the same back for the FRC Championship, and you have an undisputed champion and four healthy programs with room to grow.

I know this is a popular compromise being discussed, but but please consider how this will be perceived by the host cities. They (along with the FIRST sponsors based in those cities) likely spent lots of time and money bidding to an FRC Championship. I suspected that all cities bidding to host championships also knew there would two championship events. Suddenly changing course and giving one city the FRC Championship and the other and FTC/FLL championship with an FRC invitational is not what these cities bid for.

If you were in their shoes, and invested time, money, and political and business connections attract such a big event, and got something very different than what was promised, would you not be upset? (Honestly, in typing this, I realize this is likely what many commenters feel has happened to them with this announcement.) To be blunt, reshaping this agreement and awarding only one city the championship that both cities were promised will leave the other city snubbed.* That will ruin the reputation of FIRST, and make it that much harder to negotiate with other cities in the future (if you don't think this type of thing would be spread by mayors, tourism chiefs, etc., you're wrong).

I really think allowing qualifying teams to opt in to a "swap lottery" has a lot of potential. It allows for cross pollination, gives qualifying teams a special privilege that they earned, and would protect against stacking one Championship at the expense of the other. The host cities involved would also likely welcome a more diverse pool of teams traveling to their cities.


*To be clear, calling an FTC/FLL championship a "snub" is NOT meant to disparage these programs. It's just obviously not what either host city signed up for.

[JesseK]

FTC should have more than 1 Championship, most definitely. FTC itself isn't so competitive on a national level that I don't think teams care which event they go to in order to claim "champions".

Question 1
Could FIRST split up champs with FRC/FTC and FTC/FLL? The FRC-based FTC competition would have the FTC teams which are part of larger programs and/or have older students. The FTC competition at the other event would be for FTC-only programs and/or younger students.

I think this type of split would better-serve the types of teams which would wind up at either event given the criteria above. The teams would probably more likely have more in common from a team management, funding, and goals side than is at the typical FTC championship. It also gives FLL teams something to aim for. FLL teams who have nearby FRC teams are probably inundated with demos already, so I don't think there's much inspiration lost if they attend a FLL/FTC-only Champs. It may also open the event up for even more FLL teams.

Question 2
What data is FIRST looking to gather in order to support any changes? Is FIRST looking for flow and 'feel' of a 600-team champs, are they trying to figure out what the multi-venue split will do this year, etc? Is FIRST looking to gather specific data on alumni, local politics, or other region-centric data which will help them decide geographic boundaries (etc)?

Question 3
As is the case with district implementation, there may be a few fringe cases where it doesn't make sense to do the 'new' thing since it is entirely counter-productive to how the team is managed, located or few-year forecasts the team has done. Will FIRST allow these fringe cases to be handled on a case-by-case basis, or are the boundaries going to be as strict as districts? (Note - my team is not currently and would not become one of these fringe cases)

Question 4
Be honest: is the 4-tier "super regional" still the long-term plan? (P.S. my wife doesn't yet know there are 4 potential events next year under the district system. I seriously doubt she'll get on board with 5 events unless one of them is in Vegas or somewhere tropical. Houston doesn't count, at least I don't think it does. No offense Houston ;))

[Siri]

...If you were in their shoes, and invested time, money, and political and business connections attract such a big event, and got something very different than what was promised, would you not be upset? (Honestly, in typing this, I realize this is likely what many commenters feel has happened to them with this announcement.) To be blunt, reshaping this agreement and awarding only one city the championship that both cities were promised will leave the other city snubbed.* That will ruin the reputation of FIRST, and make it that much harder to negotiate with other cities in the future (if you don't think this type of thing would be spread by mayors, tourism chiefs, etc., you're wrong)...Yes, and it's worse than that. As has been discussed elsewhere, it's quite possible/likely that the contracts specified FRC, or at perhaps specified requirements that can only be met via FRC. That's one of the (many) reasons we've asked Frank to explain exactly what's going on. Hopefully he can clarify what parts of the press released information is set in stone and what isn't.

And, Re: "Honestly, in typing this, I realize this is likely what many commenters feel has happened to them with this announcement." — hear, hear.

I really think allowing qualifying teams to opt in to a "swap lottery" has a lot of potential. It allows for cross pollination, gives qualifying teams a special privilege that they earned, and would protect against stacking one Championship at the expense of the other.Emphasis mine. I like the swap idea too (not to claim that it does much for the big picture), but I wouldn't count on it preventing stacking one event or the other. In fact, it could well do the opposite. If one event ends up being considered perennially "stronger" pre-swap (which it will*), it's likely that few powerhouses will want to leave it and many will want to come in. (At least if the discussion here and the existence of IRI are any indication.) Assuming there are still some teams at the "stronger" event that want to travel elsewhere, you'll see a net inflow of strength rather than outflow. How large the change would be is unclear. However, one might expect that the more unequal they are and the more they're opened to swapping, the more one of them will attract strong teams and thus the fewer strong teams already there will want to leave.

*This isn't necessarily a comment on team geography, just the statistical likelihood of two quantities like this being equal. However, you can examine (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=18808&d=1428608124) the historical geography of Worlds Division finals.

[Denise Bohnsack]

This is what I've been advocating since the announcement. You can do two FLL/JrFLL events without any strife, because winning a championship tournament never was a golden ticket to World Festival. Some years, you are playing for a bid to an Open. So we'll roll with that.

Make one city the FRC Championship, make one city the FTC World Championship. At the FTC site, you hold the Good Guy Frank Invitational with 60-100 FRC teams. Some will opt to do it because it's closer, or the date works better, or they've got FTC teams that want to go, or maybe we invite some teams whose district points bubble burst--but you hold a full-fat, top-flight event there so you've got all four programs represented there. Do the same back for the FRC Championship, and you have an undisputed champion and four healthy programs with room to grow.

Yes. A solution such as this. After reading through every post on this subject, this idea seems a worthwhile suggestion, which could use more investigating and tweaking. FTC and FLL teams are very inspiring, and as well as FRC, any city should be thrilled to host them. Yes, there will be some situations where a FLL/FTC team mentored by a FRC team will not be able to stay together, but surely there are some good solutions the FIRST community can create together. I would add that I would like to see whichever city to host the FLL/FTC group be the more kid friendly, safer city. I will leave it to others to say which is better for the younger group.

[Rachel Lim]

You should also address the availability of volunteers, as it's often a bigger constraint that facilities. For larger events, normal volunteers, not key volunteers, are the constraint.


First, I wanted to say thanks for all your comments. I definitely know that there are gaps in my logic, and your questions/comments were very helpful.

I agree that finding volunteers is an issue FIRST has, but I'm slightly confused as to how having two "split" events requires more volunteers than two "mixed" events. If anything, this will allow volunteers who only can/want to help with one event focus on purely that (e.g. if you want to volunteer with FLL, now you don't have to pick one)


You should provide some evidence that the Houston or Detroit locations could support FRC events with >400 teams.


I'll admit that I'm making a huge assumption now, but aren't the Houston / Detroit locations currently going to support ~300 FRC teams (half of the 600 this year) plus FTC and FLL? Are there really only 100 FTC teams that qualify for champs each year (and same for FLL)? (Or 200 teams assuming that FRC teams are much larger than other ones)


You should address teams that run FLL, FTC, and FRC programs.

There are a few ways I could see this being approached:
- How are these teams currently doing it? Do they have a lot of overlap between the programs or have separate groups of kids/mentors?
- District champs / super regionals could have multiple or all programs together
- For teams that don't qualify / can't afford to go to one, there can be a demo section for FRC in the FLL/FTC and vice versa


I would phrase this more that "fewer teams have the opportunity to participate." FIRST's goal is not about FIRST's growth, it is about growing the opportunity for teams to participate.

I agree. I just used 25% because that seems to be the number that FIRST wants (or was it just created on CD?)


I have a thought exercise for you. Your team has attended champs based on merit in 9 of the last 10 years (congrats on Chairman's this year, BTW!), has a larger than normal membership, is from one of the wealthiest areas in the US with average family incomes well above the national average, and has a dream list of sponsors, so you're going to have an unusual perspective, compared the more common team profile. It can be hard, but please try to think about this from the perspective of a team without your resources and track record of success. Look at the record of this team (http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/2890/2015) (randomly picked as about halfway between 0 and the highest team number on TBA), and think about what your statement means to them. Imagine making a presentation to them, justifying your statement. That is what the leaders of FIRST will be thinking and doing.

Yes, this is why I've said multiple times in various threads that as long as this is seen as a "top team" problem or "CD members" problem, FIRST won't be listening. They're marketing this at the average team. But will the average team care as much about whether it's "world champs" (assuming the split champs keep that name) or "district champs" or any other name? Will having events closer to team make it easier for them to travel to it, or will not being able to say "we're going to world championships" make it harder to convince schools?

The one aspect of this split champs that probably won't directly affect my team is who wins worlds. We've played in elims once, 5 years ago. I'm writing this as a student on a team that won't feel like we won "half a championship," because the chances we'll win is basically zero. But if I dislike that, what is the chance that an average team will dislike some part of this?

But in general, yes, remember this is aimed at the average team--the teams who are not represented here. Having posters here argue against it is like having mentors on top teams say mentor-run teams are inspiring to students, or strategists on top teams say cheesecaking is beneficial to everyone. It may be true, but it's not that convincing.


This statement is unsupported by facts. Posters that are proposing 600 or 800 team single location FRC events should consider these important facts:
[snip]

Isn't St Louis going to have 600 FRC teams, plus more FTC and FLL teams? I don't know how to find the numbers for FTC/FLL or get estimates for how many people those teams have on average, but there currently is a way to host more than 600 teams in a city. Or at least they think there is; I guess we'd find out soon. Beyond that, I'll need to find out more about how FTC/FLL work in with FRC at champs (I've never seen it, and I can't find information on it easily) to say anything else. However, I did want to reply to this point:


2) the people "in the know" felt so strongly that the event needed to be split that they proposed something they knew would be very controversial. Specific facts that support this statement:
[snip]

I think that's part of the issue. FIRST hasn't explained their goals. Even Frank's follow up blog post, as good at it was, didn't explain why they think a split champs is necessary. Maybe they have a reason that it is necessary and there aren't any other alternatives, but maybe there aren't. Unless they tell us, we won't know why they decided to go forward with this.

[Dunngeon]

I'll admit that I'm making a huge assumption now, but aren't the Houston / Detroit locations currently going to support ~300 FRC teams (half of the 600 this year) plus FTC and FLL? Are there really only 100 FTC teams that qualify for champs each year (and same for FLL)? (Or 200 teams assuming that FRC teams are much larger than other ones)



Just wanted to point out that each event will host 400 teams, meaning that there are 800 FRC teams total attending a World Championship.

[grstex]

Emphasis mine. I like the swap idea too (not to claim that it does much for the big picture), but I wouldn't count on it preventing stacking one event or the other. In fact, it could well do the opposite. If one event ends up being considered perennially "stronger" pre-swap (which it will*), it's likely that few powerhouses will want to leave it and many will want to come in. (At least if the discussion here and the existence of IRI are any indication.) Assuming there are still some teams at the "stronger" event that want to travel elsewhere, you'll see a net inflow of strength rather than outflow. How large the change would be is unclear. However, one might expect that the more unequal they are and the more they're opened to swapping, the more one of them will attract strong teams and thus the fewer strong teams already there will want to leave.


That's why I think it should be a swap (qualifying team for qualifying team) lottery (random). Those trying to reach the "stronger" championship will have to rely on qualifying teams from the other region also entering the lottery. even then, it would be a random switch. Heck, the lottery algorithim could even stipulate that it's an "even swap" (winning alliance captain for wining alliance captain, etc.). Even so, There will at least be some opportunistic teams aiming to swap to the "weaker" championship to increase their chances of winning. It opens up all sorts of interesting choices with risks and tradeoffs! THAT is cool!


Yes, and it's worse than that. As has been discussed elsewhere, it's quite possible/likely that the contracts specified FRC, or at perhaps specified requirements that can only be met via FRC. That's one of the (many) reasons we've asked Frank to explain exactly what's going on. Hopefully he can clarify what parts of the press released information is set in stone and what isn't.

In that case I'd recommend requesting a Q&A session be a major agenda item at the town hall. I think FIRST's goals with split championships were pretty clear based on the press release and blog post, but anything that will help teams better understand this decision and the motivation behind it will ease the tension (as long as things are kept civil).

And, Re: "Honestly, in typing this, I realize this is likely what many commenters feel has happened to them with this announcement." — hear, hear.

With all due respect, I acknowledged and understood the sentiment, I didn't agree with it. As a FIRST alumni and active volunteer, I've been... "disappointed" by some of the comments on other threads.

Having said that, I look forward to seeing an enlightening and constructive town hall that embodies the values of FIRST. Lets aim toward that goal.

[Siri]

That's why I think it should be a swap (qualifying team for qualifying team) lottery (random). Those trying to reach the "stronger" championship will have to rely on qualifying teams from the other region also entering the lottery. even then, it would be a random switch. Heck, the lottery algorithim could even stipulate that it's an "even swap" (winning alliance captain for wining alliance captain, etc.). Even so, There will at least be some opportunistic teams aiming to swap to the "weaker" championship to increase their chances of winning. It opens up all sorts of interesting choices with risks and tradeoffs! THAT is cool!I understand that you see this working, but I still haven't figured out how making it a lottery would address the phenomenon of more powerhouse teams signing up to leave one event than the other. Unless HQ develops a way to deliberately control powerhouse swaps, making the selection random doesn't compensate for the bias within the lottery pools themselves. A winning alliance captain is not the same thing in all cases. This isn't meant an insult to any specific team, simply an acknowledgement that different performances are different. It would take concerted and arguably inappropriately specific effort on the part of HQ to even ostensibly enforce equality, with or without a swap program.

I also feel the need to strenuously challenge the term "cool" for engaging in the practice you refer to as opportunistic (personally I'd call it exploitative). This is already possible at a regional level, and I have never seen nor had the desire to apply the word "cool" to it. I usually hear it called exactly (exactly) the opposite. Particularly because most teams do not have the luxury to move even should they wish to do so.

In that case I'd recommend requesting a Q&A session be a major agenda item at the town hall. I think FIRST's goals with split championships were pretty clear based on the press release and blog post, but anything that will help teams better understand this decision and the motivation behind it will ease the tension (as long as things are kept civil).I would expect that the Q&A will be, but would personally find HQ waiting until Worlds to publicize these details rather untoward. It's very difficult to prepare proposals without knowing what's legally locked and what's not. I've made a blog comment request for more information already.
With all due respect, I acknowledged and understood the sentiment, I didn't agree with it. As a FIRST alumni and active volunteer, I've been... "disappointed" by some of the comments on other threads.Sorry, I hadn't meant to imply that you agreed, merely that the comparison was insightful and rhetorically impressive.

[PAR_WIG1350]

I know this is a popular compromise being discussed, but but please consider how this will be perceived by the host cities. They (along with the FIRST sponsors based in those cities) likely spent lots of time and money bidding to an FRC Championship. I suspected that all cities bidding to host championships also knew there would two championship events. Suddenly changing course and giving one city the FRC Championship and the other and FTC/FLL championship with an FRC invitational is not what these cities bid for.

If you were in their shoes, and invested time, money, and political and business connections attract such a big event, and got something very different than what was promised, would you not be upset? (Honestly, in typing this, I realize this is likely what many commenters feel has happened to them with this announcement.) To be blunt, reshaping this agreement and awarding only one city the championship that both cities were promised will leave the other city snubbed.* That will ruin the reputation of FIRST, and make it that much harder to negotiate with other cities in the future (if you don't think this type of thing would be spread by mayors, tourism chiefs, etc., you're wrong).

This is even more reason why FIRST should have consulted the community BEFORE it agreed to anything. Now FIRST will have to choose to spite either the host cities or the teams. On one hand, pulling the bait-and-switch on the the host cities may be damaging to FIRST's negotiating power. On the other hand, the teams are the customers to whom FIRST is providing a service. There is a limit to how much your customers will put up with before they decide that the service is not worth it.

Furthermore, if people's opinions regarding the value of the FIRST experience is diminished, such as it would be by the isolation of teams by geographical boundaries***, then teams would be less enthusiastic about bringing others into the program. FIRST seems to have dug itself a nice, deep hole, in between a rock and a hard place.

I really think allowing qualifying teams to opt in to a "swap lottery" has a lot of potential. It allows for cross pollination, gives qualifying teams a special privilege that they earned, and would protect against stacking one Championship at the expense of the other. The host cities involved would also likely welcome a more diverse pool of teams traveling to their cities.


*To be clear, calling an FTC/FLL championship a "snub" is NOT meant to disparage these programs. It's just obviously not what either host city signed up for.

This is definitely a possible solution, but it still loses to the single FRC championship option. Although time travel is still the best by far.

It might be worth noting that by moving the FTC championship to a single venue (without an FRC championship) would allow it be greatly expanded to the point where it could be nearly as large as the FRC championship. It might be possible to reduce the backlash from the host cities if FIRST promises, and delivers a greatly enlarged FTC championship in addition to a smaller FRC competition. It might take a lot of effort to effect change of this magnitude, but I think it is possible.
Additionally, FIRST could alternate which City hosts the FRC championship and which gets the FTC championship.

***The idea of FIRST causing geographical segregation is quite unpleasant, to say the least.

[grstex]

This is even more reason why FIRST should have consulted the community BEFORE it agreed to anything. Now FIRST will have to choose to spite either the host cities or the teams. On one hand, pulling the bait-and-switch on the the host cities may be damaging to FIRST's negotiating power. On the other hand, the teams are the customers to whom FIRST is providing a service. There is a limit to how much your customers will put up with before they decide that the service is not worth it.

Furthermore, if people's opinions regarding the value of the FIRST experience is diminished, such as it would be by the isolation of teams by geographical boundaries***, then teams would be less enthusiastic about bringing others into the program. FIRST seems to have dug itself a nice, deep hole, in between a rock and a hard place.



This is definitely a possible solution, but it still loses to the single FRC championship option. Although time travel is still the best by far.

It might be worth noting that by moving the FTC championship to a single venue (without an FRC championship) would allow it be greatly expanded to the point where it could be nearly as large as the FRC championship. It might be possible to reduce the backlash from the host cities if FIRST promises, and delivers a greatly enlarged FTC championship in addition to a smaller FRC competition. It might take a lot of effort to effect change of this magnitude, but I think it is possible.
Additionally, FIRST could alternate which City hosts the FRC championship and which gets the FTC championship.

***The idea of FIRST causing geographical segregation is quite unpleasant, to say the least.

Its a classic planning exercise. Determine the space needs for the 800+ FRC teams FIRST hopes to have at championships in the future. Then, make a list of venues that can accommodate those needs. Then look at hotel space within reasonable distance, travel arrangements for domestic and international teams, amenities, etc. Build a list of venues, then ask which location is the best for everyone. It's like planning a wedding. Do you hold it near the bride's family? The groom's? Do you do a destination wedding? How do these choices effect who you invite and if they'll come? 3-course meal or buffet? Go through the exercise of getting an 800-team FRC championship under one roof, find that one best location, and ask why it was not considered.

[David Lame]

I'm relatively new to First. I've got just two years of experience as a mentor.

My first year was really inspiring to me, and a big part of that was seeing a world championship event, watching the whole world come together to have the best teams compete in front of a crowd of screaming fans. It was genuinely awe-inspiring.

You can't have two championships. You can have zero or one.

Commitments have been made already. Some things aren't going to change. I don't know which things could be renegotiated and which cannot, but I'm pretty sure a lot of this plan is set in stone and can't be undone, at least for a few years, so I'm not going to say what ought to be done, because I don't know what the real options are.

I'll talk about one thing, from my own perspective. There have been a lot of posts mentioning goals and tradeoffs about the world championship events. There are a lot of factors that have to be considered, and maybe when all of them are considered, there really isn't any better way to do it than to eliminate the world championships. (I won't say "split" them. A split championship is no championship at all.) However, of all the goals that are considered, the one that I would get rid of first is the idea that every team ought to have a chance to participate in the World Championship on some sort of regular basis.

I feel like I don't have to be physically present at the championship venue to be part of it. When I talk to my students, I talk about a road that ends in Saint Louis, and how we want to go as far along that road as possible. If we didn't get very far along that road this year, we can look and see what we can do to get a little farther next year. We might not make it, but just having the destination in mind makes me feel like I'm part of that big, global, event called the world championships. Somehow, struggling to go as far as possible on the road to a world championship is more inspiring than having an easier path to half a championship.

Well, that's the way I feel about it anyway. Others may see it differently.

[EricH]

Go through the exercise of getting an 800-team FRC championship under one roof, find that one best location, and ask why it was not considered.I'll give some help with that...

Fields: 800 teams might be doable with the current 8 fields. Barely. Let's use that as a baseline for size on the playing field. Incidentally, that means we'll need a football field, covered, or similarly-sized venue, just for the fields.

Pits... at 10x10 for each team, that's 80K square feet without any aisles (which will obviously add quite a bit of space--call it 120K with the aisles as a conservative number). Plus 4 basketball courts for the practice fields, plus about 400 square feet for Pit Admin. Say a good-sized convention center.

"Add-ons" like Spare Parts, HoF, Scholarship Row, Supplier Showcase, and the Conference will also need space. Plus space will be needed for the volunteer lounge, judging rooms, and VIP areas.

Seating: Many a team brings a skeleton crew. But more bring full teams. If we figure 50 people/team, that means the minimum seating is 40K seats. Not counting VIPs and judges and all, of course (they'll need a hundred or so, at best guess).

