Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

You completely missed the point why it is unfair to teams attending. I think I know pretty well that it meant more teams does mean an unfair set of qualification matches due to the number of teams attending. The quality of matches can go down and rankings are not perfectly accurate. Please don't put words in people's mouths.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Let's look at the quote itself, shall we?

Now, please tell me how you could possibly read this in a way other than "we need to make sure that non-elite teams don't get in, because being paired with a non-elite team is harmful to the ranking of an elite team." He did not say "we need to restrict the number of teams that get in," he said "we have to make hard choices about who gets in." The sense of that quote is very clearly discriminatory as to team quality, not quantity.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

FIRST appears to believe in inspiration through competition. If this is the case, then Championships should be as competitive as teams are able to make it. Being at the mercy of the schedule after spending so much more time, effort and money to qualify and attend is uninspiring for everyone, it's just most obvious when known powerhouses get caught in it.

This is how: don't conflate "not Championship caliber" with your definition of elite. Yes, Daisy is elite. But the complaint isn't about not playing with elite teams, it's about not playing with teams that are on par with Worlds.

"...invitations to Championships get harder to come by, we need to start making hard choices about who gets in" is not a normative assertion. It's not an elitist attitude--it's not an attitude at all. It's simply true. At what point does inviting more teams to play fewer matches result in diminishing returns? How many people do you inspire pulling someone off the waitlist vs qualifying another wildcard team, versus even keeping it at 8+ matches? Whether we like it or not, we're coming up on the point that these decisions are non-negotiable.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

"as invitations to Championships get harder to come by, we need to start making hard choices about who gets in."

This implies quantity of robots as well as quality. Quality and quantity can sometimes go hand in hand when teams are taken off the waitlist.

Sure, many teams who attend from the waitlist have terrific bots, but many times there are also robots that, as Jared said, are not Championship caliber. A way to alleviate this is a qualification system based on points like FiM and MAR. The fact of the matter is that teams off the waitlist make for larger divisions = fewer matches for those who qualified for Champs.

Until that happens, I fully agree with Jared's points. Why should we come to the point where a random team is taken off the waitlist, while a team who competed early in the season and was, let's say, a regional finalist but did not get a wildcard slot, cannot attend? I would much rather see teams who didn't get Wildcards be able to attend champs instead of random teams who had good luck and fast fingers during registration.

Good example of a team that should have deserved to attend: 2791. No wildcard, no nothing.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Please give a definition for both "elite" and "championship caliber," and explain what precisely the difference is and how precisely it changes the meaning of that post from how I had interpreted it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I believe I fall somewhere in between you two. I think that 8 practice matches is too few. If the only solution to that is to not allow waitlist teams than so be it (one team I have mentored was a waitlist team that got in). BUT the quote about "many Championship robots that simply were not Championship caliber" is entirely off base. If a team builds a "not Championship quality robot" but does wonderful things in their community and wins a Chairmans award are you really suggesting that they shouldn't get in? I can safely assume you are not but this is the very grey line you are crossing. Should "not Championship quality robot" rookies get into champs? I think we should try to inspire as many teams as possible without severely impacting other teams. In this case I believe teams were impacted by not getting enough matches, but the "quality" of robots is not the point as Oblarg points out.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This, I can agree with. Reducing the total number of teams that get in off the waitlist for logistical reasons, and to increase the quality of the event for the teams which qualified, is a perfectly reasonable aim.

And this is essentially my point - and no, I do not think that he is advocating that teams which qualify but are "not championship quality" be denied access. What I took his post to mean is that we should continue to allow waitlist teams, but pick and choose which ones based on perceived robot quality.

That, to me, reeks of elitist nonsense and seems entirely contrary to the spirit of FIRST.

If I am, indeed, misreading this, and this is not what he was advocating, and Jared would like to clarify such, I would be very happy to hear it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I could not agree more with every single one of Jared's points!

100% spot on!

Unfortunately, I can't add on to his rep, b/c apparently I agree with him too often.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Sure. Of course this is my own answer, not his, though I've already indicated my agreement. I second the statement under the definition that "elite" means teams who 'should' place (barring at-fault failures) in a specific range--for example the obvious division favorites. Certainly the entire division is not favorites. Altering the rankings (lack of matches*) to the point that these teams drop out changes a lot more than just their chances. In fact, it affects all "championship caliber" teams that come looking to perform their best with and against the best: from winners to wildcards to RCAs. It's not a competition if you can't actually compete.

As for how it changes the interpretation, it goes back to the waitlist debate. How inspiring is the waitlist? Is it really garbage to advocate inviting wildcards in place of waitlisters? Certainly there's a great deal of inspiration to be had there. What about expanding the district qualification model? None of these groups are inherently elite (e.g. 1640------->----->Daisy), but they are much more likely to result in a balanced competition fitting of what so many teams have put so much into making.


*"There were many Championship robots that simply were not Championship caliber, and this combined with the 8 matches-per-team format..."

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Ok, having read your post I think this is a matter of talking past each other more than anything, and nothing other than a clarifying post from Jared will resolve it.

If he's advocating reducing the number of waitlist teams that are accepted for the sake of the competition's quality, I have no problem.

If he's advocating discriminatory selection based on perceived "caliber" among the teams who are to be accepted from the waitlist, then I have a big problem.

So, I propose we pause this here until we receive clarification. Sound reasonable?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The thing I haven't seen mentioned yet that definitely needs said:

Karthik needs to be given a larger space for his presentation. (More time would be fantastic as well). The number of people who came and were thoroughly interested and engaged throughout was incredible, but I am sure there were many more who could not get in to the room, or did not want to fight the crowds. There was something to take away from this presentation to teams of all resource and ability levels.

This may have been true of other presentations as well, but I believe Karthik's in particuar was probably the most blatant problem.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Why?

As I said before, why should a team with quick fingers be let in over someone who performed better at their regional but didn't qualify?

I take issue with who is let off the waitlist because it is a lottery. I would much rather see teams compete who performed well at their events. A universal point system would help create something like this.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

For the same reason the waitlist exists in the first place, or at least what I have always imagined that reason to be. To allow teams who otherwise might not have the experience to compete in the championships, which is a lot of fun and very inspiring, indeed.

If you truly think this is a problem, get rid of the waitlist entirely and be done with it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Please read the first line of my signature.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I apologize, please substitute "championships" for "nationals." Force of habit - that's what they've always been called on teams I've worked with.

Now, do we have anything else to discuss regarding the topic at hand? I think we're at a bit of an impasse, myself.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Something that I do not think has been mentioned is the practice fields at regionals.

I loved the full practice field at Worlds. When my team played at our regional competition, I was disappointed by the lack of chains / box on the small practice fields. This did not give an entirely accurate simulation of gameplay on the field. In addition, I saw many frisbees fly through the goals and into the pit area, which could have potentially been dangerous.

I would not suggest a full practice field at the regionals, but a practice field that is a closer replica of the field would be great, especially for calibrating autonomous and practicing lining up shots.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The loading station on the DC Regional practice field was simply a vertical piece of wood with slots cut in it. No ramps.