Now, any one or two of those conditions isn't all that hard to meet. Football stadiums, any college or NFL town will have at least one, and they'll probably all be able to handle 40K seats if the college is at a high enough level. (Or a baseball stadium, though you'd need to make sure that the home team was on the road that week. Soccer might be even better; the field is a smidge larger than a football field as I recall.) Convention centers, even more places have those that could probably handle the entirety of the pits and other similar space, maybe even fields (though seating could be problematic for fields). If tents are allowed, even more areas could be in the running.

But... you also have to deal with travel and lodging. Many a team will use a bus, but more will need to fly. This means an airport that can handle international flights (connections at another airport are OK too, but ). And don't forget about 15K hotel rooms for those 40K team members and the volunteers. A lot of major cities can deal with that; most can handle the traffic.

Now, the really tricky parts: The whole thing has to be covered throughout the event, and the field area and the pit area have to be pretty close together. And transport to the airport and hotels needs to be manageable.

And that's just for FRC.

Atlanta did a pretty good job--if FIRST were still there, I'm pretty sure they'd be able to pull off an 800-team event under those conditions. But the Georgia Dome might not be available much longer. (GWCC might still be an option.) St. Louis is rather cramped. I'm not aware of anything of that nature out here on the West Coast--maybe Seattle has something but I doubt it. I've heard rumors of Anaheim but that might be stretching it quite a bit. (We've got good weather out here, so very few stadiums even have a roof--you'd be getting a convention center.) I've heard Indianapolis floated a few times as a possible site, but I haven't been anywhere near the proposed venue so I don't know anything.

[MrRoboSteve]

This is even more reason why FIRST should have consulted the community BEFORE it agreed to anything. Now FIRST will have to choose to spite either the host cities or the teams. On one hand, pulling the bait-and-switch on the the host cities may be damaging to FIRST's negotiating power. On the other hand, the teams are the customers to whom FIRST is providing a service. There is a limit to how much your customers will put up with before they decide that the service is not worth it.

...

***The idea of FIRST causing geographical segregation is quite unpleasant, to say the least.

Alan, if you read CitrusDad's original post, this thread is a problem-solving one, dedicated to developing alternative proposals to make at the town hall meeting. One way you can distinguish serious discussion from venting is whether it includes emotionally loaded statements like spite, bait-and-switch, and segregation. Those words are fine if you want to let off steam, but they will cause the decisionmakers at the Town Hall Meeting to discount any ideas you have.

Please use this thread (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=136491) if you want to vent.

[efoote868]

Atlanta did a pretty good job--if FIRST were still there, I'm pretty sure they'd be able to pull off an 800-team event under those conditions.

I know we keep focusing on 800 teams, but it stands to reason that FIRST has the goal of getting >25% of teams to a championship event. While one location might be good for 800 teams, what happens when FRC grows beyond 3200 to 4000 or more teams?

While any solution focusing on 2017 and 2018 would assume 2 locations at some 800 team split, I'd look at it from FIRST's perspective. If the solution isn't scalable to years in the future, it probably is a non-starter with FIRST.



Thinking outside of the box, I think it would be neat to wrap up the previous season at the next year's kickoff. Having both winners play then solves the problem of no clearly defined champion, low visibility and perhaps "unofficial-ness" at any event other than a championship, fast turnaround travel times for the winning alliance at the early event, and possibly mentor burn-out / limited vacation times, etc.

This introduces more problems for the teams that win, including what to do with their robots in the off season and seniors graduating, but I think that could be worked around.

[MrRoboSteve]

EricH:

Looking at pit layout diagrams, a good number to use for pit size is roughly 250-300 square feet per team, depending on venue layout. There is generally an aisle in front of each pit that is equal in size to the pit, so that gets us to 200sf right there. Plus you need connecting aisles, and routes for robots to/from the competition and practice fields.

Pit admin, spare parts, and inspections runs closer to 1000 square feet at venues I'm familiar with. Full sized practice fields probably consume more than 4000sf each, assuming a 15' deep driver area at each end, 10' clear areas on each side, and space for waiting robots.

That said, if you assume no limits on money for event buildout, there are several locations in the US with NFL stadiums that would work for the event.

Thought exercise for those proposing a larger, single venue event

We can easily identify other options for venues that physically accommodate 600-800 teams, so we must assume that FIRST, with experienced event planners, can do the same. In fact, FIRST has the St. Louis location under contract for 2017, which is physically able to handle 600 teams, and has chosen to add a location in that year.

Since FIRST has proposed going to multiple events with smaller event sizes, there must be some other resource needed to put on an event that is not available at one location. Any thoughts on what that resource might be?

[grstex]

I'll give some help with that...

Fields: 800 teams might be doable with the current 8 fields. Barely. Let's use that as a baseline for size on the playing field. Incidentally, that means we'll need a football field, covered, or similarly-sized venue, just for the fields.

Pits... at 10x10 for each team, that's 80K square feet without any aisles (which will obviously add quite a bit of space--call it 120K with the aisles as a conservative number). Plus 4 basketball courts for the practice fields, plus about 400 square feet for Pit Admin. Say a good-sized convention center.

"Add-ons" like Spare Parts, HoF, Scholarship Row, Supplier Showcase, and the Conference will also need space. Plus space will be needed for the volunteer lounge, judging rooms, and VIP areas.

Seating: Many a team brings a skeleton crew. But more bring full teams. If we figure 50 people/team, that means the minimum seating is 40K seats. Not counting VIPs and judges and all, of course (they'll need a hundred or so, at best guess).

Now, any one or two of those conditions isn't all that hard to meet. Football stadiums, any college or NFL town will have at least one, and they'll probably all be able to handle 40K seats if the college is at a high enough level. (Or a baseball stadium, though you'd need to make sure that the home team was on the road that week. Soccer might be even better; the field is a smidge larger than a football field as I recall.) Convention centers, even more places have those that could probably handle the entirety of the pits and other similar space, maybe even fields (though seating could be problematic for fields). If tents are allowed, even more areas could be in the running.

But... you also have to deal with travel and lodging. Many a team will use a bus, but more will need to fly. This means an airport that can handle international flights (connections at another airport are OK too, but ). And don't forget about 15K hotel rooms for those 40K team members and the volunteers. A lot of major cities can deal with that; most can handle the traffic.

Now, the really tricky parts: The whole thing has to be covered throughout the event, and the field area and the pit area have to be pretty close together. And transport to the airport and hotels needs to be manageable.

And that's just for FRC.

Atlanta did a pretty good job--if FIRST were still there, I'm pretty sure they'd be able to pull off an 800-team event under those conditions. But the Georgia Dome might not be available much longer. (GWCC might still be an option.) St. Louis is rather cramped. I'm not aware of anything of that nature out here on the West Coast--maybe Seattle has something but I doubt it. I've heard rumors of Anaheim but that might be stretching it quite a bit. (We've got good weather out here, so very few stadiums even have a roof--you'd be getting a convention center.) I've heard Indianapolis floated a few times as a possible site, but I haven't been anywhere near the proposed venue so I don't know anything.

Thanks Eric! Good start. For a baseline, check the Championship website (http://2015.championship.usfirst.org/campus-maps) for this year. You'll see FTC has already been moved to a completely separate venue, so I think it's safe to assume you need greater than the maximum exhibit space at the America's Center/EJD, which is over 500,000 square feet (http://explorestlouis.com/meetings-conventions/americas-center/).

Anything on either coast is out for a single FRC event, as it's more travel for teams on the opposite coast. That leaves the central US (that was the reasoning behind St. Louis, IIRC). At 566,000 SQFT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Convention_Center), The Indiana Convention Center isn't much larger than St. Louis, which we already acknowledged is cramped. Tents are a good idea, but I was around for old school FRC at Epcot Center, which was nothing but tents and portable A/C. I imagine several 100,000 SQFT of tents would be expensive. The GWCC might have still been an option. And then there's Detroit and Houston.

Now ask FIRST why a single FRC-only championship wasn't considered at one of these facilities (or any others that meet criteria). And, ask why subdividing Championships was preferred over breaking up the established precedent of having all four programs at one event. This is the path to many of the answers as to why this decision was made. What are the goals and constraints of a FIRST Championship event? Define the scope, and look at your viable options for meeting your short and long term goals. That's what FIRST had to do, and we can find answers to our "why" questions if we attempt it ourselves. BUT, you can also ask FIRST their reasoning, too. That why they're holding the town hall.

[shhrz]

I don't know where to put this exactly, but i'll throw it up here. My vision is more long-term, seeing as I assume that the short-term aspects are already set in stone.This thread was created to deal with the short-term salvation and I think great ideas were raised, yet I think we should also look a little further over the horizon, since clearly FIRST changed their future plans. My long-term plan is similar to FIRST's previous version of expansion, with a little detail.

So, long-term, there are a few limitations on what I would try to plan for. The main issue, of course, is time. The season is limited for many reasons previously discussed in many different threads, and I assume that we would want to stay within the 9 week time frame. This is my main constraint, but I also try to think about money and time away from school.

I see everyone moving to districts. All district events will happen during weeks 1-4, where each team gets to play a maximum of 2 events. A team pays according to the amount of events they play. Should they play 2 events, their point total would equal the sum of points earned at both events. Should they select to play 1 event - their point total would be multiplied by two. I am assuming that teams play better as the season progresses, so they will be better during their second event. Should a team not be able to afford/schedule two events - they would be slightly hurt, but not horribly. The good teams will still make it to the next round of play, due to point multiplication.

Weeks 5-6 will hold the next level of competition: District Championships, similar to what happens today. Obviously, since EVERYONE is in districts then this can happen during the same time, where each District chooses the week it wants (to give the teams a break during week 5 OR week 6). I think any place with 50+ teams can move to the district system. Smaller places with few teams (China, Turkey etc.) will have to be handled separately. Not sure how yet.

Now comes the question regarding time and money. Another level of competition between District Champs and Worlds in week 7 means all teams participating need to travel and pay for playing, food and so on. Yet this seems to be a necessity long-term. Another option is to make BIG District Champs, yet even if there are many teams participating, a smaller amount of teams advances directly to Worlds rather than a bigger amount to the intermediate level - I think this is a question of time, money, and so on.

Should we have the Super Regionals, they should be a week 7 event. This allows 2 weeks to prepare for the week 9 Championship. A big advantage for these Super Regionals is that FIRST can just add more once a Region is big enough to split. Should we have big District Champs, they can be during weeks 6-7, instead of the 5-6 stated above. The Districts can also be split, should it be needed to maintain a decent sized championship (so that x% of the teams can attend the District Championship).

Finally, the World Championship can occur during week 9.

================================================== ========

While not solving the immediate issue (that coming up in 2 years), trying this out will help transition these two championship events to Super Regionals. If we don't want Super Regionals, then I guess we can use one of the previously mentioned solutions and ride them out until 2019.

================================================== ========

In terms of money, most teams in Districts go to anywhere between 2 (two District Events) to 5 (three District events, District Champs, World Champs) events. With this system, the most events a team can go to is 5 - two District events, District Champs, Super Regional, Worlds. So the payment should be roughly the same for competing.

In terms of travel... the Super Regional is probably a little further away than a third District Event, but not HORRIBLY so. Other than that it's a wash to the current situation.

In terms of the time of the competition season, we stay within the 9 week time frame, as described above.

================================================== ========

Granted, not all issues are solved here, but once we figure out the short-term ideas to bring up, we should also think long-term :)

[grstex]

I know we keep focusing on 800 teams, but it stands to reason that FIRST has the goal of getting >25% of teams to a championship event. While one location might be good for 800 teams, what happens when FRC grows beyond 3200 to 4000 or more teams?

While any solution focusing on 2017 and 2018 would assume 2 locations at some 800 team split, I'd look at it from FIRST's perspective. If the solution isn't scalable to years in the future, it probably is a non-starter with FIRST.



Thinking outside of the box, I think it would be neat to wrap up the previous season at the next year's kickoff. Having both winners play then solves the problem of no clearly defined champion, low visibility and perhaps "unofficial-ness" at any event other than a championship, fast turnaround travel times for the winning alliance at the early event, and possibly mentor burn-out / limited vacation times, etc.

This introduces more problems for the teams that win, including what to do with their robots in the off season and seniors graduating, but I think that could be worked around.

One of my favorite ideas! What a way to kick off the next season! Sure, it has its shortcomings (I'd also add that the "cliffhanger" aspect as a shortcoming, but hey, it works for TV shows), but seeing the previous champions face off would certainly spark imaginations just before the new game reveal!

And, scalability is very likely a factor in championship format.

[MrRoboSteve]

I agree that finding volunteers is an issue FIRST has, but I'm slightly confused as to how having two "split" events requires more volunteers than two "mixed" events. If anything, this will allow volunteers who only can/want to help with one event focus on purely that (e.g. if you want to volunteer with FLL, now you don't have to pick one)

My post about volunteers might have been a bit confusing. I'll try to explain further. First, I think you'd agree that FRC events are much more volunteer intensive than FTC and FLL events. Therefore, I am going to focus on FRC in this discussion.

At each FRC regional event, there are several sources of volunteers. I'll walk you through my mental map of each source.

The first group are the key volunteers (http://www.usfirst.org/community/volunteers/frc-volunteer-training). These volunteers are usually very experienced, trained, and usually return from year-to-year. They are often alumni (either team members or mentors) who continue their participation because they enjoy it. These volunteers are dedicated enough that they will often travel, on their own $$, to a regional to participate.

The second group of volunteers at regionals are team-provided volunteers -- both team members and family. The supply of these volunteers is roughly proportional to the number of team members present at a regional, adjusted based on the number of teams that have to travel to attend.

The third group of volunteers is community volunteers. A good example of this in 2015 was at North Star -- we had a large group of hard-working volunteers from Target headquarters who helped at the event. When selection a location for an event, the availability of these volunteers is a key factor.

In sheer numbers, most of the volunteers are sourced from teams and the community.

At a Champs-style event, you have a couple issues.

First is that there are a bunch of volunteer positions that you need to fill that aren't needed at a regional, increasing demand for volunteers.

The second issue is around team-provided volunteers. Fewer team-provided volunteers are available at Champs, because the total number of people from a team attending Champs (including parents) is lower. It is also possible for team volunteers and alumni to fit a shift or two between work and/or classes at a regional. A good example of this is Robot Inspectors -- the LRI will happily accept you as a robot inspector if you are competent and can help only between noon and 6pm on Thursday at a regional event. In order to compensate for this, more community volunteers are needed at Champs.

So you need more community volunteers to run your Champs-style event. What's the problem with that? For a variety of reasons (age, incomes, culture), each community has a limited supply of community volunteers. Wondering why Minnesota can operate two well-run double regionals? Being #1 in volunteering rate, with 900,000 active volunteers in the area (http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/MN/Minneapolis-St-Paul) has a lot to do with it. St. Louis is no slouch either, with 600,000 active volunteers (http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/MO/St.-Louis). But there's probably a limit to how many of those volunteers you can attract to help your event. I know our Volunteer Coordinator in Minnesota has to work hard to staff the events here.

So coming back to your question, my concern is around the supply of community volunteers available to support a Champs-style event. Hosting these events in two different locations helps address that by allowing you to draw from two different pools of community volunteers.


- How are these teams currently doing it? Do they have a lot of overlap between the programs or have separate groups of kids/mentors?

Some students participate as team members in FTC and FRC (ours, for example), in others the FTC and FLL teams are mentored by FRC team members. There are a lot of Chairman's Award applications that discuss how the FRC team created/mentored multiple FTC/FLL teams.


I think that's part of the issue. FIRST hasn't explained their goals. Even Frank's follow up blog post, as good at it was, didn't explain why they think a split champs is necessary. Maybe they have a reason that it is necessary and there aren't any other alternatives, but maybe there aren't. Unless they tell us, we won't know why they decided to go forward with this.

I disagree that they haven't been clear about their goals. The announcement has two goal statements in it that they use to justify the change.

We want more kids to feel the passion and power that comes with being a part of FIRST Championship events.

we seek to reduce the travel distances and associated travel expenses for a significant number of our teams.

They have decided that they're willing to compromise on "single experience" in order to offer "more teams."

If you read FIRST's mission statement,


Mission

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.


you have to admit that this decision optimizes for more young people having an inspiring experience. Reasonable people might disagree on the tradeoff, but it is tough to see how the change runs counter to the mission of FIRST.

[MrRoboSteve]

I see everyone moving to districts. All district events will happen during weeks 1-4, where each team gets to play a maximum of 2 events.



There are issues with venue, field, and volunteer availability that you should consider. An example, in Minnesota we'd need between 10 and 12 district events. We currently put on four events, so instead of two fields that are in use on 2/7 of the weekends (and used by others on 5/7 of the weekends), we would need three dedicated fields.

Regarding your schedule:

So a team that plays a full district schedule and advances would play on something like this schedule:

Week 1
Week 3
Week 5
Week 7
Week 9

or (worse)

Week 3
Week 4
Week 6
Week 7
Week 9

With weeks 5/6, 7, and 9 including travel. Will be a burden for some teams.


Granted, not all issues are solved here, but once we figure out the short-term ideas to bring up, we should also think long-term :)

I agree that thinking about the long term goal helps guide a short term strategy.

[Rachel Lim]

I'll be writing another post with a more detailed explanation for how I think super regionals and a single champs could work, but first I wanted to bring up this point:
If FIRST is truly determined to have a split champs, the is probably very little anyone can do to change that. Think about it (and I understand these are probably not too relevant to most of you, who are probably adult mentors) like you're arguing with your parents about whether you can go to robotics, or trying to convince mentors that WCD is better than mecanum (examples weren't intended to refer to actual events). You can try your best, but in the end, someone else has all the power. It's not clear how far FIRST is willing to compromise / work with other ideas.

Just wanted to point out that each event will host 400 teams, meaning that there are 800 FRC teams total attending a World Championship.

Thanks for the clarification. It seems that there are at least three locations (St Louis, Detroit, and Houston) that can host 400+ FRC teams, plus FTC and FLL.


My post about volunteers might have been a bit confusing. I'll try to explain further. First, I think you'd agree that FRC events are much more volunteer intensive than FTC and FLL events. Therefore, I am going to focus on FRC in this discussion.
[snip]

Thank you for the explanation. I'll address volunteers in my next post, which will hopefully be a bit more complete than the previous one.


Some students participate as team members in FTC and FRC (ours, for example), in others the FTC and FLL teams are mentored by FRC team members. There are a lot of Chairman's Award applications that discuss how the FRC team created/mentored multiple FTC/FLL teams.

I'll talk about this more later too. Currently do district champs have FTC/FLL with them, or are they purely FRC? I remember Alamo regional having FTC and FRC in the same building, but how many other events have an overlap?


I disagree that they haven't been clear about their goals. The announcement has two goal statements in it that they use to justify the change.

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. They have said what their goals are, and I think most people agree with them. What they haven't said is why a split champs is the only way to fulfill those goals. What is it about district champs / super regionals that wouldn't work out as well? I'm sure they have reasons to believe in the split champs, but I'm still waiting to understand why they think it's the only way to do that.

[PayneTrain]

you have to admit that this decision optimizes for more young people having an inspiring experience. Reasonable people might disagree on the tradeoff, but it is tough to see how the change runs counter to the mission of FIRST.

I think the source of strife comes from the trade-off sacrificing what many people who recently attended championships think are keys to making the event inspiring. They ask themselves "What is the point where the number of teams we invite to championships is irrelevant because the actual championships experience has been diminished?" That point of inflection is not something that can be easily, quantitatively defined, and depends on a variety of a variables and perspectives, but it does exist somewhere.

What makes the Championship Event inspiring? I think the elements that dissenters to the Championsplit find important are not the same elements supporters or enablers of the Championsplit think are as vital.

[shhrz]

There are issues with venue, field, and volunteer availability that you should consider. An example, in Minnesota we'd need between 10 and 12 district events. We currently put on four events, so instead of two fields that are in use on 2/7 of the weekends (and used by others on 5/7 of the weekends), we would need three dedicated fields.

Regarding your schedule:

So a team that plays a full district schedule and advances would play on something like this schedule:

Week 1
Week 3
Week 5
Week 7
Week 9

or (worse)

Week 3
Week 4
Week 6
Week 7
Week 9

With weeks 5/6, 7, and 9 including travel. Will be a burden for some teams.



I agree that thinking about the long term goal helps guide a short term strategy.

Sure, venues and such would need to be figured out. Yet if you run 3 events with 40 teams each week, you get 12 events, for a total of 480 slots, or 240 teams. Those same fields will be used, so "only" 3 are needed. You could probably add another field or two, and create more events - depending on the next point:

Volunteers are an issue, but again, this is always an issue - even at Worlds. I assume and believe that if the Districts takes it seriously - the volunteering apect is not something that should break this.

As for the schedule.. granted it's not perfect. The teams that find those options not possible, should try to sign up weeks 1 and 4, for example. 1-4-6-7-9 is not horrible. If we expand the season by a week, everything will look better. But there are issue with that. If we drop the Super Regionals and go by Districts that will split, that can work too as it will remove one level of competition and spread the competitions apart.

It's never optimal, but it's better than the current plan, I think.

[MrRoboSteve]

I think the source of strife comes from the trade-off sacrificing what many people who recently attended championships think are keys to making the event inspiring. They ask themselves "What is the point where the number of teams we invite to championships is irrelevant because the actual championships experience has been diminished?" That point of inflection is not something that can be easily, quantitatively defined, and depends on a variety of a variables and perspectives, but it does exist somewhere.

What makes the Championship Event inspiring? I think the elements that dissenters to the Championsplit find important are not the same elements supporters or enablers of the Championsplit think are as vital.

These are good observations.

One fertile line of discussion here would then be:

If we're going to have two Championships, what more can we do to make each of them as inspiring as the current single Championship?

[David Lame]

These are good observations.

One fertile line of discussion here would then be:

If we're going to have two Championships, what more can we do to make each of them as inspiring as the current single Championship?

I'm not sure how fertile that could be. If you are inspired by the existence of a World Championship, then there's nothing that can be done to make two events, neither one of which is a world championship, be equally inspirational.

[Squillo]

OK, I'll start out by saying that I *know* this is not perfect. However, I think it's an idea that hasn't been proposed before, and it has some merit (IMVHO).

It seems to me that one thing we are dealing with here (on CD) is the potential loss of inspiration to the top teams, caused by not being able to win/compete for a true "World Championship" (minor factor I hope), coupled with not being able to visit with and be inspired by ALL the other great ("top") teams at a single event.

Let's face it, for the "run of the mill" (RotM) teams (like ours), going to a 1/2-world championship-type-event will be plenty inspiring. Heck, just going to a second regional (with 254 and 1678) was pretty inspirational, in terms of meeting and being inspired by great teams. Also, for RotM teams, traveling to ONE 'championship'-type event, if feasible (in terms of time and money) at all, can be a stretch; adding levels would just make things worse (consider - when VEX recently changed its tournament model here in Hawaii, requiring attendance at more competitions to get to a "big" event, ALL (4 or 5) of our island's VEX teams folded, since they just couldn't afford the multiple inter-island trips that had become necessary to get to the "fun" level of competition they had previously enjoyed).

I don't think any mentors from RotM teams are going to quit over this new FRC change, nor are most of those teams going to be significantly less "inspired" by the prospect of attending an event with 400 great teams from 1/2 the world, rather than 600-800 "slightly greater" teams from the whole world; the issues here are coming from the top teams, and they are important - we don't want them all defecting to Vex Pro or whatever, as it will seriously damage FRC for ALL of us. So how to solve THEIR problems, which are:
- No chance to see ALL the other inspiring teams in one place, and
- No chance to compete against those teams, and Win the World Championship.

What if FIRST selected a small group of these "elite" teams, maybe like this:
- All HoF teams; and
- All Winning and Finalist Alliance Captains from regionals and District Championships (someone tell me how many this is);
- The winning alliance from the first Championship.

and said this to those teams: If you attend "your" geographic championship, we (FIRST) will pay your way to the OTHER geographic championship - no entry fee, subsidized hotel, travel and food for a set number of people (12 comes to mind).

That way, BOTH championship events would/could include ALL the top teams; all of them, and all of us RotM teams, could be inspired by them; they could compete TWICE, against ALL the best teams, for a World Championship; the Championships would be pretty high-level, with less room for waitlist teams; added bonus - the second alliance captain would have a small incentive to reject a pick by the first, since only an AC could attend TWO championships, making the elims more exciting and competitive to watch while still getting the 2nd seed a good chance at a high honor.

The downside is, of course, the time and expense for the top teams of traveling to two championships. But they'd get to go to TWO championships!! How cool is that? There could be "the grand rematch" at the second championship, with the same captains and slightly different alliances, or totally different finalist alliances - in which case, the winners of each championship could still be proud of having won at a competition with ALL the best teams.

And the top teams are, generally, those with the most resources in terms of people (i.e., 'second string' teams, more mentors), sponsors, money... so if anyone can afford MORE competitions, it's them.

Why isn't this a good idea? Someone shoot me down, I can't wait to hear it.

[Siri]

Why isn't this a good idea? Someone shoot me down, I can't wait to hear it.I don't know that it's a bad idea, I'm just not sure the problem it solves is correctly defined. I lost track back on Friday of the number of "RotM" team members that said "this sucks". A principal argument, though certainly not the only one, isn't so much about seeing Worlds as it is qualifying for that top tier event. This isn't the position of all RotMs, certainly, or of the entirety of any group. At this point neither you nor I nor anyone knows what most RotM or most elite members think or why. It would be wise to consider and phrase proposals with this in mind, rather than attributing one's own opinions to an entire cohort of people.

Hopefully the Town Hall will help understand what more people think, but considering it's is only attended by people at Worlds, and FIRST didn't consult anyone outside HQ about this beforehand, the truth is we'll probably never really know.

[Squillo]

I don't know that it's a bad idea, I'm just not sure the problem it solves is correctly defined. I lost track back on Friday of the number of "RotM" team members that said "this sucks". A principal argument, though certainly not the only one, isn't so much about seeing Worlds as it is qualifying for that top tier event. This isn't the position of all RotMs, certainly, or of the entirety of any group.

Sorry, I've never been the queen of tact, in terms of how I phrase things. I didn't mean to imply that ALL "RotM" teams feel a certain way; frankly, I was not so concerned about whether all (or even a majority) of RotM teams like or don't like the new proposal, because regardless of whether they like it or not, I think my proposal solves most of the problems that have been raised by "elite" and "RotM" teams alike - getting to either championship would be more competitive (there would be fewer waitlist positions available, since some teams would be going to both events); ALL teams at a championship (elite and RotM alike) would get to hang with and compete with (and against) more of the top teams, and see them compete against each other. I don't understand what argument you are saying my solution doesn't address - you mention "qualifying for that top tier event" but I thought I'd addressed that.

[Siri]

Sorry, I've never been the queen of tact, in terms of how I phrase things. I didn't mean to imply that ALL "RotM" teams feel a certain way; frankly, I was not so concerned about whether all (or even a majority) of RotM teams like or don't like the new proposal, because regardless of whether they like it or not, I think my proposal solves most of the problems that have been raised by "elite" and "RotM" teams alike - getting to either championship would be more competitive (there would be fewer waitlist positions available, since some teams would be going to both events); ALL teams at a championship (elite and RotM alike) would get to hang with and compete with (and against) more of the top teams, and see them compete against each other. I don't understand what argument you are saying my solution doesn't address - you mention "qualifying for that top tier event" but I thought I'd addressed that.I gotcha. I think my point was more that we don't know if this addresses the actual problems behind those you reference, because we don't in fact know what those issues are yet. I got rather caught up in explaining that.

In terms of fleshing out a proposal*, how's this:
Each season there are n, say 30, "double bid" slots. Teams can opt into this program on TIMS before the season starts. All teams worldwide are ranked throughout competition season on a universal points system using the season's District Points document. This is tracked on the Leaderboard website. The top 30 teams on this list that did (and continue to) opt in get an invitation and free registration to both Half-Worlds. This is an alternative to FIRST covering travel costs, which could also be proposed by might be trickier.

Separately, if we're looking to enforce an "equal swap" rule for the lottery, District points may be the closest way to assess equality short of a by-name qualitative decision.


*A proposal that may or may not address real issues and may or may not conflict with non-negotiables within HQ, and overall cannot be weighed cost/benefit due to lack of information. (This isn't meant as a bad thing. At least not for the proposal; for HQ's methods I lack my own tact.)

[David Lame]

Why isn't this a good idea? Someone shoot me down, I can't wait to hear it.

I think it's a pretty good proposal.

I also like that you hit the nail on the head with identifying the cost problem associated with adding another layer, like superregionals, to the mix.

I've thought a lot about this since I saw the announcement. It's a hard problem to solve, for sure. I think there's a reason that high school sports in general don't have national, much less world, championships.

But for those who have to figure out what to really do, the point I would raise to them is that it is not just the "super" teams, i.e. those who might realistically compete for a world championship, that are inspired by the event.

No little kid has ever dreamed of winning 1 of 2 gold medals to be handed out at half of the Olympics. You don't have to participate in those games to be inspired. The existence of that world championship provides inspiration, even to run of the mill teams. The existence of a very large competition with lots of people at it including teams from half of the world, not as much.

Maybe there is just no way to solve the cost problems associated with holding a real world championship as First grows. Let's not pretend, though, that we can hold two events, call them championships, and they will be the same thing.

[PAR_WIG1350]

Alan, if you read CitrusDad's original post, this thread is a problem-solving one, dedicated to developing alternative proposals to make at the town hall meeting. One way you can distinguish serious discussion from venting is whether it includes emotionally loaded statements like spite, bait-and-switch, and segregation. Those words are fine if you want to let off steam, but they will cause the decisionmakers at the Town Hall Meeting to discount any ideas you have.

Please use this thread (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=136491) if you want to vent.

With all due respect, My post was a serious attempt to contribute to the conversation in a productive manner. I certainly must admit fault for the emotional nature of the endnote, but that is why separated it from the rest of the post.

Honestly, I chose the term "bait-and-switch" because that is how FIRST's actions would be perceived if they attempted to change the terms of their contract with the Host cities after it was signed. Also, perhaps "spite" was a bit strong of a word to have chosen, but I Don't feel that its use invalidates the rest of the post.

My intent when writing the the first section of the original post was to acknowledge the fact that FIRST will likely be unable to meet the expectations of both the FIRST community and the host cities at this point, and that compromise is probably the best course of action. The second section of the post was the compromise that I was intending to present to the FIRST community. My intent was for the idea to be criticized and possibly improved upon by others. Instead I was criticized for my word choice. I will do my best to avoid similar misunderstandings in the future.

-Alan

[Rachel Lim]

Another very long post...

After considering this some more, debating various options with myself and some of my friends, reading through the various threads on this topics again, and generally trying to organize what I've been thinking, these are all the ideas I've come up with so far. Feel free to criticize them, pick them apart, or otherwise tell me what's wrong with them. Almost everything depends on how much FIRST is willing to compromise on this.

Goals:
These are goals that I'm trying to address for all of the following ideas, some are general ones that I've heard, and some are just things I personally think are priorities.
- Have many teams able to attend a higher level of competition where they will be inspired (higher level = champs, split champs, district champs, super regionals, etc.)
- Have a single final competition so the "sport" part of "sport of the mind" and "competition" part of "FRC" is kept
- Have as few levels of competitions as possible so students miss less school and mentors miss less work
- Have it end at least a week before AP testing starts
- Minimize traveling distance to make it accessible to average teams
- Have a way for FLL, FTC, and FRC to be together
- Have final matches at the competition itself so more people can watch them

Requirements:
These are requirements for all ideas so that they are actually realistic.
- Include locations that can support a large number of teams (enough hotels, an airport, etc.)
- Include locations that have a large volunteer base that can run the events

Idea 1: Super-District Champs
Introduction:
This plan will depend on FIRST being willing to listen to another proposition other than a split champs, which may or may not be true. If they are willing to, though, this is by far my favorite.

Outline:
1. Convert almost all areas to districts. For areas without the team density to create districts, they can choose to either stay with regionals (but will be considered part of the nearest district for the rest of this idea) or join the nearest district. Below is a map of the density of teams by state (and including Ontario, for simplicity I left out other provinces/countries for now):
18830

2. Draw "super-district" lines combining several districts but not creating too large of a geographic area. Below are two maps, one with larger (500-540 team) areas, and the other with smaller (170-340 team) areas. The issue with the second one is that single states with a huge density of teams (i.e. Michigan and California) skew these numbers, so unless these district lines divide states, some areas will have many more teams than others.
18831 18832

3. Replace district champs with "super-district" champs (or give them a different name). Although it will require some traveling, it hopefully won't be much more than it would be with district champs, especially for the smaller area one, and it will be a chance for more teams to see some elite teams and have it easier for them to get to than champs. Also, a split champs will be splitting up the top teams anyway (although admittedly into only two sections).

3.a. Each of these super-district champs will have ~200 teams for the larger version (~35% or more) or ~100 teams for the smaller one (~0.33 - ~0.5%, size will probably vary by the district in this case). Somewhere around 1000 teams, or ~0.33% of all teams using this year's numbers, will qualify. This will allow more teams to attend more frequently, thus expanding the impact these events can have.

3.b. Each of these will have FRC and FTC (and FLL if possible?). I'm not sure how many FTC/FLL teams normally attend champs, but each event should still not have more than ~350 teams max, so hopefully there are more locations that can support this many teams.

3.c. Each of these events will likely be held during week 7. Below is an example calendar of April using this year's dates:
18829

4. Have a single world championship with ~400-600 FRC teams and the usual number of FTC and FLL teams. This percentage will decrease as the number of teams grow, but the super-district champs will be the one to adjust. Champs will play out as usual with one winning alliance, one set of top awards, and so on.

Questions:
- How many locations can support ~200 FRC teams + FTC/FLL? What happens if that number goes down to ~150? ~100?
- A point I've seen brought up regularly is that average teams, the ones this split champs is aimed at, aren't as concerned about seeing every top team as being able to experience champs. If that is true, will having these super-district champs give the same/similar experience? Is there anything that can be done to help this?
- What type of arrangements has FIRST already set up with cities? Is there any way to negotiate to this type of event structure instead?

Pros:
- Reaches many teams, possibly even more than a split champs would
- Keeps a single champs and the competition/sport aspect of FRC
- Keeps FLL, FTC, and FRC together
- Minimizes travel distance
- Minimizes competition time
- Builds on an existing structure (i.e. district champs)
- Seems to be going where the split champs are going anyway
- More, smaller locations makes it easier to find volunteers

Cons:
(Besides changing what they already said)
- Teams will be more restricted by geographic area, likely even more than with the split champs
- Requires more venues
- Teams not in a location that will convert to districts, or far away from any of these super-district lines (i.e. teams outside of US/Canada) will either have to travel twice or depend on qualifying for champs to be in a higher-level competition

Idea 2: Split FLL/FTC and FRC
Introduction:
Would require FIRST to view keeping FRC champs as a single event as more important than keeping FLL, FTC, and FRC together.

Outline:
1. After a regular season, whether it's in regionals, districts, or super-districts, have all FRC teams attend a single FRC champs and FLL/FTC attend another one.

Questions:
- What is the most number of teams Houston / Detroit / St Louis / other locations could handle? 400? 600? More?

Pros:
- Simple (this one was so much faster to outline)
- Keeps the two locations FIRST set up
- Doesn't change much to the existing structure of events within FRC
- Doesn't require the addition of more districts, or of super-districts
- Doesn't change traveling time

Cons:
Besides having to change what they told cities they would get (i.e. a mix of FLL/FTC/FRC)
- Splits up FLL/FTC and FRC (both for the inspiration and for student/mentor overlap, although having combined super-districts might help with some of this)
- One location may not be able to host that many FRC teams anyway (may still have to be combined with super-districts or another idea to reach more teams)
- Doesn't deal with traveling distance
- May be harder to find volunteers

Idea 3: Final Matches between Split Champs
Introduction:
This is one method to try and keep the sport/competition aspect if FIRST isn't willing to change their split champs.
Since these are smaller, related ideas I'll just list them all below with individual notes.

Possibilities:
- Have the winners of the first champs fly (expenses covered by FIRST) to the second one to compete in a final match, which one is first is alternated.
Pros: doesn't create a second event
Cons: only the second champs gets to see the final matches, the first "winners" have to compete more and take more time off
- Have the winners of both champs attend another competition to play it out
Pros: no advantage to being at either competition
Cons: no one else would get to watch the final matches, everyone has to take more time off, starts to become an excessive number of competitions

General pros:
- Keeps the competition while keeping FIRST's split champs
- Very few other changes to competition schedule

General cons:
- Makes the competition aspect smaller, as not everyone can watch the final matches
- Additional playing time for the winning alliances
- All regular split-champs cons (not all elite teams together, issue of whether teams can choose which one they attend (and for the first possibility, it does become a much larger issue), gets rid of the goal of attending "the world champs," etc.)

Idea 4: Leave it as it is
Introduction:
Because it is technically a possibility, even if I don't like it.

Pros:
- Is everything FIRST said it would be

Cons:
- Is everything that has been complained about
No, I'm not writing them here. This post is long enough as it is.

[David Lame]

I think I stumbled onto this thread before I stumbled onto others that are discussing general complaining, so probably some of my discussion should have gone in there. Sorry about that. In this post, I'm going to offer an actual suggestion that I haven't seen yet.

This is a long term suggestion, as I think at least 2017-2018 has certain elements set in stone that cannot be altered.

Have a single championship event, but add 1 or 2 days to the time of the event. Create a "preliminary round" in which teams are eliminated from the competition more quickly than they currently are.

In other words, today, we have competitions Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in which everyone competes. Then alliance selections happen and we have an elimination round. Change that to half the teams compete Wednesday, and some are eliminated. Others compete Thursday, and some are eliminated. The teams that are left come back and compete in a two day competition.

This is based on the observation that of all the constraints, I think pit space is probably the most difficult to deal with. One obvious downside is that it makes everyone stay an extra day, adding cost. Another is that it actually requires teams to move in and out of pit space during the course of competition. That's a major hassle.

The up side is that it retains everything we like about the competition that exists today.

A variation on this theme would be to add one or more secondary venues in the host city. Some teams compete in the secondary venues during the preliminary round. There are obvious down sides to that scheme as well, but it does solve some problems.

[kgargiulo]

Is there a database or spreadsheet that lists every active FRC, FTC, and FLL team (globally) with their name, number, city, state, country? The OPR spreadsheet would cover FRC for 2015, not sure about FTC and FLL though.

I ask because I would like to create a GIS picture of team locations vs. departure and arrival airports for St. Louis, Houston, and Detroit. It might be very helpful to have these facts and data vs. current state of the discussion on the "global travel cost minimization problem".

Not sure if i can get it done, but I am willing to give it a shot.

I have pages of other commentary I could write on these topics, but I'm still gathering information and forming my opinion. Yes, even after three whole days since the announcement.

[cglrcng]

I know we keep focusing on 800 teams, but it stands to reason that FIRST has the goal of getting >25% of teams to a championship event. While one location might be good for 800 teams, what happens when FRC grows beyond 3200 to 4000 or more teams?

While any solution focusing on 2017 and 2018 would assume 2 locations at some 800 team split, I'd look at it from FIRST's perspective. If the solution isn't scalable to years in the future, it probably is a non-starter with FIRST.



Thinking outside of the box, I think it would be neat to wrap up the previous season at the next year's kickoff. Having both winners play then solves the problem of no clearly defined champion, low visibility and perhaps "unofficial-ness" at any event other than a championship, fast turnaround travel times for the winning alliance at the early event, and possibly mentor burn-out / limited vacation times, etc.

This introduces more problems for the teams that win, including what to do with their robots in the off season and seniors graduating, but I think that could be worked around.

Wow....There is a different solution that could work. Graduating seniors could go out as Co-World Champs...And, The incoming, continuing team members could start off with a bang also.

That would certainly be interesting, Have the Championship Matches followed by a release of the new game and unveiling of the New Field Setup. Giving kickoff a new meaning, and new relative importance.

[MrRoboSteve]

Rachel, here are some notes based on my experience with double regionals in Minnesota that might be useful in thinking about your super-district proposal. Our local committee presents two double regionals, each with 124 teams participating.

The regionals in Duluth are held in the DECC arena (http://www.decc.org/cms/files/site-plan2015.pdf) (curtain between the two events), with the pits in the attached two convention center spaces. We use the arena and the two convention spaces in the lower right hand part of that map. One of the two regionals is space constrained, based on the square footage available in the City Side facility, which limits us to 60 teams in that regional.

The regionals in Minneapolis are held in adjacent facilities. 10000 Lakes is held in Williams Arena, which has an attached Sports Pavilion that can accommodate 64 pits. Across the street, North Star is held in Mariucci Arena on the arena floor. That regional accommodates 60 teams and is very tight space-wise.

The football stadium is probably the only facility that could accommodate a 200 team event. It's possible that it could be held in the convention center, with a scaffolding grandstand for the field.

Regardless, at 200 teams it would probably be a four field event. It would be about twice the size of event that we currently staff with volunteers, so you'd need some transition strategy to build up the volunteer base for the event. I'm not aware of any local committee (run almost entirely on volunteers) presenting competition events larger than 124 teams. IIRC the next largest local event is FiM, with 102 teams this year.

[cglrcng]

I snipped this from a post of mine in the "We are Listening" thread (and added a bit more)...Just some thoughts, suggestions, conversation.
_________________________________________________

If you build it they will come. And come they (we) are, as we all spread FIRST far & wide with outreach (we / FIRST reward(s) that outreach, inspiration, and growth with the very highest awards FIRST has to offer...HofF, CM, EI, WFA, and much more), and along the way, that growth will have extreme costs (and HUGE Planetary HUMAN REWARDS),....So change is inevitable, we grow it, we must change with it.

FIRST will never be able to please ALL THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME, they know it, and we know it....Now, lets work together to solve the problems caused by our metoric growth and expansion of The FIRST Mission & Ideals...Which we should be celebrating, instead of cringing (or being angered), from/by its results.

FIRST is listening, and we as a group (a huge community), are some of the largest problem solvers I have ever witnessed in my 58 year lifetime. If you can design a system to snatch 2~4 of those RC's off the shelf in .02 seconds, this problem should be a snap to come up w/ a reasonable solution to determine a world champion in 2017, and far beyond.
___________________________________
This year 600 Robots in 8 divisions in one place, 20% of all participating teams represented, next year the same (hopefully, but may drop again to 17% w/ more growth), and the following year (2017), 800 Robots in 8 divisions in 2 different places, 25% of all teams represented again.

(FIRST may need to actually back off that "Geographical Assignment or Placement," add in a single lottery the first year to determine whether each team is N/S, w/ 400 evenly & randomly going to each location in 2017, and after that add an odd/even last digit Team # switch of location every 3rd. year (odd the 3rd year switch/even the 6th year switch, or even 1/2 teams switch each year by lottery at season beginning), to mix up what teams play where each year so that all teams qualified & attending will have exposure to all other attending teams throughout a 4 year run). Someone else could run the math to get fair & equal exposure to all, exceptions could be made for financial hardship cases only, & on an even trade request basis only.

Add 1 final place in 2017 and beyond, mid-June (maybe FIRST HQ), where those 8 championship competing teams are rewarded w/ an all expenses paid (see the $50.00-$100.00 setaside from all 800 Championship Team entries idea below to finance that program), face off to determine a FIRST FRC World Campionship Title, in a Nationally televised best of 7, or best of 9 match event to see who the real World Champions really are. (I would go 1 further...allow after the 2 N/S event Winners~Just the last 8 Teams Standing, an unbag period of 3 weeks before the mid-June event, allow both Alliances to effect repairs, practice new drivers if graduating seniors cannot possibly move on, strategize, & cheesecake all they wanted).