Yep, you heard that right. No ramps. Not polycarbonate, not wood, nothing at all. It was completely and utterly worthless, and 4464 had to scramble to bring our own because were still making critical revisions to our feeding system.

This is rather unacceptable, and I hope they're better next year.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm not really talking about Jared's opinion, just my own. (I happen to agree with what I think he said, but he's plenty capable of speaking for himself should he choose.) For myself, I'm curious about how you're measuring inspiration. If wildcards are ok, what's inherently wrong with, say, a points-based (a la districts) waitlist system? Why is getting rid of the list entirely better than inviting via performance rather than lottery?

The negative lesson learned here for me is that FRC is hitting the point where attending Worlds has the potential to be less inspiring to teams than actually qualifying. I don't think it's there yet, but this year's 8 matches is definitely going that direction. I don't envy FIRST is the decision of how far to diminish the Worlds experience for one set of teams in order to accommodate those that achieved less success in that season.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Because I do think there is a lot of value in having a small "lottery" system to allow teams who did not qualify to experience championships, and I think railing against that with only the rationale of improving the robot quality-competition seed correlation for "elite" teams is a pretty lousy way to view FRC. From a competition-logistics perspective it may indeed be necessary, but that was not how I read his given rationale.

Moreover, robot quality has never been, for me, the ultimate end of FRC. It's certainly not what is celebrated by the Chairman's award. Waitlist judgments based on robot quality seem to me to violate one of the most crucial underpinnings of the organization itself.

And, finally, that particular passage just struck me as very ungracious. The implication strikes me as very much "if you are at championships with a robot that does not perform, you should not be at championships, and should feel bad about it simply because you might hurt the seed of an 'elite team.'" This strikes a nerve, for me, and it additionally bothers me that it seems few other people here have a problem with it.

Ultimately, I think we can all agree that there needs to be a line drawn somewhere on the number of teams that go to championships. We can also agree that certainly we want the competition at championships to be of a fitting caliber, so that the event does not seem like a glorified regional. I simply think, and I believe the existence of a waitlist at all is evidence that FIRST agrees, there certainly is value in allowing for a number teams which have not qualified to attend, and furthermore that if any judgment is to be made about waitlist teams attending, robot quality alone is not a metric which is wholly indicative of the type of team FIRST wants to see at a regional.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

How about this: Instead of inviting teams that may end up discouraged from poor performance against extremely competitive teams, instead have less teams total and use some of the extra funds generated from a smaller amount of teams to bring some of those struggling teams to championship to watch. I suspect the teams that really need the championship experience are not the ones that can afford to pay full price, but the ones that cannot afford to, and cannot afford the travel cost.

However, I realize that logistically this would be a nightmare, but just a thought. Perhaps one that could spark a better idea?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I suspect there are far more diplomatic ways to communicate your point in an eloquent and respectful manner.

I, for one, happen to agree with Jared. Many students and teams, mine included, take a great deal of pride and inspiration out of the product that we place on the field. Keep in mind that we are a multi-time chairman winner, so I think our kids 'get' what the program is about.

It is not inspiring when the primary driving force behind your Championship robot result is pure random chance. That's the most non-inspiring situation I can think of. It's tantamount to randomly picking a Chairman's winner. How truly inspiring would that be?

I fully support adopting a country wide district system. If your team is unable to attend two regionals, you can submit a hardship form to FIRST that, when accepted doubles your result in your first district. Points are distributed in the same manner they are in the Michigan System, and at the end of the year a certain number of robots at the top are invited to participate in the World Championship.

I would eliminate the purchase / wait option and (gasp) the auto-chairmans invites as well.

The only option I see to bringing the number of matches up to what they should be (12 or more) is to reduce the number of teams at the Championship. You could also start matches much earlier on Thursday: this is champs and your robot should be pretty close to dialed-in after your districts/regionals/bag windows etc.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm fairly shocked at that. It sounds like we were spoiled here in the Michigan. Our practice fields were 1/3 fields that had pyramids, goals, and were surrounded by batting-cage style hanging nets that made it safe for everyone. Perhaps First-In-Michigan builds the practice fields and moves them around with the competition fields. That would explain their relatively high-quality. They were laminated plywood bolted together, all built in a folding style so they could be packed away.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

To clarify, they did have the nets and the same 1/3 fields.

I was referring to the frisbees that flew OVER the netting, sorry for that misunderstanding.

Did the goals at FiM have the full chain and box goal? Or just the frame one? My issue was with the frame one because it did not have the boxed backing or chains. Without these, the teams could not be sure that where they were shooting from would not have frisbees bounce out.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

No - ours were the same plywood frame with no chains.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Please let me clear some things up.

I said that we need to make hard choices about who gets in. This does not mean that I think you must be an elite robot to be invited. If it did, well, then 341 would not have been at the Championship many of the years we have been, and we would not be the team we are today. It means exactly what I said: we have to make hard choices! The best system I have seen for making these choices is the FIM/MAR system, which uses points accumulated over the course of a season (incorporating BOTH robot performance and off-the-field accomplishments, with automatic advancement for the highest culture changing awards) to select the most deserving teams in a given year.

To be clear, I do not think we were we impacted at all by unlucky alliance pairings (heck, we had the 5th easiest schedule in Newton by OPR). There were a couple of other specific teams I had in mind when I made the second part of my statement, which I concede was not tactfully articulated. It is not FIRST's obligation that the best robot seeds #1. But, on the other hand: There is a C in FRC, and the C is the biggest reason we are as popular as we are. The C is also our best shot at actually transforming the culture on a macro scale, because the sports model is something the public actually gets.

There is a knob we need to tune. On one end, every FRC team who is able to, comes to Championships and plays a single match. On the other end, only the 24 best robots in the world show up and they play 20+ qualification matches each. All I am arguing is that 400+ teams and 8 matches is not the optimal spot on the continuum, especially for $5000 per team. I do not think you should need to be elite to come to St. Louis, but when I know for a fact that there are teams who did not make the cut who can score lots of game pieces, who have done tremendous things in their communities and schools, and have changed lives and cultures - why are there still robots that can't score a game piece at the World Championships?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I don't believe you can find much of a cross section with well-resourced teams who perform poorly and still go off the waitlist.

When I make the decision to stick it out somewhere on any team for a year, I sign up for the organization known as For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology's Robotics Competition. And when I work with a team, I don't throw personal wellness and rational behavior out of the window just to see them do their ok-est every year.

Coming from a team that has earned precisely 1 merit based slot in its 14 years of fielding robots in the competition, and you know what? It sucks. It really, really sucks. But there are times where this team has finished second at an event after getting absolutely steamrolled by teams, specifically 25. So what did the team do? Dedicated to improving drive train quality so they don't get kicked around anymore. It inspired them to do better. This year, the team did not make picks without knowing everything necessary to build a successful alliance, something I noticed after I went back and crunched some numbers. After the students did the same, a web-based LAN scouting application was built and tested in 2 weeks for later use and will be continually improved upon, and it's because of the example set by elite teams.