Or, if that isn't agreeable, just ship all 8 of the robots to NH immediately from the N/S events bagged in the crates untouched from last match/no holdout allowance. 1 or 2 Truck(s)/ 2 weekends (Houston to Detroit, then...Off to NH w/ all 8 crated bots & 8 Sets of Team Tool Crates, etc)...Teams will see them in NH in 3 weeks or so. (Hey, I know where FIRST could find a whole lot of Grey/Yellow Totes to pack those tools in after this years Champs! They now own them). Now that...is true Recycling!
______________________
There are other ways beyond the existing signed contracts years (I had discussed something like this w/ my wife last Fall)...1 Event site 4 Days 400 Robots/Teams. Then out w/ the 1st bunch...In w/ the 2nd. Bunch next 400 Robots/Teams...You (FIRST) stores the robots and pit gear for the winners only of days 1~4, they fly home/then back in for the finals on the last Friday PM/Saturday AM. Just the drive team and essential personell paid for say 12 of each (Each of the 4 teams can/may send the rest of the team on their own dime if they wish). The venue goes dark 1~2 days (Sunday~Monday), for cleaning & admin. to breathe. Back at it again big on Wednesday ~Saturday (Championship Matches Saturday Night like usual).

That way, the same venue/hotels/fields, etc. can be used, and it is still a true single location FRC World Championships. You move that around between 4~5 geographical locations N/S/C/E/W. (You are only inconveniencing 4 total teams...4 teams w/ a 50/50 shot at a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!) How many would actually turn that down? How many of us wouldn't help them if they really couldn't afford it? Not many! (FIRST could set aside $50.00~$100.00 of all 800 teams entry fee to Champs to create a fund for the returning 4 teams=$40~&80K=10K per team in financial help to return to battle 1 week later for the World Championship Title).

12 Team Members Ea. X 4 Teams X $600.00 Flight Avg. per person=$28,800.00/1 night hotel 48 X$100.=$4,800.00=$33,600.00 Total (gas money to get home or food Bal., or addl. airfare $6,400.00) =Very Doable! (Of course as FIRST, I'd be hitting up a Major set of Airlines or Other Major Corporations wanting top billing exposure, to Sponsor the returning teams playing for the Championships myself for both the home & back round trip flights! And building the returning teams 1 room night into the actual event contract.) </;-)~ (TV Rights could add to the revenue & 4~8 returning team help stream, if billed & sold properly).

(There would be no strategy that would help any team, as nobody would know who plays the week 1 winners, until they were even back in town and ready to play again on Einstein). Just attempt to strategize when you have no clue of who you will actually play. If a later date is chosen like mid-June, both alliances would know immediately following the 2nd. event...Strategize to your hearts content. Then meet on the Competition Field and playoff for the Wins & the Title. But, if there is additional travel involved for those 8 teams, make it a big battle, make it the SuperBowl Championships of FIRST FRC!

OK, there would have to be a televised production of the Championships, so the rest of those playing week 1 and back home would have viewing access as usual to the following Saturday Championship Matches. Invited Teams are rotated based on when they last played as far as week 1 or 2 at Champs (or by simple luck of the lottery draw each year).

With 8 divisions this year, you may visit other teams pits, but you won't really have much true exposure to many outside your actual Division. And in 3~4 days, can you really visit 599 other teams? (Working fieldside this year, I may even catch a glimpse of my own team occasionally...maybe! But I will get a good look at 1/8th of the teams present, about 10 minutes at a time. In retrospect, if it were 2017, that would be 1/4 of the teams present).
_______________
Just throwing out some other future ideas here. (They promised those venues and cities 2 FIRST Championships in those contracts no doubt...Don't expect that suggested often FLL/FTC~FRC split to fly....Big chances it cannot now, no matter what! Nor, I think, would USFIRST ever want it to).

1 more thing...FIRST has never to my knowledge said it was a FRC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP (except "The 2015 FTC World Championships" this year I just noticed on the main FIRST page logos...LOL) (The community did that all on their own), they bill it as "The 2015 FIRST FRC Championship!" Do the banners this year actually say "2015 World Champion / 2015 World Finalists?"

I know what participants say...But, what does FIRST bill it as? They are the Creators, they are MANAGEMENT. (We are Customers, The Community, Volunteers, Invested Owners, Participants).

We are growing, growing, GROWING! BIG Change is HERE! (So, get used to it!) Be the problem...Or.....Be the solution. Rant over. Ideas put forth...Take them, leave them, toss them all.

There's my $0.32 cents after reading 815...ummm, NO, now over 950 postings in 1 single sitting.

[JaneYoung]

Although I am not attending the Championship Event and will not be able to attend the Town Hall Meeting (sadly), I am hoping that it goes well and that concerns are expressed clearly and information shared readily.

This would be my personal check list for participation preparation. It may sound like an elementary school lesson but, it helps.

1. Rest and food before the meeting. Make sure you are not hungry. Rest at the Championships is very difficult but, it can help. Send someone in your stead if you are already ready to snap.

2. Buddy system. Bring a buddy. That second set of ears is very helpful when going over the notes taken during the meeting. Also, an elbow in the ribs can be quite helpful at times such as, right before the snap.

3. Writing materials for taking notes. My preference is pen and paper; it allows me to doodle while I listen.

4. Listening ears. We are all guilty of wanting to say what we want to say and not actively listening. Here again, a buddy system can work wonders.

5. Draft and fine-tune a list of questions and concerns/comments that you would like to ask/express. This keeps you on task and helps control emotions during the meeting. Have 5 to 10 questions/comments prepared.

#5 is for this group. Use this thread, or a new one, to draft your collective questions and concerns. Keep them concise, allowing time for needed responses from the Senior Leadership. This was a similar approach that was used for the Transparency letter that was drafted/sent a few years back. Again, this will help keep everyone on the same page and will allow opportunity for keeping random wastes of time and emotions in check during the meeting. It also shows unity.

6. Keep the FIRST community spirit of Gracious Professionalism alive and well. Woodie's Grandmother is watching, I'm sure.

By preparing for the meeting, you have prepared yourself for any other opportunities that arise for discussions/conversations/interactions.

Jane

[PAR_WIG1350]

There are other ways beyond the existing signed contracts years (I had discussed something like this w/ my wife last Fall)...1 Event site 4 Days 400 Robots/Teams. Then out w/ the 1st bunch...In w/ the 2nd. Bunch next 400 Robots/Teams...You (FIRST) stores the robots and pit gear for the winners only of days 1~4, they fly home/then back in for the finals on the last Friday PM/Saturday AM. Just the drive team and essential personell paid for say 12 of each (Each of the 4 teams can/may send the rest of the team on their own dime if they wish). The venue goes dark 1~2 days (Sunday~Monday), for cleaning & admin. to breathe. Back at it again big on Wednesday ~Saturday (Championship Matches Saturday Night like usual).

That way, the same venue/hotels/fields, etc. can be used, and it is still a true single location FRC World Championships. You move that around between 4~5 geographical locations N/S/C/E/W. (You are only inconveniencing 4 total teams...4 teams w/ a 50/50 shot at a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!) How many would actually turn that down? How many of us wouldn't help them if they really couldn't afford it? Not many! (FIRST could set aside $50.00~$100.00 of all 800 teams entry fee to Champs to create a fund for the returning 4 teams=$40~&80K=10K per team in financial help to return to battle 1 week later for the World Championship Title).

12 Team Members Ea. X 4 Teams X $600.00 Flight Avg. per person=$28,800.00/1 night hotel 48 X$100.=$4,800.00=$33,600.00 Total (gas money to get home or food Bal., or addl. airfare $6,400.00) =Very Doable! (Of course as FIRST, I'd be hitting up a Major set of Airlines or Other Major Corporations wanting top billing exposure, to Sponsor the returning teams playing for the Championships myself for both the home & back round trip flights! And building the returning teams 1 room night into the actual event contract.) </;-)~ (TV Rights could add to the revenue & 4~8 returning team help stream, if billed & sold properly).

Many people have proposed similar situations, and the following applies to all of them. Such proposals might be feasible for a national competition, however, FRC is international. The logistics of arranging for international travel in such a short timeframe are, at best, problematic.

[Shifter]

Not ideal, but a possible temporary solution until everyone has migrated to Districts...

World Championship: crowns undisputed FRC World Champion (which is important, especially to robot-centric FRC teams)

invitees*:

Chairman's winners with robots ranked in the top 40% at their last event are invited (but have the option to choose to attend the World Festival instead) - approx 50 teams
captain and first pick from each Regional winning alliance - approx 160 teams
top 60% of teams qualifying through District Championships - approx 100 teams
Engineering Inspiration winners (with robots ranked in the top 40% at their last event) - approx 60 teams
Rookie All Stars (with robots ranked in the top 40% at their last event) - approx 30 teams


World Festival: crowns undisputed Chairman's Award Winner (which is important to all FRC teams)

invitees*:

Chairman's winners (with robots ranked in the bottom 60% at their last event or those who choose to forego the World Championships) - approx 30 teams
second pick from each Regional winning alliance - approx 80 teams
bottom 40% of teams qualifying through District Championships - approx 70 teams
Engineering Inspiration winners (with robots ranked in the bottom 60% at their last event) - approx 20 teams
Rookie All Stars (with robots ranked in the bottom 60% at their last event) - approx 50 teams
wait-listed teams (similar to the 2015 lottery) - approx 150 teams


Each year Detroit and Houston swap hosting of the Championship and the Festival.

Pros:
- eliminates "co-champions" issue
- at both events FLL and FTC can be present, compete and be inspired
- opportunity for teams at both events to meet others from around the world
- increases the level of competition at the Championship

Cons:
- does not address travel costs (makes it worse depending on the team and their location)
- is there a better way to divide teams from Districts - based on how they earned their points?
- what about teams that qualify in multiple categories?
- at each event Rookie All Star and EI are awarded at the division level only

*the number of teams shown in each category are rough estimates only. Someone more clever than I would have to confirm/adjust.

[nuclearnerd]

Not ideal, but a possible temporary solution until everyone has migrated to Districts...

World Championship: crowns undisputed FRC World Champion (which is important, especially to robot-centric FRC teams)

World Festival: crowns undisputed Chairman's Award Winner (which is important to all FRC teams)


I am not strictly against co-world champions, but I like your alternative best so far!

One challenge - what to do with teams that qualify for World Championship, but also are Chairman's winners? It would suck if they had to choose, but on the other hand, if you could win World Chairman's from either event, the World Festival loses some catchet.

[Siri]

I am not strictly against co-world champions, but I like your alternative best so far!

One challenge - what to do with teams that qualify for World Championship, but also are Chairman's winners? It would suck if they had to choose, but on the other hand, if you could win World Chairman's from either event, the World Festival loses some catchet.I don't know if this fixes the problem you see, but theoretically you could just send your Chairman's team to the WF. In fact, you could even judge CA at both events and only announce it at WF. (I suppose it would be too bad not to be there for your own CA announcement, but that would be in your trade-off between the events.) CA isn't a spectator sport after all: it's the crowning that makes WF special. And most people probably wouldn't even notice whether the CA necessarily competed with their robot at the WF.

This would preferably use the same set of CA judges at both events (at least as much as it does now), but this could be a relatively small number of volunteers specifically selected ahead of time in part because they're free on those days (wouldn't have to be all of each event). That's a heck of a lot easier than coordinating a back-to-back for qualifying teams.

[sanddrag]

I haven't seen this proposed yet so let me throw it out there: final match at the White House?

[efoote868]

I haven't seen this proposed yet so let me throw it out there: final match at the White House?

Certainly high visibility, but more logistics issues :D

[sanddrag]

I think I have a great idea to organize the Town Hall meeting. Check this out:http://crowdmics.com

Thoughts?

[MikeE]

I think I have a great idea to organize the Town Hall meeting. Check this out:http://crowdmics.com

Thoughts?

Free for up to 5 participants...

[sanddrag]

Free for up to 5 participants...In concept though, something like this would be good. Isn"t the client app free and the host needs to pay? Maybe FIRST can arrange some kind of app like this.

[dcarr]

In concept though, something like this would be good. Isn"t the client app free and the host needs to pay? Maybe FIRST can arrange some kind of app like this.

Or actual wireless mics, and a number to send questions/ask to speak via SMS? Simple and doesn't rely on an app that might target only some platforms.

[Rachel Lim]

In concept though, something like this would be good. Isn"t the client app free and the host needs to pay? Maybe FIRST can arrange some kind of app like this.

Or actual wireless mics, and a number to send questions/ask to speak via SMS? Simple and doesn't rely on an app that might target only some platforms.

I agree with the actual mics, also because I think it would help to keep everyone focused on who is talking. I'm also slightly biased because my phone's version of android is too old so I can't use it...

If you're looking at polls, though, my math teacher last semester used something like this, except through socrative (http://socrative.com/index.php). If I remember correctly, we just went to that website on a phone/tablet/laptop and used a password to join and I believe it was free for everyone. It was an interesting experience, although I'd be cautious about using it, since it can easily make those who vote in the minority feel excluded, especially here where there isn't a "wrong" answer; cause make it easy to jump to conclusions and assume the poll is representative; and (this is mostly based on that class) it always seemed to take longer than was planned for and thus became a sort of distraction. However, it was a great way to visualize the answers we gave, and according to their website, they have an open response question that could be used to gather questions.

[Ginger Power]

Remind me not to make FIRSTers angry... this thread, as well as the others that followed the 2017 announcement, has an incredible amount of content, and a ton of great ideas! I'm very proud to be a member of the FIRST community right now.

[kgargiulo]

...I would like to create a GIS picture of team locations vs. departure and arrival airports for St. Louis, Houston, and Detroit. ...

Made some progress (with help, and in so doing identified a new programming challenge for the team and a possible new mentor, but that's another story). I have all FRC teams from the OPR sheet on a Google Earth globe.

Only 16 failed to geocode correctly (they're all at lat/long 0 / 0). I attached a North America picture (low team density in other countries requires too much zoom to make a useful picture).

The pins for each team can pop up with whatever information we want to embed, such as "nearest airport" or "distance to Houston". There are a thousand possibilities.

Going to do some more work to elaborate on this and then of course will publish it, even outside this thread and the CMP topic it might be a very interesting thing to see. But probably not going to do more about it until after CMP.

Good luck to everyone attending, looking forward to seeing you there.

[Knufire]

World Championship: crowns undisputed FRC World Champion (which is important, especially to robot-centric FRC teams)

...

World Festival: crowns undisputed Chairman's Award Winner (which is important to all FRC teams)


This is also my most preferred alternative of anything suggested thus far.

[microbuns]

Made some progress (with help, and in so doing identified a new programming challenge for the team and a possible new mentor, but that's another story). I have all FRC teams from the OPR sheet on a Google Earth globe.

Only 16 failed to geocode correctly (they're all at lat/long 0 / 0). I attached a North America picture (low team density in other countries requires too much zoom to make a useful picture).

The pins for each team can pop up with whatever information we want to embed, such as "nearest airport" or "distance to Houston". There are a thousand possibilities.

Going to do some more work to elaborate on this and then of course will publish it, even outside this thread and the CMP topic it might be a very interesting thing to see. But probably not going to do more about it until after CMP.

Good luck to everyone attending, looking forward to seeing you there.

Thank you for this map - it's very enlightening. Now I see why they chose to do North and South instead of East and West.

[PayneTrain]

Not ideal, but a possible temporary solution until everyone has migrated to Districts...

World Championship: crowns undisputed FRC World Champion (which is important, especially to robot-centric FRC teams)

invitees*:

Chairman's winners with robots ranked in the top 40% at their last event are invited (but have the option to choose to attend the World Festival instead) - approx 50 teams
captain and first pick from each Regional winning alliance - approx 160 teams
top 60% of teams qualifying through District Championships - approx 100 teams
Engineering Inspiration winners (with robots ranked in the top 40% at their last event) - approx 60 teams
Rookie All Stars (with robots ranked in the top 40% at their last event) - approx 30 teams


World Festival: crowns undisputed Chairman's Award Winner (which is important to all FRC teams)

invitees*:

Chairman's winners (with robots ranked in the bottom 60% at their last event or those who choose to forego the World Championships) - approx 30 teams
second pick from each Regional winning alliance - approx 80 teams
bottom 40% of teams qualifying through District Championships - approx 70 teams
Engineering Inspiration winners (with robots ranked in the bottom 60% at their last event) - approx 20 teams
Rookie All Stars (with robots ranked in the bottom 60% at their last event) - approx 50 teams
wait-listed teams (similar to the 2015 lottery) - approx 150 teams


Each year Detroit and Houston swap hosting of the Championship and the Festival.

Pros:
- eliminates "co-champions" issue
- at both events FLL and FTC can be present, compete and be inspired
- opportunity for teams at both events to meet others from around the world
- increases the level of competition at the Championship

Cons:
- does not address travel costs (makes it worse depending on the team and their location)
- is there a better way to divide teams from Districts - based on how they earned their points?
- what about teams that qualify in multiple categories?
- at each event Rookie All Star and EI are awarded at the division level only

*the number of teams shown in each category are rough estimates only. Someone more clever than I would have to confirm/adjust.

I think at the core, this could be the compromise that could get a lot of traction in the community and be blessed by the benevolent overlords in Manchester.

I think a way to discern between whether a team qualifies for the FRC World Championship or the FRC Open Championship is by normalizing district points systems to the regional model (this year with the change in how teams earn points from seeding rounds, you don't even have to do that). The top half of qualifiers from a regional qualify for Champs and the Open, and the bottom half qualify for the Open.

This means that if a team turns down a spot at Champs to go to the Open, the next team in line at the regional gets the slot to the Championship. I believe VRC is similar in that everyone who qualifies for their World Champs also qualifies for the Open. This means if you are a team based out of Houston that qualified for Champs in Detroit but didn't have the money, you can still go to the Open.

Fluidity of the waitlist causes a lot of issues, as does the somewhat vague objectives FIRST has for it. To get a nice even 50/50 split across a district or region, the actual time to plan travel for a WL team or any team may be slim to none.

I would like to know what current HoF teams and their mentors think about a change to the HoF induction policy to roll out in the next couple of years. Teams with x RCA/DCCA wins and or y consecutive RCA/DCCA wins go up for consideration for induction to the hall of fame. Anywhere between zero and N teams can be inducted annually. This year is what I think could be the most wide open race for HoF induction in 5 years.

I think anyone who has been on the block for a while could have given you 3 or fewer numbers for every year since 2010 or 11 of teams that would be inducted and probably get it right every year (I can tell you that the '12. '13, and '14 winners were the favorites before their awards team even put words to a page). The openness of '15 and on isn't a sign of weaker teams, it's the opposite. Over the next 5 years a lot of really impressive candidates for CCA are going to hit the judges table, to the tune of up to a dozen worthy candidates per year. If FIRST is going to open the floodgates for postseason play, might as well let some more HoF inductions trickle out since that's what we are supposed to be celebrating even more. Switching eligibility of HoF teams to get a certain number of guaranteed entries to champs followed by a recurring point bonus after 5 years (I want to say at least 40, since in the district system a DCA/DCCA winner nets 40 points).

Some other points to make if anyone still remotely cares about what I'm saying here.

-FTC World Champs and FTC World Open should happen at the FRC World Open and FRC World Champs, respectively. Flipping cities is a good idea.

-Let winners of the World Open qualify for World Champs the following year.

-To clarify HoF talk, induct teams as necessary at each event they attend.

-Another clarification: all teams that qualify for the Champs also qualify for the open. Those who forgo the Champs give the first Open team their slot. Teams that forgo both Champs and the Open send their spots either down the rankings of their event or district system, or they get turned over to FIRST for waitlisting, idk.

There is a fair argument that the idea of creating two distinct levels of postseason play would mean no one would want to go to the Open. The only way I know how to fix it is if you give a bid to the next World Champs to winners. Also, the idea of the two champs having disparate quality will exist regardless.

We'll probably only get a concession that allows swapping between events, but this plan might work.

[Kevin Leonard]

I think at the core, this could be the compromise that could get a lot of traction in the community and be blessed by the benevolent overlords in Manchester.

I think a way to discern between whether a team qualifies for the FRC World Championship or the FRC Open Championship is by normalizing district points systems to the regional model (this year with the change in how teams earn points from seeding rounds, you don't even have to do that). The top half of qualifiers from a regional qualify for Champs and the Open, and the bottom half qualify for the Open.

This means that if a team turns down a spot at Champs to go to the Open, the next team in line at the regional gets the slot to the Championship. I believe VRC is similar in that everyone who qualifies for their World Champs also qualifies for the Open. This means if you are a team based out of Houston that qualified for Champs in Detroit but didn't have the money, you can still go to the Open.

Fluidity of the waitlist causes a lot of issues, as does the somewhat vague objectives FIRST has for it. To get a nice even 50/50 split across a district or region, the actual time to plan travel for a WL team or any team may be slim to none.

I would like to know what current HoF teams and their mentors think about a change to the HoF induction policy to roll out in the next couple of years. Teams with x RCA/DCCA wins and or y consecutive RCA/DCCA wins go up for consideration for induction to the hall of fame. Anywhere between zero and N teams can be inducted annually. This year is what I think could be the most wide open race for HoF induction in 5 years.

I think anyone who has been on the block for a while could have given you 3 or fewer numbers for every year since 2010 or 11 of teams that would be inducted and probably get it right every year (I can tell you that the '12. '13, and '14 winners were the favorites before their awards team even put words to a page). The openness of '15 and on isn't a sign of weaker teams, it's the opposite. Over the next 5 years a lot of really impressive candidates for CCA are going to hit the judges table, to the tune of up to a dozen worthy candidates per year. If FIRST is going to open the floodgates for postseason play, might as well let some more HoF inductions trickle out since that's what we are supposed to be celebrating even more. Switching eligibility of HoF teams to get a certain number of guaranteed entries to champs followed by a recurring point bonus after 5 years (I want to say at least 40, since in the district system a DCA/DCCA winner nets 40 points).

Some other points to make if anyone still remotely cares about what I'm saying here.

-FTC World Champs and FTC World Open should happen at the FRC World Open and FRC World Champs, respectively. Flipping cities is a good idea.

-Let winners of the World Open qualify for World Champs the following year.

-To clarify HoF talk, induct teams as necessary at each event they attend.

-Another clarification: all teams that qualify for the Champs also qualify for the open. Those who forgo the Champs give the first Open team their slot. Teams that forgo both Champs and the Open send their spots either down the rankings of their event or district system, or they get turned over to FIRST for waitlisting, idk.

There is a fair argument that the idea of creating two distinct levels of postseason play would mean no one would want to go to the Open. The only way I know how to fix it is if you give a bid to the next World Champs to winners. Also, the idea of the two champs having disparate quality will exist regardless.

We'll probably only get a concession that allows swapping between events, but this plan might work.

This proposal obviously has issues, but I think it's the most amenable to all parties of any proposal yet presented.

[barn34]

Not ideal, but a possible temporary solution until everyone has migrated to Districts...

World Championship: crowns undisputed FRC World Champion (which is important, especially to robot-centric FRC teams)

invitees*:

Chairman's winners with robots ranked in the top 40% at their last event are invited (but have the option to choose to attend the World Festival instead) - approx 50 teams
captain and first pick from each Regional winning alliance - approx 160 teams
top 60% of teams qualifying through District Championships - approx 100 teams
Engineering Inspiration winners (with robots ranked in the top 40% at their last event) - approx 60 teams
Rookie All Stars (with robots ranked in the top 40% at their last event) - approx 30 teams


World Festival: crowns undisputed Chairman's Award Winner (which is important to all FRC teams)

invitees*:

Chairman's winners (with robots ranked in the bottom 60% at their last event or those who choose to forego the World Championships) - approx 30 teams
second pick from each Regional winning alliance - approx 80 teams
bottom 40% of teams qualifying through District Championships - approx 70 teams
Engineering Inspiration winners (with robots ranked in the bottom 60% at their last event) - approx 20 teams
Rookie All Stars (with robots ranked in the bottom 60% at their last event) - approx 50 teams
wait-listed teams (similar to the 2015 lottery) - approx 150 teams


Each year Detroit and Houston swap hosting of the Championship and the Festival.

Pros:
- eliminates "co-champions" issue
- at both events FLL and FTC can be present, compete and be inspired
- opportunity for teams at both events to meet others from around the world
- increases the level of competition at the Championship

Cons:
- does not address travel costs (makes it worse depending on the team and their location)
- is there a better way to divide teams from Districts - based on how they earned their points?
- what about teams that qualify in multiple categories?
- at each event Rookie All Star and EI are awarded at the division level only

*the number of teams shown in each category are rough estimates only. Someone more clever than I would have to confirm/adjust.


I've been quietly mulling over my thoughts on these developments and this is extremely close to the best compromising solutions I could come up with to the issues everyone has already discussed. Essentially a kind of NCAA and NIT breakdown between venues which make each event more competitive and inspiring for the team's in attendance, but with different focuses that highlight different awards and overall aspects of the competition and FIRST experience.

While not a perfect solution, I think there's enough good here to use this as foundational building blocks for a compromise that would potentially be an improvement for the overall championship experience and competition as a whole.

[TDav540]

I've been quietly mulling over my thoughts on these developments and this is extremely close to the best compromising solutions I could come up with to the issues everyone has already discussed. Essentially a kind of NCAA and NIT breakdown between venues which make each event more competitive and inspiring for the team's in attendance, but with different focuses that highlight different awards and overall aspects of the competition and FIRST experience.

While not a perfect solution, I think there's enough good here to use this as foundational building blocks for a compromise that would potentially be an improvement for the overall championship experience and competition as a whole.

I fully agree. Additionally, although a team might not be "World Champions" if they win the World Festival competition, it would still be a tremendous achievement and amazing for every team there.

I believe this idea is a fantastic place to start.

[Foster]

I'm going to guess that this will be unpopular.

You are not looking at a request for comments or a request for proposal from FIRST. You are looking at a done deal.

Two champs (and feel free to call them Half-Champs) with FRC/FTC/FLL all sharing the Championship Inspiration is what FIRST is offering. What they want.

They are not going to listen to "but Mom, this isn't the way that I want this".

You need to go to the town hall and listen.

You need to ask who, what, when, where, why, how questions. (And not What were you thinking when you came up with this).

-- What was your goal
-- What were your criteria
-- How were they weighted
-- When do you think events will happen
-- etc.

When Government has town hall meetings, they expect people to come and whine and then they do what they want.

When politicians have town halls, they have people that ask carefully scripted questions to elicit the "correct" answer. Watch for these people, let them ask their questions, they may add a clue. And then they do what they want.

When companies have "Town Hall Meetings" the expect to explain to people what is going on at a glossy high level" -- Your job is to sit there and nod, but it's possible to ask questions that will reveal the next level down of details. But remember they then do what they want.

Reminder, FIRST is a company, but they are somewhat political in the way they act since they have sponsors, etc. But they have decided.

If you are thinking of standing up and suggesting a change, let me suggest you stay in your seat and let someone that will ask a "nice" question to help us learn more. Your idea isn't worth anything to them. They have decided.

We need to learn more about why they did this and what the goal is, driving factors, pain points, etc.

For example, lets call these half-worlds or super-regionals or hemisphere championships. To move to a World Championship can be carting 6 teams to a location and playing. To inspire millions of roboteers and want to be roboteers it may mean another 400 team event. That is painful and expensive if they wanted that, they would have said so.

Once we know the details then we can help make it great.

I'd suggest that this thread die and a new one start of "things we would like to know". We know FIRST reads CD, so maybe if they have a list of questions before hand they will have answers.

I look at this like standing in front of the GDC on Saturday afternoon. "Totes? Stacking Totes? Like some factory drone? Really, what is the competition in that?" and here we are 14 weeks later ready to declare a champion.

Good luck!

[PAR_WIG1350]

I'm going to guess that this will be unpopular.

You are not looking at a request for comments or a request for proposal from FIRST. You are looking at a done deal.

Two champs (and feel free to call them Half-Champs) with FRC/FTC/FLL all sharing the Championship Inspiration is what FIRST is offering. What they want.

They are not going to listen to "but Mom, this isn't the way that I want this".

You need to go to the town hall and listen.

You need to ask who, what, when, where, why, how questions. (And not What were you thinking when you came up with this).

-- What was your goal
-- What were your criteria
-- How were they weighted
-- When do you think events will happen
-- etc.

When Government has town hall meetings, they expect people to come and whine and then they do what they want.

When politicians have town halls, they have people that ask carefully scripted questions to elicit the "correct" answer. Watch for these people, let them ask their questions, they may add a clue. And then they do what they want.

When companies have "Town Hall Meetings" the expect to explain to people what is going on at a glossy high level" -- Your job is to sit there and nod, but it's possible to ask questions that will reveal the next level down of details. But remember they then do what they want.

Reminder, FIRST is a company, but they are somewhat political in the way they act since they have sponsors, etc. But they have decided.

If you are thinking of standing up and suggesting a change, let me suggest you stay in your seat and let someone that will ask a "nice" question to help us learn more. Your idea isn't worth anything to them. They have decided.

We need to learn more about why they did this and what the goal is, driving factors, pain points, etc.

For example, lets call these half-worlds or super-regionals or hemisphere championships. To move to a World Championship can be carting 6 teams to a location and playing. To inspire millions of roboteers and want to be roboteers it may mean another 400 team event. That is painful and expensive if they wanted that, they would have said so.

Once we know the details then we can help make it great.

I'd suggest that this thread die and a new one start of "things we would like to know". We know FIRST reads CD, so maybe if they have a list of questions before hand they will have answers.

I look at this like standing in front of the GDC on Saturday afternoon. "Totes? Stacking Totes? Like some factory drone? Really, what is the competition in that?" and here we are 14 weeks later ready to declare a champion.

Good luck!

From Frank:
To meet our lofty goals, though, we will need your help. As Don said in his video, we want to engage members of the community in coming up with the best solutions possible to the challenges presented to this two Championship approach. The concerns you’ve expressed are valid. Over the next several months you will see a number of initiatives intended to engage the community in helping shape what these Championships and activities surrounding them will look like. As an example, we are currently planning a town-hall style meeting at the 2015 FIRST Championship that will allow the community to engage directly with Senior FIRST Leadership on this important change. In all of this, we need your help in doing what you do best – solve problems. I’m personally very interested in hearing your ideas about how we may be able to arrange for final matches between the winners of FIRST Championship Houston and FIRST Championship St. Louis.

While the existence of two events is set in stone, this seems to suggest that they are open to some degree of input regarding the nature of the events. If that isn't the case, then the next question would be "What kind of example are we trying to set for students by eschewing compromise?". (This would not be an appropriate response in the examples you gave because those examples lack the context of a high school robotics competition)

[grstex]

I'm going to guess that this will be unpopular.

................

Good luck!

Foster, Even though many things are likely set in stone, That doesn't mean FIRST won't be open to suggestions. Of course, they're free to accept and reject suggestions, too. That's true in most every engagement effort.

The examples you give are mostly based on old stereotypes. Most definitely, when a government agency is seeking comments on a proposed action, they HAVE to at least consider them. Its the law. Sometimes those comments not relevant to the proposed action, or propose infeasible actions, but they are all considered. And, sometimes, things change. Even large companies will seek comments on projects, though doing so is not always required.

Participation is a spectrum, and you're only describing one end of it. Where this town hall sits on the spectrum remains to be seen.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Not ideal, but a possible temporary solution until everyone has migrated to Districts...

World Championship: crowns undisputed FRC World Champion (which is important, especially to robot-centric FRC teams)
World Festival: crowns undisputed Chairman's Award Winner (which is important to all FRC teams)I don't like this suggestion for several reasons. The crux of my problem is this solution is based on the assumption that RCA winners and highly competitive robots are somewhat mutually exclusive. Yet the eventual Chairman's winner is quite often on Einstein. Hot (67) actually took home both awards in 2005, and you can't tell me 359, 842, 111, etc. don't field competitive robots. So what you're doing is forcing teams to pick which half of the program they value most. It seems like a weird thing to do if we think FIRST is about changing the culture through awesome robot competitions. This seems more like changing the culture OR having an awesome robot competition. To me, it seems a lot more damaging to the spirit and mission of FIRST than just having two championships.

Also, I dispute the notion that having a single, undisputed Chairman's Winner is important to all FRC teams. At the very least, it's not important to me and mine. As I said in the other thread, I would be quite surprised if a Chairman winning team was disappointed that a second team won Chairman's that year. Heck, they say right in the award description that it "recognizes sustained excellence and impact, not just a one (1) year team effort". I don't see how it's mandatory that we only recognize one team per year for what is essentially a lifetime achievement award. At this point, we're growing fast enough that we're creating CCA caliber teams at a rather higher rate than 1 per year. You could probably take the top 10 Chairman's teams, pull one of their numbers out of a hat and be quite justified declaring they should win that year because (specific extraordinary traits/achievements that are different than those of the other 9 teams).

So. I think the beef with having multiple WFAs, CCAs, etc. is pretty misplaced, and I really don't like the concept of officially segregating the two halves of the FIRST mission.

[JaneYoung]

I don't like this suggestion for several reasons. The crux of my problem is this solution is based on the assumption that RCA winners and highly competitive robots are somewhat mutually exclusive. Yet the eventual Chairman's winner is quite often on Einstein. Hot (67) actually took home both awards in 2005, and you can't tell me 359, 842, 111, etc. don't field competitive robots. So what you're doing is forcing teams to pick which half of the program they value most. It seems like a weird thing to do if we think FIRST is about changing the culture through awesome robot competitions. This seems more like changing the culture OR having an awesome robot competition. To me, it seems a lot more damaging to the spirit and mission of FIRST than just having two championships.

Also, I dispute the notion that having a single, undisputed Chairman's Winner is important to all FRC teams. At the very least, it's not important to me and mine. As I said in the other thread, I would be quite surprised if a Chairman winning team was disappointed that a second team won Chairman's that year. Heck, they say right in the award description that it "recognizes sustained excellence and impact, not just a one (1) year team effort". I don't see how it's mandatory that we only recognize one team per year for what is essentially a lifetime achievement award. At this point, we're growing fast enough that we're creating CCA caliber teams at a rather higher rate than 1 per year. You could probably take the top 10 Chairman's teams, pull one of their numbers out of a hat and be quite justified declaring they should win that year because (specific extraordinary traits/achievements that are different than those of the other 9 teams).

So. I think the beef with having multiple WFAs, CCAs, etc. is pretty misplaced, and I really don't like the concept of officially segregating the two halves of the FIRST mission.

This.

Jane

[Andrew Lawrence]

Does anyone know if the meeting is being recorded?

[Hallry]

Does anyone know if the meeting is being recorded?

I heard that it was being recorded by FIRST.

[Cory]

I heard that it was being recorded by FIRST.

You're not gonna get much out of it... Pretty much 40 min of Steve Chism and Don Bossi evading questions.

[dodar]

Did anyone there just record it? Because I forsee FIRST's video of this not going up for quite a while.

[Steven Donow]

Did anyone there just record it? Because I forsee FIRST's video of this not going up for quite a while.

FIRST was recording it but there was also another personal camera on a tripod recording it

[blazingbronco18]

For those off us that weren't able to make it to the meeting can someone fill us in on what the jist of the meeting was?

[scottandme]

For those off us that weren't able to make it to the meeting can someone fill us in on what the jist of the meeting was?

From the presentation slides:

Non-negotiable:

2 "Championships" through 2020
400 FRC teams at each event (800 total)

FIRST is "exploring":

- Options for a post-season, broadcasted, event between winning alliances
- Opening a percentage of slots at each Championship to teams from the other Championship region
- Other options for adding to the value of Championship for teams

Questions:

- What are FIRST's objectives with this decision?
- What process was used to make this decision, and why wasn't the FIRST community asked for input?
- How does this reduce travel costs, especially for West Coast teams?
- Doesn't having two championships weaken the competition aspect that helps make any sport exciting?
- What elements of the decision are set in stone and what elements can the community still help decide?


So basically - FIRST is unable or unwilling to make substantive changes to the plan, but you can rearrange the deck chairs if it makes you feel better.

Sounds like they barely provided answers to the "Questions" slide - they cited "contract negotiations" as a reason that the community wasn't consulted. Total cop out.

They had a big chart showing that the percentage of teams "that can experience Championship is shrinking". Going from 80% in 1995 to the current ~20%. The cheeky response is that 0% of teams will experience the "Championship" starting in 2017.

Unclear why FTC and FLL are so unloved that it's OK to have a very small % of those programs attend the Championship event, but that's unacceptable for FRC.

[DampRobot]

From the presentation slides:


So basically - FIRST is unable or unwilling to make substantive changes to the plan, but you can rearrange the deck chairs if it makes you feel better.

Sounds like they barely provided answers to the "Questions" slide - they cited "contract negotiations" as a reason that the community wasn't consulted. Total cop out.

They had a big chart showing that the percentage of teams "that can experience Championship is shrinking". Going from 80% in 1995 to the current ~20%. The cheeky response is that 0% of teams will experience the "Championship" starting in 2017.

Unclear why FTC and FLL are so unloved that it's OK to have a very small % of those programs attend the Championship event, but that's unacceptable for FRC.

Wow, that's a real screw you to teams if I ever saw one. Sounds like someone is trying to cover their behind/save their job by trying to convince the FRC community (which is teams, not administrators) that this is good for them.

[PayneTrain]

Glad to hear it's all going according to plan.

[BrennanB]

From the presentation slides:


So basically - FIRST is unable or unwilling to make substantive changes to the plan, but you can rearrange the deck chairs if it makes you feel better.

Sounds like they barely provided answers to the "Questions" slide - they cited "contract negotiations" as a reason that the community wasn't consulted. Total cop out.

They had a big chart showing that the percentage of teams "that can experience Championship is shrinking". Going from 80% in 1995 to the current ~20%. The cheeky response is that 0% of teams will experience the "Championship" starting in 2017.

Unclear why FTC and FLL are so unloved that it's OK to have a very small % of those programs attend the Championship event, but that's unacceptable for FRC.

Well that sounds incredibly disappointing.

[Munchskull]

Sounds like they were cowards. If they kept dodging questions then what was the point?

[Eugene Fang]

From the presentation slides:


So basically - FIRST is unable or unwilling to make substantive changes to the plan, but you can rearrange the deck chairs if it makes you feel better.

Sounds like they barely provided answers to the "Questions" slide - they cited "contract negotiations" as a reason that the community wasn't consulted. Total cop out.

They had a big chart showing that the percentage of teams "that can experience Championship is shrinking". Going from 80% in 1995 to the current ~20%. The cheeky response is that 0% of teams will experience the "Championship" starting in 2017.

Unclear why FTC and FLL are so unloved that it's OK to have a very small % of those programs attend the Championship event, but that's unacceptable for FRC.

Did anyone ask about the potential issue of limited volunteers?

[PayneTrain]

Wow, that's a real screw you to teams if I ever saw one. Sounds like someone is trying to cover their behind/save their job by trying to convince the FRC community (which is teams, not administrators) that this is good for them.

Well that sounds incredibly disappointing.

Let's establish some truths:

In the long run, FIRST does not care about what you think concerning the prospect of two championships.

In the long run, FIRST is not scared of you.

Your ideas don't hold any weight as long as it is fundamentally different from the idea of the championsplit that has taken hold over HQ since 2014 (I assume)

FIRST thinks they are doing the right thing and those who don't fall in line to this line of thinking
a) are not a threat to the overall mission of FIRST
b) can only become a threat if their wishes are respected and thoughts are considered on equal footing to those who made the decision to split
c) will fall in line eventually because there is no alternative to FRC as far as they can see (which I assume is to the end of their nose)

If they do not fear a collection of individuals who are WFA, WFFA winners, employees of major sponsors, mentors on teams who share major sponsorship with FIRST, they fear no one. If the opposite were true, the town hall would have gone on as it should have in the eyes of the community, and not as planned out by FIRST.

I'm not a mind reader, but this is the perception, and perception is reality.

[Lil' Lavery]

The adversarial stance of the community here on Chief Delphi is helping the situation how, exactly?

[connor.worley]

The adversarial stance of the community here on Chief Delphi is helping the situation how, exactly?

I guess it would be okay to give them a pat on the back and tell them that we don't mind if they keep making mistakes like this.

[cgmv123]

Did anyone ask about the potential issue of limited volunteers?
I'm sure someone would have eventually, but the session was only an hour, and half of it was Don Bossi's presentation.

[cgmv123]

The adversarial stance of the community here on Chief Delphi is helping the situation how, exactly?
Don Bossi actually complimented us on how "constructive" our comments were.

[Lil' Lavery]

I guess it would be okay to give them a pat on the back and tell them that we don't mind if they keep making mistakes like this.

Or the displeasure could be expressed in a professional manner. Calling people "cowards" and openly insisting that FIRST should "fear" you and cannot see beyond the "end of their nose" is not constructive. This type of adversarial behavior would not fly in a professional setting. Voice your disagreement and concerns, don't make it personal. It's especially troubling to see this type of behavior coming from mentors.

[Green Potato]

...because currently, nothing the community is doing is really affecting FIRST's decision-making logic at all. Unless the community takes an obvious and impaction stance on pointing out the issues with champs AND rallying behind a straight-forward, obviously superior solution, FIRST is going to give us talk without really DOING anything at all. No single community member or group of passive members, as I see it, is influential enough to impact the doings of an organization that large. It will almost literally take an army.

And, obviously, this whole 2-destination championship means there is no champion anymore. It's like the AFL versus the NFL. Teams can use the metrics all they want, but if it's not settled on the filed, it's never going to be official. People are going to miss witnessing the "true champion" because there's another one being crowned in some city hundreds of miles away. That, and FIRST is going to live on and see a bunch of diffrent teams doing well, and probably doesn't mind a lack of a concluding event so long as "everyone has fun." Well, I only have 4 years I know I'm going to be actively in this program, and I can speak for more than myself when I say that crowning "co-champions" is a rather diluted way to end the season.

That, and we CAN come up with a better solution, but it will take more minds than are in this room right now. (1), and probably some FIRST reps too. That's why we have a forum, and I have an idea.

[Lil' Lavery]

...because currently, nothing the community is doing is really affecting FIRST's decision-making logic at all. Unless the community takes an obvious and impaction stance on pointing out the issues with champs AND rallying behind a straight-forward, obviously superior solution, FIRST is going to give us talk without really DOING anything at all. No single community member or group of passive members, as I see it, is influential enough to impact the doings of an organization that large. It will almost literally take an army.
And that "army" can do so in a respectful manner. That army can also understand that the contracts are already signed. There are better ways to move forward than stamping your feet on the ground and personal attacks.

And, obviously, this whole 2-destination championship means there is no champion anymore. It's like the AFL versus the NFL. Teams can use the metrics all they want, but if it's not settled on the filed, it's never going to be official. People are going to miss witnessing the "true champion" because there's another one being crowned in some city hundreds of miles away. That, and FIRST is going to live on and see a bunch of diffrent teams doing well, and probably doesn't mind a lack of a concluding event so long as "everyone has fun." Well, I only have 4 years I know I'm going to be actively in this program, and I can speak for more than myself when I say that crowning "co-champions" is a rather diluted way to end the season.

We crowned "co-champions" ever since alliances were introduced in 1999. There hasn't been a "true champion" in more than a decade. The champion alliance has emerged from a sub-set of all teams in which it was impossible to play with all teams since divisions were implemented in 2001.