However, after 8 matches per team in Virginia, a team with zero ability to do anything was carried by teams like 422 to alliance captain, and 2 other entirely non-functioning robots ended ranked ahead of 422 that were also carried by 422, team members came up to me and said "Oh, I guess the secret is to build a robot that can't work and hope someone wins for us." I took thoughts like that very seriously, because competition in FRC is not meant to be secondary to everything else, it is supposed to matter.

We do not compete in the FIRST Robotics Flowers and Rainbows Happy Place. Woodie Flowers doesn't slink on up to the podium every year to tell me "help people off the field, and don't compete like hell on it, but make sure everyone feels like they got something out of it during matches." No. Our competition is designed to only bring out the absolute best of our teams, FIRST itself, and each person that participates in it, but it is still a competition. The more competitive FIRST has become, the stronger it becomes on an organizational level, and it is becoming clear HQ sees this school of thought panning out well on the field and in the spreadsheets.

However, when teams are moved off the waitlist who didn't try like hell and ended up winning two judged awards, or get knocked out by the champs of both of their events in quarterfinals, or something else, that's bad. When you are moving teams who can't build a functional machine off the waitlist and keep finalists who picked bad events waiting or wholly excluded, you are doing something very, very wrong. You are instilling in children that no matter how much effort they put into their build season, HQ doesn't care and would rather have any old team willing to drop $5k and registration plus the insane costs of travel and lodging. Having merit based waitlisting is something that should be instituted. It is not fair to teams who are just "elite", it is unfair to any team that has ever busted their chops and just wasn't great enough to say that one team clicked the blue box on TIMS .xxx seconds faster so they earned it.

Teams need to take ownership of their successes and failures on and off the field. By providing a waitlist with conditions that have nothing to do with either, you are infinitely diluting the importance of those successes and failures, and the students in this program are very smart and they do notice this and some of them are getting really sick of it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Jared and I had a reasonably long conversation about this subject after one of our matches on Thursday. I will not speak for him, but I will share my opinion on the subject with the hope that it may help your understanding.

From 2006 to 2010, I went with my team (at the time, 816) to the Championship via the wait list. Two of those years, we had no business being at a 'championship' since we were less than competitive. That being said, those two Championships (mainly 2006) were two of the most inspirational moments of my life. Seeing what could be done if one was willing to put their all into it was simply astounding. I am a fan of the waitlist because it gives teams this opportunity.

With that being said, the Championship is our Championship. As a group, a family, a league of competitors and as a culture, the Championship is our moment to get together and show each other and the world what we've got. There will always be unfair match ups and tough breaks just like any competition, but at some point we need to look at where we're going and make some difficult decisions.

There will be some point in the near future where FIRST and FRC reach critical mass and having a Championship like what we've got now will not be feasible or a good idea or whatever you want to call it. The situation is being addressed by both the wildcard system and the district model and both have shown promise for long term growth. They create a 'fair' way to allow teams to qualify for the Championship without doing it through one of the conventional methods.

Aside from the issue of the size of the Championship, we also need to address the question of 'what is FRC going to be' in the future. We're finally starting to break the boundaries of sports and some places are considering FRC to be equal to that of any other Varsity sport and personally, I think that's amazing. With that being said, if we keep allowing teams that don't meet some sort of minimum competitive threshold to compete at the Championship, are we really a sport?

I'm not trying to say that every team at the Championship needs to win an event, be a powerhouse or anything like that - it's not who we are. What I'd like to see is a small amount (and I mean really small) of robot related emphasis placed on any qualification method for the Championship - the easiest way to summarize it would be 'A qualifying team's machine must be able to complete the game objective'. Something as simple as scoring 3 discs in this year, or being able to hang from the 10pt bar would suffice. I know some of the qualification methods are not about the robot, which I can agree with, but if we're sending these teams to our largest most visible event, then I think that it would be in the best interest of all of us to have each team be able to at a minimum complete the game objective. *

If you can't understand what I'm trying to get across here, then that's fine. It is a bit controversial and different from the norm. Also, this is just my opinion and has nothing to do with any team so please keep that in mind.

*TLDR, there shouldn't be Machines at the CMP that cannot complete the game objective.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I agree 100%, though the argument for the chairman's auto qualifying is if you don't then how many teams are going to send their chairman's presenters to Champs just to present?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Jared, I'm with you on this one.

5000 for 8 matches and coming from Hawaii especially, is NOT acceptable.
If this means adding an extra day, or less teams competing, so be it.
If it means I have to win at events and not get the HOF exemption, then so be it. If my robot is poor, I won't subject our team to getting blown out.
If it means that if RCA's win, they compete only with the Other RCA's in a judges room, then so be it.
This is a competition event!
Champs is a big deal. Excuses that I can't get off work another day is a personal problem. For an event as inspiring as this, and a once in a lifetime opportunity for kids, you make the necessary sacrifices to make it happen.
It's my job to use it to inspire kids all of the other zillion of hours I put in to take care of the learning part!

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think we all agree that would not be inspiring, but that wasn't the case even this year. The number of matches only affects the seeding which is a big deal but doesn't make the final outcome completely random (hence we had a VERY competitive Einstein).

Secondly, that comparison is not accurate. I won't even go into why it is so far off base I think that is obvious.

I must have misunderstood this? Are you going to stop inviting Rookies too? FIRST has proven that the competition can be competitive and allow "less than championship quality" robots in at the same time. The MAIN problem here is with the number of matches not the "quality" of the play.

Good Luck! I think it is far too restrictive and exclusive to get 12 or more matches with the current championship setup. You are talking about cutting 1/3 or more of the teams that is quite drastic.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Practice fields, IIRC, are built and maintained by regional committees. FiM used their practice fields over a dozen times while DC would only use theirs once, so building them better makes sense; people will actually get stuff out of them...

Point 1 for districts. For those of you keeping score at home, that's:
Districts: 5469
Traditional Events: 1 (because they tried)

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I really liked this game but there were a few things that needed to be changed.

The Game:
The endgame needed to be worth more. FIRST needs to work on balancing out teleop and the endgame.
Also the real time scoring needs a huge improvement for next year.

Districts:
I know that the New England area will be moving to a district system next year and I would love to see it put in place in more places. The system allows for more events and more chances to go to a big event like the region championship with a better chance for worlds.

Championships:
There either needs to be less teams or more divisions at worlds. I know that adding more divisions would be very hard because of space and logistics but there needs to be more than eight matches for all the teams. I have seen some people talking about extending the championships to starting with practice on wednesday and I do not agree with that. We need to keep in mind that FRC is high school students and, although they are all motivated and intelligent, they cannot be missing that much school. Finally I would like to see Einsteins placement moved so that more people can watch it without having to be stuck at the top of the stadium.