There's plenty to be displeased about with the championship format. The "true champion" gripe is simply not legitimate. We don't have a "true champion" now as it stands.

[PayneTrain]

Or the displeasure could be expressed in a professional manner. Calling people "cowards" and openly insisting that FIRST should "fear" you and cannot see beyond the "end of their nose" is not constructive. This type of adversarial behavior would not fly in a professional setting. Voice your disagreement and concerns, don't make it personal. It's especially troubling to see this type of behavior coming from mentors.

Never claimed anyone should be feared, just that if they think they should be, they aren't.

As far as the beyond the nose comment, it's a reiteration of the decision makers being unable to anticipate a nontrivial level of detractors at best, and not really caring at worst. It's a flash of ineloquence on a good day and really unnecessary on a bad one, but it's nothing that hasn't already been hashed out enough already. A lot of things that have happened regarding the championsplit have been pretty unprofessional and they don't start and end at post 113 in this thread.

I'm not even stamping my feet, I've already accepted the fate.

[DonShaw]

Numbers can lie.

The better question to ask is why do only 40 percent of the registered teams in First compete in any event?

So to say a less percentage teams are competing at worlds is not a valid statement.

First needs to look at cost of a team to compete in events to gain more participation.


I think the two venues will allow First to have 800 teams participate as there was no venue in one place for this many teams.


So out of 6k teams and 600 of them at worlds they hold a town hall meeting after the fact.

Poor management decision, should have been held last year and discussed at district's and regional's throughout the year and summarized at worlds.

In the end I think it is all about the money in their account.

[grstex]

From the presentation slides:


So basically - FIRST is unable or unwilling to make substantive changes to the plan, but you can rearrange the deck chairs if it makes you feel better.

Sounds like they barely provided answers to the "Questions" slide - they cited "contract negotiations" as a reason that the community wasn't consulted. Total cop out.

They had a big chart showing that the percentage of teams "that can experience Championship is shrinking". Going from 80% in 1995 to the current ~20%. The cheeky response is that 0% of teams will experience the "Championship" starting in 2017.

Unclear why FTC and FLL are so unloved that it's OK to have a very small % of those programs attend the Championship event, but that's unacceptable for FRC.

Based on your post, can I assume you were not in attendance? I wasn't and would like a report from someone who was there.

[pathew100]

Let's establish some truths:
If they do not fear a collection of individuals who are WFA, WFFA winners, employees of major sponsors, mentors on teams who share major sponsorship with FIRST, they fear no one.

I'm not sure why they should fear anyone. The goals of FIRST and it's major sponsors are aligned. Why would the sponsors care how many championship events there are? They put $$$ into the program because it readies people for the workforce. The goal for FIRST is much the same, get students interested in STEM, get them to pursue post-secondary training in such things and be productive members of society. End of story.

[BrennanB]

We crowned "co-champions" ever since alliances were introduced in 1999. There hasn't been a "true champion" in more than a decade. The champion alliance has emerged from a sub-set of all teams in which it was impossible to play with all teams since divisions were implemented in 2001.

There's plenty to be displeased about with the championship format. The "true champion" gripe is simply not legitimate. We don't have a "true champion" now as it stands.

Not that I necessarily fall into this category, I feel this is a pretty poor argument.

There is a very big difference between 3-4 teams working on the same alliance to achieve the same goal while getting to know each other, and two 3-4 alliances of teams operated by hundreds of miles which have nothing to do with each other and never actually interact during the season... Ever.

[scottandme]

Based on your post, can I assume you were not in attendance? I wasn't and would like a report from someone who was there.

No, I wasn't. Text is from the slides that FIRST presented, and impressions are from those who were there. Pretty well captures the spirit of it, and all the key points.

Some information is better than no information, right?

[grstex]

No, I wasn't. Text is from the slides that FIRST presented, and impressions are from those who were there. Pretty well captures the spirit of it, and all the key points.

Some information is better than no information, right?

I suppose. Really I want to know what questions were asked that were "barely answered."

[Lil' Lavery]

Not that I necessarily fall into this category, I feel this is a pretty poor argument.

There is a very big difference between 3-4 teams working on the same alliance to achieve the same goal while getting to know each other, and two 3-4 alliances of teams operated by hundreds of miles which have nothing to do with each other and never actually interact during the season... Ever.

There is a very big difference between a single team beating all of the others in a double elimination tournament and 3-4 teams being crowned simultaneous champions after competing in a subset of a competition than is a subset of all the teams in the world. Yes, two championship events moves us further away from a "true champion," but we've already been very far away from a "true champion" for a long time. We already have multiple winners each year. Those alliances already form from a subset of teams.

You won't find any disagreement from me in terms of thinking the region locking is a negative asset. But I don't think it particularly impacts how legitimate our champions are. Especially given that FIRST is considering some amount of flexibility between the two regions.

Further still, did you skip over the information posted by Scott Meredith than FIRST is considering a post-season event where the two champions face one another?

[smistthegreat]

I was at the meeting taking notes, and have some pictures of the slides shown. I'll try to upload what I have after opening ceremonies, but our hotel wifi is super sketchy so no promises.

[JaneYoung]

I was at the meeting taking notes, and have some pictures of the slides shown. I'll try to upload what I have after opening ceremonies, but our hotel wifi is super sketchy so no promises.

That would be super. Thank you.

--
Let's take the high road with this discussion. The high road consists of mature responses/reactions that contribute to a professional and thoughtful atmosphere. There is no reason to behave otherwise.

This is an emotional and frustrating time for some, perhaps many. Don't feed or fuel the emotions with name-calling and assumptions. In the end, it will only reflect poorly on you and will not accomplish anything productive.

I am very interested to learn more and hope to hear of more opportunities for discussions at the event.

Jane

[MrTechCenter]

It's likely too late for FIRST to even change anything. I'll bet they've already signed some sort of contract with the cities (or venues) of Houston And Detroit. If they can't get out of it, then everything is pretty much set in stone. But I really wish FIRST would just tell us things for what they are instead of beating around the bush.

[ezygmont708]

It is about the KIDS!
In talking with a freshman today, I asked what he thought about FIRST Champs as it is his first experience with an event outside the district model>
Reaction > AMAZING!!! "I love seeing the teams and the different ways they solved the same problem"

For everyone who looks solely at the competitive nature of the event, I want to say: I am sorry for you. The experience that students take away from the event is THE important part of the event. Mentors, we are here to support the students in their endeavors to discover and achieve great things. "More than Robots" - quite frankly it is.

As I sit here proctoring two promising young students AP Chem Test Exams, I can't help but notice the general tone of this discussion continuing to divulge into negativity. Does FIRST accomplish 100% of everything correctly on their first try? < NO. Are they trying to make a positive impact on the largest population of students? < YES

I have seen it on our team > Sometimes students experiencing something like Championships is all it takes for them yearn to accomplish bigger and better things. Who are we, as adults, to suggest that any one team or student deserves that privilege more than another.

Put the competition aside for a few minutes... Think about some of the most amazing moments that you have had as a mentor or a student not at a competition. Do those significantly change if there are 6 "World Champions"?

If you are in it for the ROBOTS and not the STUDENTS > Perhaps there is a better place to be spending your energies.

[MikLast]

It is about the KIDS!
In talking with a freshman today, I asked what he thought about FIRST Champs as it is his first experience with an event outside the district model>
Reaction > AMAZING!!! "I love seeing the teams and the different ways they solved the same problem"

For everyone who looks solely at the competitive nature of the event, I want to say: I am sorry for you. The experience that students take away from the event is THE important part of the event. Mentors, we are here to support the students in their endeavors to discover and achieve great things. "More than Robots" - quite frankly it is.

As I sit here proctoring two promising young students AP Chem Test Exams, I can't help but notice the general tone of this discussion continuing to divulge into negativity. Does FIRST accomplish 100% of everything correctly on their first try? < NO. Are they trying to make a positive impact on the largest population of students? < YES

I have seen it on our team > Sometimes students experiencing something like Championships is all it takes for them yearn to accomplish bigger and better things. Who are we, as adults, to suggest that any one team or student deserves that privilege more than another.

Put the competition aside for a few minutes... Think about some of the most amazing moments that you have had as a mentor or a student not at a competition. Do those significantly change if there are 6 "World Champions"?

If you are in it for the ROBOTS and not the STUDENTS > Perhaps there is a better place to be spending your energies.
Hi, i am student.

Big thing to think about, 400 teams will be about 800 miles away, never to be seen by you. You will not be able to see them, see how they tackled the challenge, compete against and with them, and learn how they work. Teams like us cant afford either to spend a few grand to go to stuff like IRI or Chezy Champs, so teams like us will never interact with teams in Israel or New York, and vice versa.

For that matter, a lot of my friends (and I) would feel cheated if we were to make it. The feeling of being a "top team" INSPIRES a lot more than people seem to realize. There are people i know who only do stuff like this just to get out of school, or to look cool because we are a decent team. Some students dont realize that its more than just robots, and some wont change that mindset.

Along with that, instead of feeling like you are good, you would just be another team with 800 other teams competing for 1/6th of a title, how fun is that? Or go to a sponsor, "We won 1/6th of a world championship." Not going to go well.

It is about the students, but splitting the championships is not the right way to get more involved, it just annoys and saddens all.

[PayneTrain]

It is about the KIDS!
In talking with a freshman today, I asked what he thought about FIRST Champs as it is his first experience with an event outside the district model>
Reaction > AMAZING!!! "I love seeing the teams and the different ways they solved the same problem"

For everyone who looks solely at the competitive nature of the event, I want to say: I am sorry for you. The experience that students take away from the event is THE important part of the event. Mentors, we are here to support the students in their endeavors to discover and achieve great things. "More than Robots" - quite frankly it is.

As I sit here proctoring two promising young students AP Chem Test Exams, I can't help but notice the general tone of this discussion continuing to divulge into negativity. Does FIRST accomplish 100% of everything correctly on their first try? < NO. Are they trying to make a positive impact on the largest population of students? < YES

I have seen it on our team > Sometimes students experiencing something like Championships is all it takes for them yearn to accomplish bigger and better things. Who are we, as adults, to suggest that any one team or student deserves that privilege more than another.

Put the competition aside for a few minutes... Think about some of the most amazing moments that you have had as a mentor or a student not at a competition. Do those significantly change if there are 6 "World Champions"?

If you are in it for the ROBOTS and not the STUDENTS > Perhaps there is a better place to be spending your energies.

There has been plenty of discussion on the split and it's not all limited to the "true championship" argument. To think some detractors only focus on this is pretty one dimensional and insulting to people who have been in FIRST longer than you and me combined. Quite literally, over a thousand thoughts on Chief Delphi are available for you to sift through to help understand where detractors of the split are coming from. While I can easily point out a post here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1468257#post1468257), there are others you are welcome to browse. Don't take false pity on people who made rational arguments against the split.

I will concede that my energies are better spent not performing the internet equivalent of talking to a brick wall.

[GKrotkov]

On the subject of potential solutions; I seem to remember Siri floating a "exchange" possibility on the first thread - where teams going to one championships would have the ability to trade their slot with a team going to the other championships.

That would certainly be a start towards solving the "region locking" - I can't see any downsides at the moment. Is there something I've missed?

[AGPapa]

It is about the KIDS!
In talking with a freshman today, I asked what he thought about FIRST Champs as it is his first experience with an event outside the district model>
Reaction > AMAZING!!! "I love seeing the teams and the different ways they solved the same problem"


I agree, I think it's a shame that so many people are focusing on the 'two world champions' thing.

The real problem with the championsplit is that those students will not see many of the unique ways to solve the problem. Your students will never see the unique solutions that 254, 148, 118, 1678, 1983, 16 or any of the other great Houston-Champs teams will build.

I wonder, how many people were inspired to build a PTO after seeing 254's climber at champs in 2013?

[BrennanB]

I will concede that my energies are better spent not performing the internet equivalent of talking to a brick wall.

It doesn't help either that the community "against" two championships doesn't exactly have a unified idea on why two championships is bad. We waste our time talking about individual preferences which may or may not be the biggest issue.

I agree, I think it's a shame that so many people are focusing on the 'two world champions' thing.

The real problem with the championsplit is that those students will not see many of the unique ways to solve the problem. Your students will never see the unique solutions that 254, 148, 118, 1678, 1983, 16 or any of the other great Houston-Champs teams will build.

I wonder, how many people were inspired to build a PTO after seeing 254's climber at champs in 2013?

This is the fundamental issue. The world isn't coming to one spot to compete and inspire. The community is cut in half no matter how much you try to "stitch it together" with spots for the other side of the world to join your championships.


That would certainly be a start towards solving the "region locking" - I can't see any downsides at the moment. Is there something I've missed?

Then you have good teams trading to one side or the other. A conspiracy to make the "real" champs where the good teams go, and the "bleh champs" where everyone else goes. You could do it completely randomly, but then... no travel cost reduction.

[EricH]

On the subject of potential solutions; I seem to remember Siri floating a "exchange" possibility on the first thread - where teams going to one championships would have the ability to trade their slot with a team going to the other championships.

That would certainly be a start towards solving the "region locking" - I can't see any downsides at the moment. Is there something I've missed?

I believe that that is one of the things FIRST is looking at--see the recap posts earlier in this thread.

My personal preference would be that two "exchanges" would be in play.
1) Region exchange. Basically, random-draw the regions every year, or swap X regions every year. Somewhat easy to manage, if it was done early enough (let's just say in August).
2) Team exchange. Teams that for whatever reason want to (or need to) go to the "wrong" championship can trade with teams at that championship with the same dilemma.

That being said, I think that the effect on teams of the announcement--and then any perceived stonewalling at the town hall--is a very definite negative. Having a little bit more openness--including an announcement about how "changing eligibility to maintain a reasonable size at Championship is very difficult, so we are looking at other options, does anybody have any ideas"--from the start would have been, I think, much better received. And they'd have gotten a lot more constructive feedback before making the call--now, I think they'd have made the same call, but there are different ways to put things that can give a much different "reaction". See "spin" in the politicians' dictionary.

[David Lame]

I don't have a strong opinion about how to solve the growth problem. If you want to start with thousands of teams, and narrow things down to a single championship match, you have to have various "layers" of competition (i.e. districts->district championship/regional->8 divisions->4 rounds at Einstein.)
As the number of teams grows, you either have to lower the number of teams that advance to each new layer, or add layers, or knock off the top layer. If you add layers, (like with super-regionals) that means extra cost and extra time off school for students. There's no "easy" answer of how to handle that growth.

Nevertheless, it disturbs me that some people who have chosen one solution to the problem don't even seem to understand, or even want to understand, the tradeoffs involved with the other solutions. In particular, an awful lot of people who favor the "two championship" model, don't see to realize that there is something lost with that solution. An awful lot of people, including what would appear to be the people at HQ, seem to think that the "single championship" model has something to do with determining the best team. It doesn't. Sports don't really do that, ever. Some sports come closer than others. Our sport doesn't even come close. There's a huge amount of luck in most of our games, and the alliance selection process totally destroys the idea that the winning alliance is made up of the best teams. No, it is not the best teams that end up with the blue banners.

And that doesn't matter. What we are doing this weekend is still a real championship, and what we will do in 2017 will not be a real championship. That matters.

Does it matter enough to make one decision better than the others? I'll leave that to the professionals to decide, but I would feel better about it if I were convinced they understood why it matters.

[efoote868]

There's plenty to be displeased about with the championship format. The "true champion" gripe is simply not legitimate. We don't have a "true champion" now as it stands.

Furthermore, of all the concerns it is probably the single easiest item to fix.

[epylko]

Hi, i am student.

Big thing to think about, 400 teams will be about 800 miles away, never to be seen by you. You will not be able to see them, see how they tackled the challenge, compete against and with them, and learn how they work. Teams like us cant afford either to spend a few grand to go to stuff like IRI or Chezy Champs, so teams like us will never interact with teams in Israel or New York, and vice versa.


I don't understand this logic at all. I've seen others make similar statements about not being able to see all the teams, so please don't take this as specific to you.

Let's do the math:

4 days of competition (half day Wednesday/Sunday, full days Thursday/Friday/Saturday)
24 hours/day
60 minutes/hour

If you have 800 teams at one location, that gives you 4*24*60 minutes to meet with 800 teams. Assuming no eating, sleeping, walking between teams, or actually competing, you end up with a best case scenario of being able to spend 7.2 minutes per team. In that timeframe, how can you "...see them, see how they tackled the challenge, compete against and with them, and learn how they work." Even if you go to 400 teams, you're still at 14.4 minutes for a best case scenario.

Now that's only for you. What about those top tier teams? Can they deal with new people coming to their pit every 7.2 minutes for 4 days straight? Maybe think of it this way: at 7.2 minutes per person, a team could only meet/talk with 800 people.

FIRST estimates 3,000 teams this year and 75,000 students involved. If you took 800 teams to a single championship and the proportionate number of students, you would have 20,000 students. That does not include mentors, family members, and the general public that would attend as well. How can a small fraction of those meet all the teams they want? It's impossible.

If you want to argue that you might not be able to see your favorite teams, I can agree with that. However, you will have other teams you will get to see that you normally might not.

And sure, it's cool to see all the different robots. I get that.

This is change and people don't like change. I think it will all work out in the end. After all, is there ANY sport that claims a true, single WORLD champion? The World Series winner never plays baseball teams from Cuba or Japan. The SuperBowl champions never play teams from Finland or Belarus (I just looked those up - they play football or gridiron). Stanley Cup winners don't play Latvia or Sweden.

[MikLast]

I don't understand this logic at all. I've seen others make similar statements about not being able to see all the teams, so please don't take this as specific to you.

Let's do the math:

4 days of competition (half day Wednesday/Sunday, full days Thursday/Friday/Saturday)
24 hours/day
60 minutes/hour

If you have 800 teams at one location, that gives you 4*24*60 minutes to meet with 800 teams. Assuming no eating, sleeping, walking between teams, or actually competing, you end up with a best case scenario of being able to spend 7.2 minutes per team. In that timeframe, how can you "...see them, see how they tackled the challenge, compete against and with them, and learn how they work." Even if you go to 400 teams, you're still at 14.4 minutes for a best case scenario.


Cant deny that, its not exactly possible. That doesnt mean you cant at least marvel at their robot for a few seconds, and talk to only the teams you really want to talk to.

With the other 400, you just dont see them, and that is truly missing out on some great teams, which is one of the main issues.


This is change and people don't like change. I think it will all work out in the end. After all, is there ANY sport that claims a true, single WORLD champion? The World Series winner never plays baseball teams from Cuba or Japan. The SuperBowl champions never play teams from Finland or Belarus (I just looked those up - they play football or gridiron). Stanley Cup winners don't play Latvia or Sweden.

Both Baseball and Football are predominantly american, and we (and we i mean the viewers of the sport) dont exactly want outside competition in those, i cant say the same about hockey.

There is also Olympic versions of these too. you can consider those "World Champions."

[PayneTrain]

I don't understand this logic at all. I've seen others make similar statements about not being able to see all the teams, so please don't take this as specific to you.

Let's do the math:

4 days of competition (half day Wednesday/Sunday, full days Thursday/Friday/Saturday)
24 hours/day
60 minutes/hour

If you have 800 teams at one location, that gives you 4*24*60 minutes to meet with 800 teams. Assuming no eating, sleeping, walking between teams, or actually competing, you end up with a best case scenario of being able to spend 7.2 minutes per team. In that timeframe, how can you "...see them, see how they tackled the challenge, compete against and with them, and learn how they work." Even if you go to 400 teams, you're still at 14.4 minutes for a best case scenario.

Now that's only for you. What about those top tier teams? Can they deal with new people coming to their pit every 7.2 minutes for 4 days straight? Maybe think of it this way: at 7.2 minutes per person, a team could only meet/talk with 800 people.

FIRST estimates 3,000 teams this year and 75,000 students involved. If you took 800 teams to a single championship and the proportionate number of students, you would have 20,000 students. That does not include mentors, family members, and the general public that would attend as well. How can a small fraction of those meet all the teams they want? It's impossible.

If you want to argue that you might not be able to see your favorite teams, I can agree with that. However, you will have other teams you will get to see that you normally might not.

And sure, it's cool to see all the different robots. I get that.

This is change and people don't like change. I think it will all work out in the end. After all, is there ANY sport that claims a true, single WORLD champion? The World Series winner never plays baseball teams from Cuba or Japan. The SuperBowl champions never play teams from Finland or Belarus (I just looked those up - they play football or gridiron). Stanley Cup winners don't play Latvia or Sweden.

The most famous sporting event in the world (probably beating out the Olympics, even) is the FIFA World Cup.

I also don't think anyone has wondered why they didn't go for a single 800 team venue. That's insane.

[IKE]

From the notes I took and some personal thoughts about the meeting:

FIRST said they would open with about half the meeting explaining their thoughts and what went into the decision. The discussion would try to answer/cover what they deemed the 5 most frequently requested questions of:

Questions:

- What are FIRST's objectives with this decision?
- What process was used to make this decision, and why wasn't the FIRST community asked for input?
- How does this reduce travel costs, especially for West Coast teams?
- Doesn't having two championships weaken the competition aspect that helps make any sport exciting?
- What elements of the decision are set in stone and what elements can the community still help decide?