P.S.
this might be a little off topic but I saw someone talking about how they don't like jags and won't be using them next year. I just wanted to say that my team has been using jags with the can system for years now and we love it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

To everyone complaining about time between einstein matches being used for awards, may I point out that Einstein is still a FRC field, which requires near 10 minute match cycles. Along with the 6 min minimum for back to back matches, and the timeouts, I think how they handle awards between matches is rather time efficient. Sometimes the awards run a little longer than a 10 min match reset, but overall it works out better.

May not be fun for spectators, but I'd rather watch awards then people resetting a field. Also works out for sponsors watching who would have no idea what's going on in the ~10 min gaps between matches.

2c

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This strikes me as a kind of optimization problem. Given the current composition of the Championship, can it be demonstrated that the value of admitting an additional merit-qualified team in lieu of a waitlisted team will be positive?¹ And how does this relationship change as you tweak the proportions and quantities of qualified teams? Is this relationship different for teams that only won judged awards versus the ones with more competitive robots?

I suspect that to answer that, we'll need to discuss the purpose of the Championship, and the criteria used to judge merit and calculate value.

¹ Or, given the distribution of likely outcomes, at least a positive expected value and a low likelihood of drastically negative values.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

A couple of thoughts...

1) Championship Caliber vs. Wait List:
I suspect that part of the reason we accept robots from a waitlist to fill out the fields is financial. It costs a significant amount of money to rent out a facility such as the Edwards Jones Dome for a week and those wait-listed teams really help the bottom line. I have experience running select baseball tournaments. If I were to rent and prepare a facility for a 24 team tournament, but only got 16 teams, I'd be in a mess financially. However, were I to fill the tournament with 24, I'd make a pretty profit. Thought FIRST is not a for-profit organization, the concept is the same. The last thing we want is for them to be forced to raise the price on everybody in the event that the tournament does not fill.

However, I agree that, in this case, it causes some challenges. Eight qualification matches is not nearly enough to allow teams to adequately separate themselves and puts them all much more at the mercy of schedule pairings. I would much rather see eight 50-team divisions, 10 qualifying matches and a quarter-final round at Einstein.

Further, I would not want to dissuade teams from coming who qualified with less competitive robots. If we have enough qualifying rounds, those who have truly great robots would rise to the top and those who don't would fall out of contention. A team with a weaker robot what really wants to compete either 1) will be inspired by all the great robotics around them to learn and be come better or 2) will learn real fast that they didn't belong in the first place and will see what great teams are really capable of accomplishing.


2) Competition vs. Gracious Professionalism
This is such a hard balance sometimes. Yes, this was the World Champsionships, which, by definition, is very competitive. We were all there to win. However, what sets FIRST aside is that Gracious Professionalism is the core value and being graciously professional is more important than winning a trophy. Sometimes, in our desires to excel, we forget this. Some things I witnessed personally, that I would rather see go differently:

* One team, when approached about alliances, blasting another's mentor and effectively demanding that the first not choose them.

* A team continuing to practice on the practice field and looking nothing short of awesome, but looking like garbage on the real field. Later, this team is seen talking to a top alliance about being a third pick.

* Teams being upset when being selected by the "wrong" team for alliance selections.

* Teams "showcasing" specific skills during the last qualification rounds in hopes of improving their chances at being selected - at the cost of the match and their alliance partners' chances. (Consider a team that loses the #8 seed because of such a loss, then never gets chosen for eliminations!)

* Teams in the stands yelling obscenities about referee's calls - and not being calmed by mentors.

* Teams saving seats when specifically asked not to. I saw several instances when kids could not watch their own robot compete because the they were not permitted to stand in teh aisles to watch matches and the 100 (or more!) empty seats were all being "saved" by other teams.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think there needs to be an algorithm that balances the merits of the team under a traditional points system with some leverage in times the team attended championships in its history/veteran status. I can't tell you what it should be, there should be some sort of consensus met by teams and HQ of what does merit a championship caliber team, but I think it should be pretty easy to reach the consensus that a fastest-finger competition isn't that.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I was personally not involved with any team for Build Season this year. I did help work with Team 70 during the competition season, so these observations and issues that I have noticed/felt this season and there are some potential solutions:

1) The number of qualification matches at Championship was too low. Everyone agrees with this being an issue, I don't think anyone is going to disagree with it. There are several proposed solutions that I think could solve it. FIRST needs to decide who they want to appeal to when it comes to Championship. Removing the wait-list will make it a more competitive and maybe a more positive experience for the teams that qualify. Expanded the divisions/adding another will certainly decrease the quality of play, but gives more students the opportunity to attend championship.

2) Third event teams at the Bedford District Competition. This is obviously a Michigan centered issue, but the fact that 22 of the 24 teams that were playing in eliminations were competing in their third event left a sour taste in my mouth. I am generally a fan of teams being allowed to compete in extra events to fill up the spots, but I really wish that there was a better distribution of teams at the events from earlier weeks to make it less likely something like this might happen.

3) Real time and Autonomous Scoring issues. I am not that mad about the real time scoring. For better or worse I have more or less given up expecting to see a quality real time score. One thing I wish they would have done is added in a pause following the end of Autonomous mode, similar to what was done in 2006 to give counters the ability to verify and accurately count the discs.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I really hope FIRST HQ sees this. I agree 100% with this!

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The camps were amazing and we were honored to be there.
That being said some adjustments need to be made to make it better for everyone.
Too many teams in a division and too few matches. The speeches are way too long. Too few good seats for Einstein.
If the Einstein speeches were cut way back there would be time to do a normal QF, SF, and finals match set up. This would require more divisions. More divisions means less teams for each division. Less teams per division means more matches.
Einstein needs to be setup on one of the long sides of the dome like it was in Atlanta. This would allow for better seating for Einstein.
Some people don't like the paper airplanes (I think they are just fine) if the speeches were shorter and more matches were being played, there would be less students and mentor bored and maybe less airplanes.
Some might ask where would you put the extra fields for the additional divisions... Why doe FTC need to be at the same championship. FTC is being limited at the championship by FRC just as much as FRC is being limited by FTC. Michigan has adapted FTC as a middle school program and the season as been adjusted so it does not interfere with FRC. This allows us coaches/mentor to do both teams. Makes for a great feeder system for FRC and allows 7th and 8th graders to be involved in something more challenging than Lego. Most of that age group is not interested in Lego any way. Michigan is still only allowed to send 2 teams to camps. This limits the growth of FTC in our state. If FIRST is going to continue to grow the way it should, some hard decisions need to be made.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Far too many teams for Championships... perhaps getting rid of the wait list would narrow down numbers? Also switching to districts would also make for less teams at the world's. I'm not sure but just a suggestion.

Another issue I came across was the screens for each division were TOO small for those in the stands to read everything. Kind of pointless if the only ones who can read it are those on the playing field and they aren't paying attention to the screen anyways.

Scoring issues in real time. Kind of embarrassing to watch in all honesty... specifically in autonomous mode.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Thank you for the clarification; it seems much of the disagreement was, indeed, miscommunication. No, the current system is clearly imperfect and does indeed need work - I can certainly agree there.

I apologize if my post was overly-confrontational, and am glad that what I took offense at was not your intended message.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Agreed. With the conferences being free this year, this was a BIG problem. Shutting out almost as many people as were in the room?! Time for a bigger room. I don't think this was something they were ready for with the change in attendance policy. I have heard that they're looking at using the Ferrara Theater for the more widely-attended conferences next year.

My other thoughts:
-Fewer teams, more divisions, or both. 8 matches was completely unacceptable.
-The Hall of Fame setup. Embarassing. These guys should have a way bigger display space - after all, they're the FRC role models. It wouldn't be that hard to find a better, bigger, more advantageous space for them a la Atlanta's HoF display.

I've got more, but those are the big two.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I agree with many of the points in this thread, but I found the finale to be dangerously overcrowded. I watched several students fall down the stairs, and by the time the bus I was on arrived, all we could find to eat were the cookies. Also, while down on the field during elims, I noticed that the back up robots (there were four per division) and their teams needed to be in the center area where they needed to sit still and wait. The kids weren't allowed to watch the matches, and a group of kids who worked hard, built a great robot, ranked 12, and weren't picked were forced to sit where they couldn't see the elimination rounds for any division is not a nice thing to do to a dedicated group of students. Also, I agree that 8 matches is not enough. Teams that didn't build great robots ended up in the top 8, and bad robots were chosen for alliance partners(making it easier for us to get far in elims).

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Yes, the finale planning all-around was atrocious, from the transportation to the event itself. That volume of people in that space was not a good idea.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm not certain how the financials for the Championship work, but having talked with some local organizers, many of the regional competitions have a very large percent (up to 100%) of the costs for reserving space payed for by sponsors. I would imagine that the Championship works in a similar manner, where most if not all of the facility costs end up being covered by sponsor donations, not team entry fees.

Someone who has more insight, please feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The HOF looked nicer than it has in a long while but it was too small and seemed sterile and disorganized (where were teams supposed to set up?). I didn't even hear anything about the HOF til I talked to Dan Green at Midwest and I was hoping to start designing our HOF setup during the build season since I am the lead mentor on the promotions team. Instead we had to scramble to throw something together at the last second just to put something in the HOF. If the Chairman's award is so important to FIRST they certainly have a funny way of showing it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

As a mentor for 15 years, I have noticed that the field is becoming more and more complicated and more and more important to testing. This year's pyramid was expensive and required alot of space. Our team is limited to an active shop classroom to design, build and test the robot. We could not build the pyramid due to space. In addition, the low cost field was not truly representative of the actual field. The small portion of the pyramid we did build drove us to make certain design decisions that were not appropriate once we saw the actual field.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

We aint rich.
We share a build site with two other teams.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This really needs to be repeated until FIRST acknowledges it - the pyramid was a prohibitively difficult field piece to simulate accurately, and it added another hurdle for teams of limited means. Every field piece should be easy to simulate accurately for testing purposes.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

You hold quite a controversial opinion, and I just want to let you know that this topic has been discussed time and time again.

The objective of the HoF and the Chairman's award is to inspire other teams to spread the ideals of FIRST. You are correct that some teams have a great amount of resources and have an "easier" time accomplishing certain goals. That being said, it's impossible ensure equal circumstances for all teams competing. Your argument doesn't apply to just the Chairman's award, it could be applied to the competition itself, and even to instances outside of FIRST as well (think high school sports teams, students applying to colleges, etc). Judges definitely do take things like economic circumstances into account when judging for all awards. An inner city school can certainly have many more challenges to overcome than an engineering academy might, which makes it that much more exciting and inspiring when they achieve their goals. What matters is how much your team does with what it is given. I promise that if you make the most out of what your team has, you will be rewarded for it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Biggest problem this year? Low number of matches. DC we got 8 matches for 60 teams. There was simply no hustle. The ranking algorithm this year was quite decent but needs time to work. 8 matches meant we saw ~2/3 of the field. Champs was the same issue but instead of 2/3 of the field it was 40%. It also means your season is more or less at the mercy of the scheduling gods. This was compounded by the, as Jared put it, teams that weren't Championship caliber issue. I had matches at CMP where my partners put up a combined 6 discs. Is this a championship or is it an exhibition? If it's the former then we need to be a lot more selective.

Just tell me who to contact about it and we'll have them broadcast online (at least audio) and recorded to be posted online next year.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I don't get how you can say that Hall of Fame status indicates ANYTHING about money, but it may be just me. Hall of Fame teams are such because of their efforts in raising awareness, transforming culture, and having such a HUGE impact on their local and global communities. Go to these hall of fame teams and talk to them about their programs, they don't let down!

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

And if you'll notice, not a single 30 point climber was in the Finals on Einstein. Expanding it to division champions, only one team, 1640 Sa-BOT-age, was a 30 point climber. FIRST may dictate what point values are assigned in a game, but teams dictate what is the most effective method for scoring. a team's analysis of risk/reward for scoring dictates what's most effective for them to accomplish. Building a full scale pyramid is hard and it takes up a lot of space and have ideas on how we would re-do it if another challenge like it arises.

Point is, you don't necessarily have to build every single feature to build an effective robot. Listen to Karthik's conferences and monetary barriers cease to exist.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Ugh, no.

Walking through the HoF area has always been the highlight of my championships for the last 10 years. I regret I didn't make it there this year.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This is completely wrong. I took time to visit each and every one of the Hall of Fame teams and each of them have their own problems. Some even struggle to come to the championship each year. For example, the team that won in 2009 (I forget who they are) had an awesome robot with a 30 pt climber this year, but they worked in a small portable classroom where the ceiling was too low to set up a full sized tower. So, the team build a shorter version of a corner and were able to be successful without building a full tower at all. While it is true that many of the teams are well funded and have good resources, not all of the teams there are rich.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Obviously not, but there still should not exist field elements which cannot be simulated by a team with limited funds. "Funds are easy to get" is not a valid excuse; like it or not, believe it or not, there are teams who do not have a large amount of resources, and placing the blame on them for having limited means rather than on FRC for designing field elements which can't be constructed without access to a metal shop with a skilled welder is nonsense. Having limited resources is a burden enough - you don't need to compound it by denying those teams the ability to accurately test their mechanisms, to boot.

Moreover, even with a fair amount of resources, the pyramid was a pain. We went to a full-sized practice field in Virginia about a week before build season ended, and even their professionally-made pyramid was having problems.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

You do realize that having limitations and learning and finding ways around those limitations is one thing the FIRST build/competition seasons are about, right?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm getting conflicting messages here. Do you not want to recognize the teams who have made significant impacts in their communities (and regions, and continents, and the world...etc)? That's what the HoF does - it showcases the role model teams that have done more than just build a robot. I mean, I'm sure that these teams would continue to be inspirations without the recognition (it's not about the recognition, it's about the inspiration), but showcasing what they have done to promote STEM (and other values) in their communities adds another element of inspiration to aspiring teams. For instance, it's hard for someone on the east coast to know what the Holy Cows are doing without the recognition.