***************************************
Don Started with Objectives and Core Values and the importance of the organization to stay mission focused.
They wanted a solution taht scales. They wanted more kids to have access to the life changing experience of FIRST and FIRST Championship.
Enable more teams to participate in the FIRST Championship by reducing travel distances and transportation costs for a significant number of teams.
They reviewed a nice graphic that showed the growth of FIRST and the relative portion of population that attend FRC championship throughout the years.
Don brought up the desire to get to around 20% (up from 15%), and cited the 600 team events this year and next as the current method followed by teh 2 event as the follow on method.
Don frequently stated that in the 9 months of working towards the current plan, they did not find what they felt was an ideal solution, but did feel that what they found was the best options that they had.
Don mentioned some of the dificulties from a venue size and more importantly availability out through 2020. Don mentioned that the convention industry has had a lot of growth since their last contract award (IE going to St. Louis) which only makes sense from an eceonomy standpoint. (In MY Opinion, Don seemed to reference that some locations they really wanted were just not available until some time after 2020).
They mentioned again that the locations were chosen in part due to the number of teams within a given mileage (600 miles), that they cited as the range for persons to drive to the event. They basically cited that they felt really bad about California, and especially PNW, but it sounded like their hands were tied from venues standpoint.
There was some commentary on the weakening due to two events, but frankly that one was glazed over during this portion and they went into what was set in stone vs. what was flexible:

Non-negotiable:
2 "Championships" through 2020
400 FRC teams at each event (800 total)
Must have FIRST Progression of programs at each event (IE FLL/FTC/FRC).


FIRST is "exploring":

- Options for a post-season, broadcasted, event between winning alliances
- Opening a percentage of slots at each Championship to teams from the other Championship region
- Other options for adding to the value of Championship for teams

At the end, they covered that FRC used the bulk of floorspace citing about 80-90%.

This opened to Q&A. People were asked to go to Mics (there were two), they asked persons to keep their questions to about 30 seconds, and they would be allowed a follow up if they didn't feel their questions was adequately covered. They did remind people of "Gracious Professionalism". People giving Questions were asked to give Name, Location, and team affiliation. I will save names and teams, but will cite location as it seemed relevant for some:

From NH mentor: Asked if there could be a focus on conferences and other Championship items be brought to District Champs and Regionals.
I believe Frank ansered that it was an idea that would be investigated. NH mentor asked how to get involved and Frank asked her to email him.

CA mentor #1: Asked why "Community" was not engaged in decision making process. Don Bossi cited the need when negotiating for venues that they cannot involve everyone, but the survey they sent out hopes that they can keep the good and important stuff of th championship at both events. My notes are bad on CA mentor's follow up as it was something about Michigan Model and FIRST Core values (more on this later).

NY Mentor- FIRST time at Champs wanted to know more about location selection. ?? cited that FIRST from a geopgraphy standpoint would have liked Salt Lake City Utah & Detroit, but that could not be worked out.

CT Mentor: Brought up the need for this to follow the sports model and the need for a Champion (1 champion). Compared this to a divorce and splitting up the kids. This was more of a statement than a question.

CT Mentor/Student: Brought up the importance of international teams and cultural exchange, and wanted to know how their location was decided. ??? responded that they were still working through details on that. Additional exchange about the importance of international with accidental "rip" on Canadians not being real international, but was OK as the person was Canadian... A small chuckle from the crowd, but only answer was "we understand it is important, but are still working through those details."

CA Mentor #2: Asked about Super Regional model rolled out a couple years ago, and why that was not being followed. Answer was that FIRST thought districts would be more widespread by now. Some discussion about local leadership needing to take on District efforts, and that FIRST could not force their hand. Some good back and forth about districts from mentor that posed question. Follow up question asked how many FIRST Alum are on FIRST Board. Answer was "0", and mentor mentioned that was an issue.

North Carolina Mentor: Brought up concern for Safety and bringing students to DETROIT. Don brought up the extra efforts FIRST does with Cities to ensure Safety. Brought up the extra police, and some of the newspaper reputation St. Louis has. Mentioned he has been to Michigan and Detroit and felt safe. Some back and forth with the mentor about concerns about Detroit. Concern about finding safe lodging "just outside the city" was follow up. No real answer by FIRST.*
*As someone that lives in Detroit Metro, I can assure you there is very very nice areas in the Metro area that are very reasonable drive to the city. I lived at 9.5 and Woodward for 5 years and loved the area. Downtown Detroit is actually really nice, but there are dangerous parts/areas, but that is pretty much every big city.

CA Mentor #1 Round 2: As this mentor had already discussed 2 topics, FIRST asked other questioners if they were OK waiting. They were, so CA Mentor discussed the District model, referenced people from FiM, and "its proven ability to generate new growth" and thus why 1 winner is needed. FIRST disagreed that the growth was primarily due to having a champion and instead cited growth as primarily FiM having a growth goal culture, engaging schools, sponsors, and engaging Gov. Snyder and State legislature to provide funding support for new teams. CA Mentor #1 referenced the need for 1 real world champion and the goal for that is a major driving force in his efforts.

NJ #1 Mentor: Asked why FIRST did not engage experts in decision. Cited airline experience and Detroit being a shrinking Hub. FIRST asked him to get to his question. He cited concerns about bringing kids to the most Dangerous City in the US. His follow up question was asking which FIRST member has vacationed in Detroit. FIRST cited some similar items about safety as earlier question, and the Mentor asked again who had vacationed in Detroit to which no one had.

*It should be noted that I believe there is a FIRST regional in or within 20 minutes of 7/10 of these most dangerous cities in the US, and St. Louis, current World Championship cite is #4... Just sayin....http://lawstreetmedia.com/crime-america-2015-top-10-dangerous-cities-200000-2/
**Note there are several nice "I'm so tough I vacation in Detroit" T-Shirts available at various stores...

I got up to ask a comment/make a statement. I believe there were 2 more questions, one from:

CA Mentor #3, but I did not take notes.

NJ #2 Mentor, I also missed notes for his, but I think it was more of a comment than a question.

At that point, time was up.

These are my notes/shorthand. Overall, I thought a reasonable effort was given to explain their decision and their rationale. Like most town halls, there seemed to be a fair amount of airing of grievances and ensuring ones voice is heard. I admire the passion that all of the presenters and question askers showed for their topics.

I talked with one of the question/statement persons with regards to the need for 1 Champion. It was not terribly productive as I was trying to cite the "IMO" need for mindset beyond winning, and her and several supporters made it clear the need for role models that are pointed out by them winning.

As far as dodging questions, I really only felt that the "need for 1 champion" and "where are internationals teams going" were dodged. In general, the "need for 1 champion" weren't really questions and instead were statements of concerned persons. I can see how this may have come across as "dodgy", but again the comments seemed more like statements than questions when poised. In this scenario, those answering were likely wiser than I as they didn't try to change anyones mind, just asked if they had a question to follow their statement.

************************************************** ***
The statement that I wanted to bring up, but ran out of time was that the citing of Michigan growth was not due to crowning a champion. FYI, at MSC, you have 1 Champion alliance, 3 MSC Chairman winners, and 1 team that has the most points (often but not always a MSC event winner). Since 2009, I have never heard any of the 3 MSC CA winners complain abuot getting a dilluted award. I have heard others talk about how unfair or difficult it is to win and MSC CA, but no one I talked to was sad when they won. IMO, the really important part of FiM was giving every team an opportunity to compete, improve, and compete each season (which all districts currently do), and a focus on improving middle and bottom tier teams to make a stronger overall community. This lead to more widespread support which in turn lead to more events and more cities being involved which lead to more impact to the community which eventually lead to getting the Governor and other Legislative persons engaged in supporting FIRST in Michigan.

************************************************** ***

My favorite set of questions was CA Mentor #2. I too prefer the Super regional model and was curious why that seemed to go away. During the explanation, I sensed a great deal of frustration that the "District model" has not taken off in certain areas. I also thought that the question of "alumni" on the board was a very good point/question to make. When I was in high school, I was one of 2 Junior Leaders that sat on the fair council meetings. While we were outnumbered by adults, it was occasionally beneficial for them to get/understand the student perspective for decisions. I think having a former student or having a panel of say Dean's List students weighing in on some important questions might benefit FIRST a lot.

************************************************** ***

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

I was in the meeting and thought the notes posted were pretty accurate of the meeting. I guess what bothered me a little is that the only thing not really set in stone is what to do with the winners. Seems like there was no way to have them consider moving FLL and FTC into their own event and no one is world champs and one is world festival idea. It was really mostly just them telling us most things we already knew and hearing the communities complaints and saying okay. They also mentioned they expected backlash maybe not quite as much as what happened but went with it anyways without really letting us know.
***
I know they were talking about contracts and stuff but unless they sealed those last minute, I don't think there was a reason to not inform us. I know deans list winners are usually asked their opinions on major change ideas but this time we heard nothing. I wasn't even aware how they were doing the Dean's list ceremony. Alumni network hasn't gained much traction as far as I know but honestly Chief Delphi is the best alumni network we are going to get and is fine in my opinion. Maybe not the one FIRST wants but it works the best.
/dlw rant

Anyways though, it seems like nothing is really going to change and the meeting was more of a this is how it is going to be, get your frustration out now. Maybe they didn't intend it to be that way and so hostile on both ends but that's what it became and was.

[Andrew Lawrence]

I'm curious to know if they explained why each championship had to have 400 FRC teams, and some number of (J)FLL/FTC teams. I know they started off by saying that it's non-negotiable, but I want to know why. The 2 championships I understand cannot be changed due to contracting issues, but I don't see why they absolutely have to split up the teams within their own competitions.

[216Robochick288]

NY Mentor- FIRST time at Champs wanted to know more about location selection. ?? cited that FIRST from a geopgraphy standpoint would have liked Salt Lake City Utah & Detroit, but that could not be worked out.

Im glad this was addressed, I was very curious myself. Salt Lake seemed like the logical location but if you cant get the venue you cant get it.


NJ #1 Mentor: Asked why FIRST did not engage experts in decision. Cited airline experience and Detroit being a shrinking Hub. FIRST asked him to get to his question. He cited concerns about bringing kids to the most Dangerous City in the US. His follow up question was asking which FIRST member has vacationed in Detroit. FIRST cited some similar items about safety as earlier question, and the Mentor asked again who had vacationed in Detroit to which no one had.

*It should be noted that I believe there is a FIRST regional in or within 20 minutes of 7/10 of these most dangerous cities in the US, and St. Louis, current World Championship cite is #4... Just sayin....http://lawstreetmedia.com/crime-america-2015-top-10-dangerous-cities-200000-2/
**Note there are several nice "I'm so tough I vacation in Detroit" T-Shirts available at various stores...

Gosh I wish people would stop ragging on Detroit. As you said, so many Events are hosted near "dangerous" cities, our lovely St. Louis being one of them.

I also thought that the question of "alumni" on the board was a very good point/question to make. When I was in high school, I was one of 2 Junior Leaders that sat on the fair council meetings. While we were outnumbered by adults, it was occasionally beneficial for them to get/understand the student perspective for decisions. I think having a former student or having a panel of say Dean's List students weighing in on some important questions might benefit FIRST a lot.

Very, VERY good point.

Thank you greatly for your notes. I hope someone recorded it- I would love to see everything not-shorthand. Ill take what I can get, as it stands I was neck deep in sorting out the queue behind the curtains when this was going on. Thanks much for the time to write it all out :)

[IKE]

I'm curious to know if they explained why each championship had to have 400 FRC teams, and some number of (J)FLL/FTC teams. I know they started off by saying that it's non-negotiable, but I want to know why. The 2 championships I understand cannot be changed due to contracting issues, but I don't see why they absolutely have to split up the teams within their own competitions.

They mentioned the progression as a core value and cited that FLL and FTC are a small portion of the footprint of an event.

[PayneTrain]

From what I gather, there was no discussion of an "open/world" model?

[MrTechCenter]

You know what I still don't understand? The question about why the community wasn't involved beforehand and FIRST answers by saying that it was because of contract negotiations with the venues. That makes sense (kinda) but why not ask the community how they felt about splitting up Champs well BEFORE starting contract negotiations with the venues?

[Leav]

One ray of hope I can imagine in all this is that maybe FIRST could move back towards the super regional format in a few years by scaling back these events and adding back a true championship.

And then we would look back at the 2017-2020(?) as the dark ages of the big mistake.

[JaneYoung]

One ray of hope I can imagine in all this is that maybe FIRST could move back towards the super regional format in a few years by scaling back these events and adding back a true championship.

And then we would look back at the 2017-2020(?) as the dark ages of the big mistake.

Learning curve. Possibly, a steep one.

The response regarding thinking we would be further along in regions moving to Districts holds merit. This change could possibly help move that forward. I'd love to see more discussion about that.

It is not surprising that the focus is on furthering the mission and that all of the programs need to be represented/involved at both events. Core Values are Core Values and the progression plan is important. It is what makes FIRST, FIRST. FRC is a part of the whole, not the whole. The program has continued to develop over the years and I don't see that changing. The development is off the field as well as on the field; it has to be that way. STEM initiatives and developments don't take a vacation. That means that FIRST has to continue to evolve to keep up and remain relevant in its mission.

Jane

[grstex]

From the notes I took and some personal thoughts about the meeting:

FIRST said they would open with about half the meeting explaining their thoughts and what went into the decision. The discussion would try to answer/cover what they deemed the 5 most frequently requested questions of:

Questions:

- What are FIRST's objectives with this decision?
- What process was used to make this decision, and why wasn't the FIRST community asked for input?
- How does this reduce travel costs, especially for West Coast teams?
- Doesn't having two championships weaken the competition aspect that helps make any sport exciting?
- What elements of the decision are set in stone and what elements can the community still help decide?

***************************************
Don Started with Objectives and Core Values and the importance of the organization to stay mission focused.
They wanted a solution taht scales. They wanted more kids to have access to the life changing experience of FIRST and FIRST Championship.
Enable more teams to participate in the FIRST Championship by reducing travel distances and transportation costs for a significant number of teams.
They reviewed a nice graphic that showed the growth of FIRST and the relative portion of population that attend FRC championship throughout the years.
Don brought up the desire to get to around 20% (up from 15%), and cited the 600 team events this year and next as the current method followed by teh 2 event as the follow on method.
Don frequently stated that in the 9 months of working towards the current plan, they did not find what they felt was an ideal solution, but did feel that what they found was the best options that they had.
Don mentioned some of the dificulties from a venue size and more importantly availability out through 2020. Don mentioned that the convention industry has had a lot of growth since their last contract award (IE going to St. Louis) which only makes sense from an eceonomy standpoint. (In MY Opinion, Don seemed to reference that some locations they really wanted were just not available until some time after 2020).
They mentioned again that the locations were chosen in part due to the number of teams within a given mileage (600 miles), that they cited as the range for persons to drive to the event. They basically cited that they felt really bad about California, and especially PNW, but it sounded like their hands were tied from venues standpoint.
There was some commentary on the weakening due to two events, but frankly that one was glazed over during this portion and they went into what was set in stone vs. what was flexible:

Non-negotiable:
2 "Championships" through 2020
400 FRC teams at each event (800 total)
Must have FIRST Progression of programs at each event (IE FLL/FTC/FRC).


FIRST is "exploring":

- Options for a post-season, broadcasted, event between winning alliances
- Opening a percentage of slots at each Championship to teams from the other Championship region
- Other options for adding to the value of Championship for teams

At the end, they covered that FRC used the bulk of floorspace citing about 80-90%.

This opened to Q&A. People were asked to go to Mics (there were two), they asked persons to keep their questions to about 30 seconds, and they would be allowed a follow up if they didn't feel their questions was adequately covered. They did remind people of "Gracious Professionalism". People giving Questions were asked to give Name, Location, and team affiliation. I will save names and teams, but will cite location as it seemed relevant for some:

From NH mentor: Asked if there could be a focus on conferences and other Championship items be brought to District Champs and Regionals.
I believe Frank ansered that it was an idea that would be investigated. NH mentor asked how to get involved and Frank asked her to email him.

CA mentor #1: Asked why "Community" was not engaged in decision making process. Don Bossi cited the need when negotiating for venues that they cannot involve everyone, but the survey they sent out hopes that they can keep the good and important stuff of th championship at both events. My notes are bad on CA mentor's follow up as it was something about Michigan Model and FIRST Core values (more on this later).

NY Mentor- FIRST time at Champs wanted to know more about location selection. ?? cited that FIRST from a geopgraphy standpoint would have liked Salt Lake City Utah & Detroit, but that could not be worked out.

CT Mentor: Brought up the need for this to follow the sports model and the need for a Champion (1 champion). Compared this to a divorce and splitting up the kids. This was more of a statement than a question.

CT Mentor/Student: Brought up the importance of international teams and cultural exchange, and wanted to know how their location was decided. ??? responded that they were still working through details on that. Additional exchange about the importance of international with accidental "rip" on Canadians not being real international, but was OK as the person was Canadian... A small chuckle from the crowd, but only answer was "we understand it is important, but are still working through those details."

CA Mentor #2: Asked about Super Regional model rolled out a couple years ago, and why that was not being followed. Answer was that FIRST thought districts would be more widespread by now. Some discussion about local leadership needing to take on District efforts, and that FIRST could not force their hand. Some good back and forth about districts from mentor that posed question. Follow up question asked how many FIRST Alum are on FIRST Board. Answer was "0", and mentor mentioned that was an issue.

North Carolina Mentor: Brought up concern for Safety and bringing students to DETROIT. Don brought up the extra efforts FIRST does with Cities to ensure Safety. Brought up the extra police, and some of the newspaper reputation St. Louis has. Mentioned he has been to Michigan and Detroit and felt safe. Some back and forth with the mentor about concerns about Detroit. Concern about finding safe lodging "just outside the city" was follow up. No real answer by FIRST.*
*As someone that lives in Detroit Metro, I can assure you there is very very nice areas in the Metro area that are very reasonable drive to the city. I lived at 9.5 and Woodward for 5 years and loved the area. Downtown Detroit is actually really nice, but there are dangerous parts/areas, but that is pretty much every big city.

CA Mentor #1 Round 2: As this mentor had already discussed 2 topics, FIRST asked other questioners if they were OK waiting. They were, so CA Mentor discussed the District model, referenced people from FiM, and "its proven ability to generate new growth" and thus why 1 winner is needed. FIRST disagreed that the growth was primarily due to having a champion and instead cited growth as primarily FiM having a growth goal culture, engaging schools, sponsors, and engaging Gov. Snyder and State legislature to provide funding support for new teams. CA Mentor #1 referenced the need for 1 real world champion and the goal for that is a major driving force in his efforts.

NJ #1 Mentor: Asked why FIRST did not engage experts in decision. Cited airline experience and Detroit being a shrinking Hub. FIRST asked him to get to his question. He cited concerns about bringing kids to the most Dangerous City in the US. His follow up question was asking which FIRST member has vacationed in Detroit. FIRST cited some similar items about safety as earlier question, and the Mentor asked again who had vacationed in Detroit to which no one had.

*It should be noted that I believe there is a FIRST regional in or within 20 minutes of 7/10 of these most dangerous cities in the US, and St. Louis, current World Championship cite is #4... Just sayin....http://lawstreetmedia.com/crime-america-2015-top-10-dangerous-cities-200000-2/
**Note there are several nice "I'm so tough I vacation in Detroit" T-Shirts available at various stores...

I got up to ask a comment/make a statement. I believe there were 2 more questions, one from:

CA Mentor #3, but I did not take notes.

NJ #2 Mentor, I also missed notes for his, but I think it was more of a comment than a question.

At that point, time was up.

These are my notes/shorthand. Overall, I thought a reasonable effort was given to explain their decision and their rationale. Like most town halls, there seemed to be a fair amount of airing of grievances and ensuring ones voice is heard. I admire the passion that all of the presenters and question askers showed for their topics.

I talked with one of the question/statement persons with regards to the need for 1 Champion. It was not terribly productive as I was trying to cite the "IMO" need for mindset beyond winning, and her and several supporters made it clear the need for role models that are pointed out by them winning.

As far as dodging questions, I really only felt that the "need for 1 champion" and "where are internationals teams going" were dodged. In general, the "need for 1 champion" weren't really questions and instead were statements of concerned persons. I can see how this may have come across as "dodgy", but again the comments seemed more like statements than questions when poised. In this scenario, those answering were likely wiser than I as they didn't try to change anyones mind, just asked if they had a question to follow their statement.

************************************************** ***
The statement that I wanted to bring up, but ran out of time was that the citing of Michigan growth was not due to crowning a champion. FYI, at MSC, you have 1 Champion alliance, 3 MSC Chairman winners, and 1 team that has the most points (often but not always a MSC event winner). Since 2009, I have never heard any of the 3 MSC CA winners complain abuot getting a dilluted award. I have heard others talk about how unfair or difficult it is to win and MSC CA, but no one I talked to was sad when they won. IMO, the really important part of FiM was giving every team an opportunity to compete, improve, and compete each season (which all districts currently do), and a focus on improving middle and bottom tier teams to make a stronger overall community. This lead to more widespread support which in turn lead to more events and more cities being involved which lead to more impact to the community which eventually lead to getting the Governor and other Legislative persons engaged in supporting FIRST in Michigan.

************************************************** ***

My favorite set of questions was CA Mentor #2. I too prefer the Super regional model and was curious why that seemed to go away. During the explanation, I sensed a great deal of frustration that the "District model" has not taken off in certain areas. I also thought that the question of "alumni" on the board was a very good point/question to make. When I was in high school, I was one of 2 Junior Leaders that sat on the fair council meetings. While we were outnumbered by adults, it was occasionally beneficial for them to get/understand the student perspective for decisions. I think having a former student or having a panel of say Dean's List students weighing in on some important questions might benefit FIRST a lot.

************************************************** ***

This is SUPER INFORMATIVE! Thanks so much! How many people showed up? Was it a packed room? and, were there a lot of people waiting to ask questions, because it reads like one person got to ask questions twice.

[Steven Donow]

This is SUPER INFORMATIVE! Thanks so much! How many people showed up? Was it a packed room? and, were there a lot of people waiting to ask questions, because it reads like one person got to ask questions twice.

The room was actually not very packed. Definitely less than half full.

Periodically more people would go in line to ask questions, but I would say each side never reached >5 people.