This has been beaten to death a million and a half times in many different ways (some teams can afford to travel/some cannot, some teams can afford multiple regionals/some cannot). I understand that not every team has the same opportunities for sponsors, but...simply playing the "it's not fair" card isn't going to help. Lower budget teams can have the same powerful machines as high budget teams, and money doesn't even guarantee that you'll have a perfect, game-winning robot - it's useless unless you know how to use it properly.
:deadhorse:

Also, you seemed to imply that HoF teams are just those with lots of money. I hope that I was reading that wrong, because that's simply not the case.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The presense of teams like 341 and 359 that have the funds to do absolutely mind-boggling things doesn't strike me as "unfair" in the slightest, it pushes me to keep going harder than ever. But what I find truly impressive about many hall of fame teams is not just what they are doing now, but what they grew from, and often some of the limitations that they face even today. No matter how hard you work at obtaining resources, it's always possible to sit on your hands and complain that you don't have enough to make a difference, or to win against those that are a little better off. But so many teams find a way to do incredible things despite this. Team 1100 has been an inspiration to myself and many other teams over the years, precisely because of the incredible things you do on and off the field despite sometimes limiting resources, and I hope you and your teammates will continue to inspire us rather than demand those above you be brought down a notch.

Besides, there's an R in FIRST. Recognition. Should we be recognizing teams that go above and beyond, making the most of resources that they've gained through a combination of hard work and being at the right place at the right time, and doing incredible things that we should all be striving to emulate and exceed? I would sure hope so.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

A design challenge in which you don't know the parameters or can't test in them is a poor design challenge. I guess you could construe it as indicative of actual work environments, but it still doesn't make for particularly good game design. It doesn't help that it's far more of a burden for small teams than for large ones with lots of resources.

The thing is, FRC is usually very good about making their games accessible for teams with limited resources, be it rookie teams or veteran teams with difficult situations. That's what makes the pyramid this year so unusual, and it certainly ought to be brought to attention.

Edit: I apologize for the profanity.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I know others have touched on it here and there, but the finale was an absolute disaster.

It worked fine in 2012 because there were multiple places for teams to go, so the load of people was distributed to a comfortable level. But packing all the teams into the Science Center like that? Just terrible.

Not only is it uncomfortable, and not fun for anybody, it's unsafe. People were getting bumped around and elbowed all over the place. Not to mention that the food (which was fantastic, and plentiful last year), was far less than what was needed for the volume of people at the event. We had to stop at a McDonalds down the highway just so our team members could get some dinner. We met up with team 303 there, and many of them expressed the same issues.

I heard there was talk of asking for our money back, and frankly, I'm for it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

In what ways were design parameters of any part of this year's game not known? And I would love to show you teams that are small in many ways and yet still achieve just as much as larger teams do, but the list is far too large to put in a CD post.

Also, seeing as your rookie year was 2008, you havent been introduced to very large game components; even though you should remember the overpass from 2008. But even the year before you joined, 2007, had to be one of the worst game elements to make, the Spider. Our team had little resources back then to actually make one and yet if you didnt make one that year you pretty much could not make a working robot. Knowing what we had at our disposal, we constructed 1/4 of it and used it to the best of our abilities. You dont have to have a NASA facility to work at or the brightest GM mentors, all you have to do is use what resources you have to their peak efficiency.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Exactly. We were fortunate enough to weld our own pyramid and had several teams take up our offer to use it, and yet we still found that virtually all of our consistency issues were due to its complexity (knuckle geometries) and cost (particularly the powder coat).

We should have planned for both better, and I certainly don't fault FIRST for that. What I dislike is that it moves the objective out of many creative and passionate teams' reach. Many such teams made the entirely correct Karthik-esque call: drop it and do what you can do well (that whole 10 units of robot awesomeness thing). Good on them, bad on FIRST for setting up a game that makes a potentially inspiring challenge so strategically unappealing to so many teams.

FIRST, please don't do that again.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This. So much this. You said it better than I ever could have.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

While I am sure this has been addressed, I want to make sure it is mentioned. Camera angles. Right now, for those who don't know, the official streams involve zooming in on "exciting" parts of the match and displaying fully on the screen. While I understand FIRST is trying to make it viewer friendly, there are several flaws to this methodology. We can see them best by seeing why it is used in most sports and why.

• Baseball: used to follow the ball and to observe player stances (think pitcher) during stagnant periods of play. Note that camera often goes to a wide shot.
• Football: used heavily during replays and play analysis. Camera also follows ball at wide angle during play.
• Soccer: same as football
• Tennis: used between play to show players, neglected during play
• Swimming: used in replays, other than that FOV is kept in a position to keep all swimmers in view

Based on a very small sample size, it would appear that in order to avoid missing action, these sports give coverage of large portions of the field during action-packed moments, saving zoom-shots for after the play. Note that there are some differences between those sports and FRC, most notably the fans caring about 1/6th of the players much more than the other 5/6ths, and there being many game pieces.
THE SOLUTION:
Make the stream Michigan-style; fixed, full-field, top-down view of the game. If you HAVE to zoom in, save it for a separate stream and/or instant replays. And yes, instant replays would be AWESOME!!!

If I have one final note, it would be that getting matches up on an official youtube page would be very much appreciated! I am sure teams would love to help out, but the team-led coverage in Michigan is exceptional, and FIRST could use to learn from it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Serious Question: Would any of you really give up the awesomeness that was Ultimate Ascent for easier to build field elements?

I definitely think the GDC should do their best to make sure teams have the easiest time possible testing their solutions, but I think the overall quality of the game should come first.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think we can all agree that the pyramid was not one of the (many) things that made Ultimate Ascent awesome.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I dunno, I thought it was pretty awesome. Seeing teams actually faced with the decision to go for certain game elements over others was a nice change from 2008-2012's era of do-it-all bots.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

No, we cannot.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

As a lifetime member of the FIRST community and the child of two CCA judges...

...that attitude about the Hall of Fame could point to why your team's not in it.

Your team won an RCA this year. Therefore you were in contention for the Hall of Fame 2013 spot. If you don't want the HoF to exist, why did you even bother presenting? You don't have 'less of a chance to compete' - you just have different resources to work with. Do the best you can with what you have and you're doing perfectly fine.

The Hall of Fame exists as a way to recognize the Championship Chairman's winners. They are our role models. If you think they're only in the HoF for their sponsors, you're straight up wrong. They are there because they've made an impact in spreading the mission and values of FIRST as well as improving the FIRST community from the inside.