[cgmv123]

You know what I still don't understand? The question about why the community wasn't involved beforehand and FIRST answers by saying that it was because of contract negotiations with the venues. That makes sense (kinda) but why not ask the community how they felt about splitting up Champs well BEFORE starting contract negotiations with the venues?
My thoughts exactly. Announcing "we're considering having two separate Championships" is different than announcing "we're in negotiations with [Venue(s)] in [City A] and [Venue(s)] in [City B] to hold two separate Championships on [Dates A] and [Dates B]." I can understand keeping the later under wraps, but the former?

[cgmv123]

The room was actually not very packed. Definitely less than half full.

Periodically more people would go in line to ask questions, but I would say each side never reached >5 people.
I'd say it was somewhere around 15%. And that was just the lower level of the theater. The upper levels were essentially empty.

[Drakxii]

I'd say it was somewhere around 15%. And that was just the lower level of the theater. The upper levels were essentially empty.

How does that compare to other conferences they have held at champs?

[Qbot2640]

One ray of hope I can imagine in all this is that maybe FIRST could move back towards the super regional format in a few years by scaling back these events and adding back a true championship.

And then we would look back at the 2017-2020(?) as the dark ages of the big mistake.

My main concern now is how to "undo" this for 2021, in such a way that will continue to satisfy the FIRST objective mindset that told them this was a good idea. (Don't get me wrong - I'm still plenty peaved that my son's senior year will be a "half-championship" year if we get to go...and all the incoming Freshmen that year will get to experience nothing other than "half-championships" during their tenure.) But the real question and task becomes how to put the necessary changes in motion so that a switch from 800 FRC teams, plus the cumulative representation from the other programs back to whatever number a single venue can support will not be considered a backward step by either the teams or by FIRST. Further, while some incremental change would be necessary (universal districts, or something like that) there will also need to be some kind of major change for that season to either increase or at the very least maintain the number of teams gaining what FIRST is currently calling the "Championship Experience."*

I have a nagging feeling that something like a new government program was just created...and once it is created it won't go away.

*(By my math...607 FRC teams are receiving the full "Championship Experience" this year...thus 607 * x = 607x...in 2017 800 teams get half...thus 800 * .5x = 400x The Championsplit results in a 34.1% reduction in experience.)

[Michael Hill]

I hope this incident this afternoon sways FIRST into moving away from a violent city....I hope nobody involved with FIRST was involved in the shooting.

[Lil' Lavery]

I hope this incident this afternoon sways FIRST into moving away from a violent city....I hope nobody involved with FIRST was involved in the shooting.

Please prepare a list of potential venues in cities with no violent crime.

[scottandme]

Please prepare a list of potential venues in cities with no violent crime.

Although I'm certainly not losing sleep over it, St. Louis and Detroit are in fact #3 and #1 in the nation for violent crime (cities with population over 250,000). And not much better by the other metrics. Asking him to find a city with no crime is pretty disingenuous, when *every* other city (sans Oakland) is in fact safer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate_(2012))

If you want to look at the data for cities <250,000. Salt Lake is the only one I remember offhand that people mentioned as a WCMP site.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/8tabledatadecpdf/table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_by_state _by_city_2012.xls/view

[Michael Hill]

Please prepare a list of potential venues in cities with no violent crime.

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mlj45jggj/1-detroit/

Something not in the top 10 would be nice for a change.

I'd personally like Indianapolis. I have no problem with the championship in Houston

[Michael Hill]

Granted, I am a big fan of Detroit sports, so I wouldn't mind going to a Tigers game. The immediate area around the stadiums isn't bad and I would feel fine walking around there, but it gets seedy REALLY quick. There are simply not enough hotels in what I would consider the "safe" part of Detroit to support a championship.

[rsegrest]

The response regarding thinking we would be further along in regions moving to Districts holds merit. This change could possibly help move that forward. I'd love to see more discussion about that.
This ^
I believe FIRST thought the majority of states would be on the district model by now. I don’t think they expected moving to districts would take so long or meet with the resistance that it has in some areas (which begs the question of why they were surprised that there was so much backlash over the schplit but I digress). It is human nature to be fearful and angry about things we don’t understand or that we feel have come at us from out of the blue. The problem they have encountered with the move to districts IMHO right now is several-fold:

A lack of understanding of the district model (which I am very guilty of myself but am taking steps to rectify for me personally)
Concerns with the costs of moving to the district model (who is going to pay for everything and how)
The geographic density of teams (in some states it is sparser than others)

Jane, I agree, I think that this is a huge push to make districts happen by ’17 and I think that this all goes back to the fundamental vision of having FIRST everywhere.

*Sidebar*
As far as the complaints about Detroit and Houston only time will tell if they were the right choices or not but I will say this: Please remember, this is a public forum and we are setting the tone for which these two cities will accept us as a community. If I were either a Detroit/Michigan team or a Houston team (which we are...kind of the red-headed step-child but it's our home regional :D) I might start to get a little miffed at all the negative rep our HOME has gotten here on CD.

Thank you guys who did attend the meeting and try to get some answers. They may not have been the answers we wanted but at least you were there and took the notes!

[Jared Russell]

The room was actually not very packed. Definitely less than half full.

Periodically more people would go in line to ask questions, but I would say each side never reached >5 people.

This had a lot to do with being scheduled during lunch of a qualifying match day. Lines were long and food was not permitted in the theater.

[grstex]

This had a lot to do with being scheduled during lunch of a qualifying match day. Lines were long and food was not permitted in the theater.

That was going to be my followup question. thanks for the info.

[KrazyCarl92]

One point that I still don't see answered is why is this the lowest hanging fruit for making a higher impact "Championship Experience"? It takes a tremendous amount of resources to have a single FIRST Championship, and now they are trying to put on two Championships. That's going to put an incredible amount of stress on the volunteer pool for FRC, and quite frankly I anticipate it is unrealistic that these events will match the inspirational power of the single Championship.

FIRST could stand to do a much better job marketing, televising, and really bringing the Championship experience to many more people by putting together truly professional media coverage. I know they have tried to do this with Einstein the past two years, but something more like the FiM television program would be more ideal for "making it loud". That is such a high production quality program that is fun to watch AND it can captivate even non-FIRST affiliated audiences on a public broadcast. However, FIRST currently has a lower production quality, difficult to find, and low experience webcast that fails to even show a full field view of Einstein matches (there is a whole thread on this...).

I have to believe an EXTREMELY well done televised cast would require less resources, reach more people (both within FIRST and outside of FIRST), and "make it loud"er than trying to make 2 Championships happen. I admittedly don't know all of the details, but it just seems to be lower hanging fruit for a bigger FIRST impact in my opinion.

Another interesting outcome of the Town Hall is the fact that places aren't going to districts as quickly as FIRST had hoped (...shocker). This is particularly intriguing from my perspective because I look back at where Michigan was in 2009 (based on CD searches) and where New York is in 2015, and it seems to me that districts make as much or more sense in New York now as compared to Michigan when they first went to districts. There's a whole thread on this particular situation, but the resistance to change is a real barrier to FIRST's scale-able growth in the future.

[Bgreen1591]

Let's establish some truths:

In the long run, FIRST does not care about what you think concerning the prospect of two championships.

In the long run, FIRST is not scared of you.

Your ideas don't hold any weight as long as it is fundamentally different from the idea of the championsplit that has taken hold over HQ since 2014 (I assume)

FIRST thinks they are doing the right thing and those who don't fall in line to this line of thinking
a) are not a threat to the overall mission of FIRST
b) can only become a threat if their wishes are respected and thoughts are considered on equal footing to those who made the decision to split
c) will fall in line eventually because there is no alternative to FRC as far as they can see (which I assume is to the end of their nose)

If they do not fear a collection of individuals who are WFA, WFFA winners, employees of major sponsors, mentors on teams who share major sponsorship with FIRST, they fear no one. If the opposite were true, the town hall would have gone on as it should have in the eyes of the community, and not as planned out by FIRST.

I'm not a mind reader, but this is the perception, and perception is reality.

Well they should fear us and care about what we think.. we are paying 5000+ to compete yearly...what is all FRC team get together and decide not to enroll until we have a say in something regarding the program? or is that too much to ask for? At the end of the day this is not a free program we are all in a way paying customers.

[Racer26]

I still think the single biggest problem with the championshplit is that the lions share of the inspiration of the championship comes from being able to schmooze with the best teams in the world.

By geographically dividing them, the best don't end up in one place and that necessarily reduces the total impact of the event. Are DCMP's inspiring? Sure, but not as inspiring as WCMP. The championshplit takes WCMP and turns it into 2x something a bit bigger than MICMP.

Not only this, but the most inspiring super-elite teams (like 1114, 254, 148, 118, and many many more) build their FRC robots around the goal of winning the championship, and by removing the cohesive goal they strive toward, their impact may be reduced.

Its easy to say that HQ is making these decisions to get maximum impact for maximum number of teams (and so getting more teams to a CMP-class event is good), but not if it comes at the cost of watering down the impact of the top teams, because IMO, that's where most of the inspiration comes from.

I remember a couple of years ago in 2013 listening to 1114 explaining their reasoning behind Simbot BA Baracus not having a floor pickup. They had built their robot to be the best cycler and 30pt climber, because they knew that 7 disc autos would be prevalent among the top teams, and they wanted to be first pick of the #1 captain. Two 7 disc autos wouldn't help an alliance, but a really fast 30pt climber would. They werent concerned with how to win regionals, but rather, how to win CMP. It made perfect sense. Their plan worked, too. They built a robot to be first pick, and it was.

[David Lame]

One point that I still don't see answered is why is this the lowest hanging fruit for making a higher impact "Championship Experience"? It takes a tremendous amount of resources to have a single FIRST Championship, and now they are trying to put on two Championships. That's going to put an incredible amount of stress on the volunteer pool for FRC, and quite frankly I anticipate it is unrealistic that these events will match the inspirational power of the single Championship.

FIRST could stand to do a much better job marketing, televising, and really bringing the Championship experience to many more people by putting together truly professional media coverage.

I wonder if the leadership understands this comment. If they do, then they will be able to fix some problems and do the best job they can to make the experience everything it can be, and patch up some relationships in the process.

My initial emotional reaction to the two season finale events was intensely negative. After reading a little bit about things, I saw that there really was a problem for a lot of teams, and having two season finales might really be all about offering an affordable experience to more people.

A couple of things have happened since then that make me think, though, that they just don't understand the problem. One was the town hall presentation. If they had understood the problem, they never would have led with what they did. It's just a non-starter. It shows that they didn't understand their audience.

A second thing was my own championship experience, from a few hundred miles away. When the system for updating the match results went down, they didn't fix it or find an alternative. A way of posting scores and linking to that on a web site is not a major technological challenge in the 21st century, but First didn't seem to think it was important enough to get it done. (As an aside, thank you again, Blue Alliance)

It seems almost as if the leadership doesn't understand what they've got. They put together a fantastic backdrop for a fantastic event. Getting everything together, the stadium, the arrangements, the exhibits, the ceremonies, the concerts, that's all fantastic. No doubt such a major undertaking took a huge amount of their time, effort, and resources.

I have to wonder if they didn't forget what was the backdrop, and what was the event. Yes, all those things are great, and offering them to more people is a worthy goal, but they're the backdrop. Without the event, they wouldn't be so spectacular. They might even seem out of place.

We shall see, I suppose. If they come to understand the problem, I'm sure they'll find a way to make it great. I look forward to helping with a great event in Detroit. For those of you who are afraid of coming to my adopted home town, your fears are misplaced. We hosted a Super Bowl just a few years ago. We can do half of a First Championship, and with 350 teams from Michigan to draw from, there will be the best volunteer staff you could possibly imagine. See you there......Well, half of you, anyway.

[hannaners]

I'm not sure why they should fear anyone. The goals of FIRST and it's major sponsors are aligned. Why would the sponsors care how many championship events there are? They put $$$ into the program because it readies people for the workforce. The goal for FIRST is much the same, get students interested in STEM, get them to pursue post-secondary training in such things and be productive members of society. End of story.

If this is true, than that's pretty sad to me - FIRST is hugely focused on STEM of course (it's in the name) but the entire program has so much more depth than simply preparing people for the workforce. I have never built a single part for my team's robot, but have done a ton strategy, PR (website & social media), and some CADing (hmm you might be able to consider that as indirectly building a part...). The highlight of my season is always competitions, culminating in World Champs. What's special about FIRST is that everyone can have a role whether or not they like engineering; think of how many teams have a business/media/awards side and an engineering side. FIRST is a well-rounded program, and it's always "more than robots" as they so like to say. I for one do not plan to pursue a career in STEM, but I do plan to stay in FIRST for as long as I can manage. FIRST needs these kinds of people - students who become alumni who become key volunteers - but as passionate as I am about FIRST, having the two championships from 2017-2020 (putting that end date because I'm hoping it'll change for the better after that) is frustrating and disheartening because it won't allow me as a mentor/volunteer to provide students with the same experience that made me fall in love with FIRST in the beginning :confused: /endrant

How does that compare to other conferences they have held at champs?

The room/theatre was a lot less packed than I expected it to be. I attended Karthik's strategy talk and the theatre was almost full. In comparison, the seating during the town hall meeting looked sparse and disappointing. Also, I knew a meeting would take place during Champs, but didn't know when it would happen until I saw a tweet by the Cheesy Poofs, so I'm wondering if some people just didn't know it was happening (it could've just been me though :rolleyes: )

[BrennanB]

There's a whole thread on this particular situation, but the resistance to change is a real barrier to FIRST's scale-able growth in the future.

In most cases I would say the change to districts is not the fact that regions don't want to switch, its the fact that...

- They don't have enough volunteers
- They don't have enough venues
- They don't have enough money

These are far more likely assessments.

[PayneTrain]

In most cases I would say the change to districts is not the fact that regions don't want to switch, its the fact that...

- They don't have enough volunteers
- They don't have enough venues
- They don't have enough money

These are far more likely assessments.

Volunteer need scales to fill available space for the most part. What good does FTA training do someone if an FTA already covers all events in the area and/or the only events in the area are ones you attend with your team? Replace "FTA" with almost every other position. There's likely a rough gap year, but any other issues with volunteering probably center around issues outside of a talent pool.

Venues can be shaky. I know Ontario isn't home to the mega-gyms you see even in places like Indiana.

Money is an odd complaint. There are startup costs, sure (like buying your own field perimeter, I think FIRST sells the electronics to you directly??? I need to read up) but regionals aren't what one would call a low cost solution.

[Siri]

I'm not sure if anyone's posted another version, but I'm grateful that 1640 recorded the hour-long session.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FFhhPlrRvM&feature=youtu.be

[Hallry]

I'm not sure if anyone's posted another version, but I'm grateful that 1640 recorded the hour-long session.

Popcorn's in the microwave. Thanks, 1640.

[Steven Donow]

I'm not sure if anyone's posted another version, but I'm grateful that 1640 recorded the hour-long session.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FFhhPlrRvM&feature=youtu.be

Thank you, 1640.

[dodar]

I'm not sure if anyone's posted another version, but I'm grateful that 1640 recorded the hour-long session.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FFhhPlrRvM&feature=youtu.be

Thank you guys so much for recording this.

I also gotta say, the guy leading the town hall meeting, re-iterating about GP right after Shawn stopped talking, that was pretty dang rude to him.

[Hallry]

I also gotta say, the guy leading the town hall meeting, re-iterating about GP right after Shawn stopped talking, that was pretty dang rude to him.

Link for the lazy: https://youtu.be/8FFhhPlrRvM?t=3179

Don't forget when the moderator was rude to Mike Corsetto, after he fairly got back in line after asking his original question: https://youtu.be/8FFhhPlrRvM?t=2892

[dodar]

Their growth expectation of FRC seems absurdly high too. They want 5-10x growth over the next 10 years. I think FRC only doubled over the previous 10. Sounds like they expect FRC to be at 20,000+ teams in 10 years. I sincerely doubt FRC gets past 12,000, if even 10,000.

[EricDrost]

Don't forget when the moderator was rude to Mike Corsetto, after he fairly got back in line after asking his original question: https://youtu.be/8FFhhPlrRvM?t=2892

"How do the two people behind you feel about you being up for round 2?"

Honestly, I would have been okay if the entire Q&A was just 30 minutes of Mike asking questions.

[Fusion_Clint]

I feel worse after watching that, than before. FIRST leadership is obviously disconnected with the community.

FTC is growing exponentially (Why), lower the cost of FRC (the robot is the cheapest part) and you will get more teams. With the availability of more and more COTS parts, even teams without dedicated engineers can be competitive.

They want STEM leaders to be celebrated by the world, but they continue to disrespect and take for granted the STEM leaders that make their program successful.

What they should be doing is petitioning states to help create the district model nation wide, the message will be louder coming from FIRST than from "mentor X".

The body language on stage told it all, for the most part they seemed annoyed.

I was a volunteer and didn't have time to attend the town hall during the day.

[PayneTrain]

"How do the two people behind you feel about you being up for round 2?"

Honestly, I would have been okay if the entire Q&A was just 30 minutes of Mike asking questions.

He's probably one of few people there who was articulate enough to ask questions everyone was thinking and receive occasionally dubious answers without having his calm severely damaged.

The whole exchange is simply baffling. This whole year has been baffling. There are people in FIRST who have put a lot more faith into the organization than I have and the last 5 months or so I have felt it evaporate from under me. What makes FIRST what it is? Students? Mentors? Volunteers? Staff? Those who we can reach out to? The board of directors?

I'm going to yell at the proverbial brick wall until I'm blue in the face: this is a partnership. If mentors do something that is not in the interest of students, the partnership can be damaged and disintegrate. If staff and volunteers cannot communicate information to students and mentors, that partnership can (and has in the past) turn hostile. It is paradoxical for the board to act in the best interests of FIRST over the interests of the community of FIRST, but that seems like the move they made here. If volunteers get overworked, they'll burn out. If staff get overstretched, they'll quit. If mentors feel like this program's moves do not align with what they hold to be true, they'll move on. If students don't have mentors, volunteers, or staff, what do they have left? A board that can give them a pat on the back?

[Richard Wallace]

From the notes I took and some personal thoughts ...

Don started with Objectives and Core Values and the importance of the organization to stay mission focused. They wanted a solution that scales. They wanted more kids to have access to the life changing experience of FIRST and FIRST Championship. ...Thank you Isaac for these notes. Like many other volunteers I was a bit busy during the time the Town Hall was scheduled so I did not get to attend. I also enjoyed watching the video that 1640 made and linked in this thread.

What came through most clearly to me in the video was Don Bossi's preamble, in which he contrasts FIRST's mission to that of the NFL. The latter exists primarily to serve the interests of team owners, while FIRST's culture changing goal is directed to inspire a whole generation of students to become leaders and innovators in science and technology. FIRST programs currently reach only 20% of US high schools, and a smaller fraction internationally, so the mission is mostly directed toward students that do not have access to FIRST programs now -- NOT only to the interests of teams that already exist.

Culture change, and the FIRST program growth that will drive it, will not happen without sustained engagement of strong teams. The inspiration provided by FRC games, and by winning at those, is a major piece of that sustained engagement.

[Siri]

Thank you Isaac for these notes. Like many other volunteers I was a bit busy during the time the Town Hall was scheduled so I did not get to attend. I also enjoyed watching the video that 1640 made and linked in this thread.We've also got photos of the slides now (http://wiki.team1640.com/index.php?title=2-Championship_Town_Hall_Meeting), if anyone wants them.

[Caleb Sykes]

"How do the two people behind you feel about you being up for round 2?"

Honestly, I would have been okay if the entire Q&A was just 30 minutes of Mike asking questions.

Seconded. The voice of the top 1% of teams needs to be heard by FIRST leadership, and 1678 has almost certainly entered that elite group. The FIRST leadership is walking a very fine line here, trying to keep the highest level teams engaged while attempting to bring in even more teams to the championship events. If this decision causes any of this 1% to leave FRC, then I hope the FIRST leadership will realize what a horrible decision they have made. Any one of those teams provides more inspiration than 50 waitlist spots at an event that has an exciting name do.

[BrennanB]

Money is an odd complaint. There are startup costs, sure (like buying your own field perimeter, I think FIRST sells the electronics to you directly??? I need to read up) but regionals aren't what one would call a low cost solution.

Food, lights, AV, sometimes venue renting. It adds up quickly.

[dag0620]

Money is an odd complaint. There are startup costs, sure (like buying your own field perimeter, I think FIRST sells the electronics to you directly??? I need to read up) but regionals aren't what one would call a low cost solution.

The bigger issue right now is not only the actual money, but the fiduciary responsibility. Currently, even though RPCs are responsible for paying their own bills, all the cash runs through FIRST's bank accounts, and FIRST takes all of the legal responsibility. FIRST is a large and established organization financially that if something was to go south at a regional, they have the ability to sustain hits.

When you move to districts, its the local legal entity, spearheaded and ran by the local leadership, that is entirely responsible for the entire operation of FRC in your area. This includes not only raising the money, but having your own bank accounts, being legally responsible for the events instead of HQ, and all the issues arising from that responsibility (insurance, legal protection and fees, etc.) It's a lot of extra overhead and responsibility for local volunteers to take up.

It is understandable that local leaders are scared to take on that responsibility. In New England, we're lucky we have a great board who did what they had to to make the creation of ingenuityNE happen. Other regions already in districts have had the same luck. Not every region is in those positions though.

[evanperryg]

FLL and FTC at one location. All FRC teams at the other. Vendors, speakers, workshops can be more specific to age and needs this way.
This would work, but I think part of the reason they're splitting champs is to possibly get 800 FRC teams at champs, returning us to the 400 FRC teams per venue, 100 team divisions we have seen in years past. If they want to do this, I think it's be better to randomly assign teams to the different events, and have a provision for teams that can't attend one of the events for funding/travel reasons.