I stand by my position - the Hall of Fame deserves bigger and better recognition. Especially to help remind people with attitudes like yours why we HAVE a Hall of Fame.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Guess I'm not in the same boat then. Yes, the pyramid was a pain. Yes, the thirty point club (And dump club) is smaller than it could have been, but that doesn't make the pyramid as a challenge any less awesome. It was amazing to see how many different ways to scale the pyramid were, and how effective some of the methods were. Seeing the likes of 1114 or 67 rocket their way up the pyramid for a quick dump (Or I suppose spit...), a slow and steady 1810 ascent with a surefire dump (Shout-out to a local team), or even the wild acrobatics of 148 swinging about up and down proved to be one of the most inspiring sights of the season yet.

And the strategic decision of driving under the pyramid vs having a tall FCS was incredible. It lead to a lot of variation in design, a bit of head banging for not thinking of going under the pyramid, and made driving quite the challenge. I loved it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Wait, it wasn't?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This is the problem with the webcasts. Most of them ARE NOT WEBCASTS. Most "webcasts" we see consist of what is on the projector screen at the event. These do what they are supposed to, which is to provide close-ups and alternate angles so spectators can get a good look at the robots during each match. They are not ideal and are hard to watch. A few events have real webcasts, designed specifically for those watching online. These are usually just a stationary camera showing the whole field, which is much better. I find that most of these are run by teams or by third parties like a local TV station. If FIRST or an event isn't willing to do this kind of broadcast, maybe teams can pull something together themselves. We can build robots, who thinks we can do this? :cool:

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Beg to differ. Conquering the pyramid climb & dump was incredibly crowd-pleasing and a rewarding challenge to undertake because of the high risk/reward. Ultimate Ascent wouldn't have been the same without it (the name alone couldn't be the same).

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Like sending a trained 2337 representative to every regional? :rolleyes: But seriously, FIRST needs to take a hint or a dozen from how 2337 runs their Michigan archives. 1 GoPro + 1 painters pole + 1 fish eye = AWESOME way for me to be a Michigan fanboy in Kansas.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Ok, I guess I have a minority opinion, but the pyramid (excluding 10-point climbs) was largely ignored in pretty much every competition I was at, including nationals. Sure, it was cool to see the occasional robot climb to the top. Did it make the game? Nah, not even close. A combination of low point value and the fact that it was near impossible to build meant that most of its potential went completely unrealized. I'd certainly trade it in the state it was for a more reasonable field element; note that "more reasonable field element" does not mean "easier design challenge."

To be fair, though, I admit a few changes (easier construction, more point value) probably could have made the pyramid much better than it was.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I wouldn't go that far. It wasn't perfect, but it was a solid attempt. I just hope FIRST learns from it and finds a way to make a similarly interesting game object more accessible next year. No small task!

I will point that another major mark against the pyramid geometry is how difficult it was to ref. As a coach, I spent a good chunk of my time determining and implementing how to make it obvious that we were touching the pyramid in different situations. As a ref, I felt terrible that I knew I couldn't catch all the fouls that were happening (there was just no physical way to see them), and had to deal with very upset coaches who saw things--both right and wrong--that I did not. I don't think the GDC meant to create such a contentious situation, so it'd be good if reffing was examined more closely in game design.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

1. There's this (kinda strange :rolleyes:) kid named Gregor running around ChiefDelphi. I suggest you read the first line of his signature.
2. 1918 would like a word with you about "low point value" out of the Pyramid.
3. What would your definition of a "more reasonable field element" be?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Something with a similarly difficult design challenge that one could reasonably expect the average FRC team to be able to simulate with reasonable closeness to the actual field object for testing purposes, and whose reward in game scoring accurately reflects the engineering difficulty.

This is not asking overly much. In fact, as I mentioned, the pyramid itself probably could have been this with a few changes to construction and game scoring.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

You literally just described the pyramid...

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Going to close this down for a little bit of time. The arguments are getting bad and has lasted about 90 posts now...

Cool down and come back to it later.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Be nice or it's going away for much longer.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Admit it you. You just wanted to close a thread and impose your will upon others. The mod powers are already going to your head.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Nope. Not the first one I've closed, not the last.

We received numerous complaints from people about this thread and comments going on.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Oh borther. :rolleyes:
How is this any different from the other bloated Negative threads we had other years?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm going to simply list off the big things, with some constructive criticism.

• Chairman's Award Process: As a student who's been involved I know it can be a daunting process preparing and submitting for it, and this is on a team that's had experiences in preparing this. Talking to numerous teams submitting for the first time, you can tell it's a confusing process for them. While the submission guidelines are clear (and I'll give props for that) we need some way to help make the process, especially for first timers, a little less scary. Also a little clarification or transparency on the judging process would be awesome.
  
• Non-STEM Students: I've always held the position that FIRST has become more about just getting kids into jobs with Science and Technology. While I love Science and Technology, I am pursuing a career in marketing. The thing is FIRST is what helped me find this career and I owe all of my future plans and discovering my passion for marketing to FIRST. Much of the community knows, and celebrates stories like mine. However once and a while, I still feel like a failure of the program due to the fact I'm not pursuing a career in STEM. Maybe we could just work on our attitudes of this program getting students in careers other than Science and Technology.
  
• 8 Matches at Champs: Been beat to death, just wanted to add I didn't like it.
  
• The Rooms at Championship Conferences: Karthik's Presentation was amazing, hopefully more people will get to learn from his knowledge.
  
• Einstein: Long, overdrawn. I'm glad the awards and matches are integrated. I think the issues is that there was a lot of awards and speeches spread out before matches. Fixing this really just comes down to distributing the awards and speeches a little more between matches. I do understand issues can arise from this (such as Chairman's may be awarded after some matches, and I understand this may flow bad) but it's somewhere to start looking.
  
• FIRST Finale: Crowded, Expensive, Food was alright. I'm sure HQ will look at this and fix it though.
  
• Dean's List Ceremony: My only issue is if the ceremony is over the lunch hour, it would be nice if the recipients were announced within the hour and it ended on time. Not really an issue for me, however I know my friends who were volunteers were not able to see the winners due to having to get back to work at 1.
  

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Good call Alex on shutting this thread down for a while, it was getting downright vitriolic.

I could list off a bunch of petty problems I have had with the season but I think by far the biggest one was the lack of reverence given to the Championship Chairman's Award.

EI got a funny speech by Dave Lavery, the teams on Einstein got the big stage but it seemed like CCA was just the Chairman coming onto the stage, saying "well holy cow this team is great" and handing them the award. No long speech about how much Chairman's means (this is one place where I wanted a meaningful speech!), just up and down. And they didn't even play the video! Furthermore, it seemed misplaced in the award ceremony with lots of lower tier awards being given both before and after it. It neither felt like it kicked off the ceremony nor was the finale. Teams in our hall of fame deserve more than that. I hope Frank will post the video on his blog when 1538 releases it.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I was very surprised by this too. If it's the most prestigious award, shouldn't it command more recognition and build-up? Man, the speech we got for winning the regional chairman's award was at least twice as long as that one.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I can agree about Dean's List needing to be on time-- our team's Dean's List finalist and myself were presenting Chairman's for my team at 1, and, frankly it was incredibly disappointing to have to leave the ceremony without finding out whether she had won or not. And then we had to wait ten minutes while judging got sorted out (I think one of our judges was at the ceremony, and we didn't have even close to a full judging panel).

Admittedly that particular affected a maximum of three teams, but I can't help but think it probably affected several drive teams as well. Hopefully FIRST can find a nice medium with the Dean's List ceremony.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Agreed it was really strange. There was no build up to the presentation and it honestly didn't highlight much about what the cows do.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think everyone agrees that the number of matches at Champs is a joke.
One of the ways to solve that is to reduce the number of teams attending but all I see folks focusing on is waitlist teams.

From what I have read hear most of you seem to think waitlist teams are the problem with quantity and the quality of teams, this is simply not true. Eliminating all the waitlist teams would have gotten you maybe 9 matches which would have made zero difference in the luck factor. Also the waitlist teams were not the reason for the quality problems, there were so few of them this year they were not the problem. In fact I would submit that many of them were quality robots.

The simple fact is the rookie awards and the golden ticket robots (second picks who ride on the coat tails of the winners) are the reason for the quality problem, not the waitlist teams. But can we deny these teams that did win a rightful spot at the Championships? Do we want to not let these rookie award winners come and experience what its about and get inspired? It's a difficult problem at best.

But I think the only real solution is the district system for some of the country and qualifying through super regionals for non-district teams. Then significantly reduce the quantity of teams at champs, maybe even give the rookie award winners their own division to play in. That or find a place (and volunteer base) to increase the number of divisions at champs.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Oh, one other thing I noticed completely absent this year was divisional spirit. When the MC's introduced the teams from their respective divisions it was highly anticlimactic because they did it in reverse...They brought them out onto the field then led them out. Very weird, we thought it was a rehearsal or something. I also heard about one Gali-Leo or Archi-Medes cheer the entire Einstein. I think the division spirit is a really cool dynamic on Einstein and the MC's from each division need to lead it off.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I find this funny because Blair was doing such a good job of building it up in Galileo. I was a bit stunned to see it fall off on Einstein.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I am the lead mentor and founder of Miss Daisy. I usually don't do this, but I felt the need to reply to several comments made about our team, but I wanted to do it elsewhere and in a positive way.

I do not want to start anything here because I want this thread to remain open. Don't make Alex close this thread, its an important discussion.

Here is the link to my reply.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=116527

I promise that my response is positive, but I really would like the people that made negative comments or think negative comments about successful teams to read it with an open-mind.

Thank you.

Alan Ostrow
Team 341

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

My mother was a CCA judge.

There was a much bigger script and it was, for some unknown reason, not read.

Anyone sitting near us on the floor can vouch for the fact that she was NONE too happy about it. The judges worked very hard on a script to emphasize the work they do, and it was not given.

She wants me to apologize for that, even though it's not her fault. Believe me, there was a much bigger plan for acknowledging them.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

It's satisfying to hear that there was at least a speech planned for team 1538. I'm sure there must've been some reason for not reading it. Hopefully FIRST will display the holy cows more in the future.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I traveled to St. Louis this season as a volunteer (working on Newton, great times there!). I have attended the Championship since 2000, including 2003, (the infamous Houston year), and every year it was held in Atlanta. However, this was my first visit to St. Louis. Here are my thoughts, as a "seasoned" FIRST veteran.

The team I mentor was fortunate enough to have a Dean's List finalist this season, but by no means had a "championship caliber" robot, and so didn't qualify by merit. We do have a team policy of trying to attend the Championship every 5 years (via pay your way/wait list), such that the majority of our members have the chance to experience it at least once in their high school career. We decided for the years between, we would only attend if we met the merit based qualification criteria. Our last trip to the Championship was in 2009, when we qualified via the Rookie All Star award at our local regional. The students who attended the Championship in 2009 were still excited and shared what a great experience they had with younger students right up to their graduation this past year. As per our policy, we decided to sign up for the Championship early this season, being the 5th year since our last Championship berth. With the wait list system working as it did this season, we didn't find out we had a Championship invitation until Wednesday, April 17th. Literally a week before the event. We had made preliminary plans to attend, researched hotels and flight options back in January, but most of that information/early reservations had been cancelled or expired due to lack of commitment. We scrambled, made some late night phone calls, had to split the team between hotel rooms for a night, but managed to pull it off and make it. (Which is why I signed up to volunteer and booked travel plans much earlier).

Our robot? Seeded in the mid 90s in our division. It's probably a safe bet we were one of your partners that "put up a combined 6 discs". Heck, we missed a match because our whole team was at the Dean's List ceremony that went over time. Do we care that our robot didn't perform? Absolutely. Did we try our best to fix it and improve it? Absolutely. Was it Championship caliber? Absolutely not. Were our students super inspired by the atmosphere, walking on the dome floor, seeing and playing with "elite" teams, hearing the roar of the tens of thousands of spectators, learning the iterative design and build processes and stories of other teams? You'd better believe it. These students will be talking about this experience, and using it to improve our team and robots for the next 4 years, until we either qualify with a Championship caliber robot, Chairman's or EI awards, or another 5 years elapses.

Sometimes it takes a trip to the Championships to give your students that extra inspiring kick in the pants to get them motivated enough to really work on designing, building, and iterating "Championship caliber" robots. Would you seriously want to keep teams like mine from attending the Championships so the "elite" can play one or two more matches or be less "at the mercy of the scheduling gods?"

"Is this a championship or is it an exhibition?" It's a celebration. It's inspiring. It's the end of a crazy season. It's both, championship and exhibition. If you want purely performance based competition, that's what IRI is for. The quality robots and teams will still succeed regardless of pairings or match numbers (if scouters actually provide useful information). The rest of us are there for the experience above all else. Or at least, that's what brings me back year after year.

I'd also like to add that I didn't see the Chairman's Award video for The Holy Cows, nor did I see an 1114 follow-up video from last year.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I meant the follow up video, I don't know if that has been done for the years CMP has been in St. Louis. I remember in Atlanta, the previous year's Chairman's award winning team produced a video highlighting their impact in the community as a lead up to the announcement of the current year's winner. I have seen 1114's Chairman's Submission video, and it really is one of the most inspiring things. I was hoping for the follow up.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I understand what you mean. In 18 days I will be a college graduate with a degree in Business Administration and in the Fall I will begin a Master's of Youth Development.

FIRST promotes and celebrates Science and Technology and yes a majority of the scholarships are for those fields BUT it takes all types of people to make up a FIRST team. That is why I really like Non-Engineering Mentors Organization(NEMO). There are students and mentors who just are not science and technologically inclined. They help keep the team running. These people so much for the team and gain so many skills you normally would not acquire in high school. Without the fundraising team or those people who can creating marketing materials to gain sponsorships there would be no team.

FIRST may not be outwardly celebrating non-STEM careers but I just checked the scholarship list and was amazed to find 58 scholarships that can be used for any course of study. In my mind this shows that they know and understand that not everyone will go into STEM. This number is sure a lot more than when I was a junior or senior in the program.