2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

What happened in 2013 that FIRST could stand to improve upon?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The real time scoring left much to be desired.
Need more districts. Now.
The afterparty wasn't just unappealing it was overcrowded and dangerous. The food was rather nice though.
Einstein ran far far too long AGAIN.
The season ended. Not cool.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Definitely agree with the scoring. Last year's auto scoring was quick and accurate, and match resets were quick as well, allowing more qualification matches for each team at champs. I missed that.

Also, no captain's armbands during champs?

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I didn't like the difficult to enforce rules like the 54" cylinder, whether or not a climbing robot bumped the corner post in the next zone, whether or not a robot was touching the pyramid when it got bumped (when it was close.)

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

There isn't very much, but FIRST can't be changing big rules at the end of build season, our team built a ground intake because we thought human players would be able to throw lots of frisbees full field. Also, real time scoring was a problem.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I mean, with all the frisbees being shot, it was really hard to get the score and you also had to see how many fell out. So this years game was just hard to keep up with

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

FIRST changed that rule as it was a major safety hazard they didn't forsee and didn't know about until the week 7 scrimmages, I do not hold it against them, even though I understand your point.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I know that was the reason, and I definitely agree to it, but 3 days before build season ended was just poor timing.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Oh... Sorry I must have misread your post.

And while we're at it I think FIRST should test their games actually playing matches. I don't know if they do or not, but I think if they did it would prevent this sort of things from happening. It'll be terrible logistically for the GDC though.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The inconsistency of counting game pieces at some regionals.
The video quality on the webcast of some regionals. Would love this to be consistent and good.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The sooner we get everyone to Districts the better off all of FIRST will be. I hope they come up with a good system to handle those of us in remote areas (maybe read some of the threads on CD for a few ideas ;) ) but I'm willing to be inconvenienced on what competitions we can attend short term for the huge economic benefits. Plus I think forcing the system may be the best way to spur growth in the areas that haven't seen it.

FIRST needs to stop using custom/rare game pieces. There have been a few games where it would have been easy to use a standard size, readily available game piece without needing to tell the suppliers about it and they've gone to custom or hard to find ones every time (this year stands out in particular). Orbit balls (2009) are still the only game piece that I think they have made any legitimate attempt at this, but it was made by a single supplier that stopped producing it at the worst possible time.

Not to brag or anything, but Crossroads and Buckeye were streamed in 720p. ;)

ninja-edit: Midwest districts pls

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Commercials during webcasts

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Lets do this in Sections:

The game:
Nothing to really complain about besides another shooting game in a row which as a complaint is the most minor one I have ever had.

Kick-off:
I honest to god thought that when they began to announce the game it was a joke being played on us since it happened so early and with no fan fair. Give us some heads up.

Build Season:
If the purpose of the Q&A is not to answer hypotheticals or design specific questions. How about we make a system that does?

The new Jaguars were horrid and I am sure many teams who used Jags as their main controller, such as my team, will never use them again.

Regionals:

Nothing to complain about here Orlando and South Florida are still great events, in great areas with tons of space and easy access and I would recommend any teams from out of state or country to consider these events when picking regionals.

Champs:
As a team who went to Champs via wait list I will freely say, I wish FIRST would make a decision by week 3 saying: "Because of field reset times and the desire to give teams as much playing time as possible the number of wait list teams given will only be enough to make the divisions equal this year." 100 teams is way to much and to just vent a little among the top 8 teams in Newton my team played with 1 and against 1, and I am sure that their are teams who can say "We played against 4 and that was it." or "We never played with or against any of them".

FIRST has evolved beyond our current structure for Champs and something needs to change. To many teams, not enough time, speeches go on for way too long. At the dean's list presentation our team had to leave before the 3 college representatives finished speaking for our match but I did hear what the Representative from MIT said about making this longer and I wouldn't be opposed to saying "Load in Tuesday night, practice is first half of Wednesday then matches start Wednesday afternoon" This would have given teams 4 more matches minimum with only needing 1 more day off from school.


We have big huge screens showing our rankings hanging above our heads, why couldn't we have another screen with no audio showing us the field? This also would have allowed for people in the pits to see the opening ceremonies and the start of eliminations.

Pit Admin should be centrally located among the four fields being on Newton it was a great location but It must have been a hike for Archimedes.

Now here is the big one for me and this resulted in a conference with Pit admin:

When returning from a match a woman from Underwriters Laboratory stopped my crew and asked us which division we were in, when we told her it was Newton she said well all newton teams have to walk around the other way to return to our pits meaning instead of walking along the area meant to lead on to the stadium field Newton would have to walk around all 3 divisions. Since there was 5 other teams from Newton with me the coaches all said that can't be right and to let us go the way we came and we would consult pit admin and ask them to make an announcement or send someone to all the pits if this was the case. She agreed and let the other 5 teams go but when we tried she actually grabbed the handle that we use to pull our cart out of our Human Players hands and said "Well all of you can't go that way" and pulled our cart sharply resulting in our robot falling out. Another person from Underwriters saw this came over told her to leave, assisted us in getting our robot back on and personally escorted us to our pit.

Now here is what I have gathered from this experience:
The women felt that since the coaches on the other 5 teams were all men who looked 30+ years old that she could pick on my team since I am the coach and will freely admit that I do not look any older then a Sophomore in High School.

Unless the robot is in danger of hurting someone no one (volunteer, ref, safety personal, Dean, Woody) should touch your robot our your cart without your teams permission.

The people from Underwriters were very good to us when we all went to Pit admin and explained the situation, they even stated that if anything broke they would go speak to the machine shop about having us cut in line. I feel this was one member of one company who was not doing what should have been done and should not have her actions reflected on her company, I just felt this story needed to be told and this was the thread to do it in.

Overall:
Even though this post was much longer then my positive one I felt this was one of the best games and seasons I have ever experienced

Unfortunately those are from the website hosting the stream. FIRST/the webcaster has no control over this. BUT, you can install AdBlock (Google Chrome extension) and it'll get rid of those pesky ads and more.

I feel like this needs to be in writing somewhere. Our team had this happen this season and it was completely unacceptable. We were lucky that our robot did not fall.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Does Adblock really take care of those? I guess we never installed it at our shop.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

It does; with Ustream, I never see a single ad.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The Game: I must say that this might have been one of the hardest games for refs this year. I saw refs that I know and trust struggle at times. To many ambiguous rules left to many things open for the head ref to interpret. Also the nets caused sight line problems that were difficult to overcome. The GDC really needs to put more thought on how the game design effects the refs.

Real Time Scoring: need I say more than what's already been said.

The Champs: Too many teams in each division. Less teams attending champs or more divisions, something has too change. For the most part the top 8 teams are determined by luck of the schedule not on field performance. Saturday afternoon = just way to long, speeches go too long as usual. FIRST really needs to do something about this, it really ruins the finals. Seating, the way the dome is arranged there isn't near enough seats for teams during opening ceremonies or Finals. Open the upper decks or arrange the fields like Atlanta.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think the speeches on Einstien went on for too long this year. Imagine if at any other competition the speeches were plentiful and went on for this long. We want to make FIRST exciting, not bore the audience.

Another thing that's already been beaten to death is that we had 8 matches. This needs to be fixed for next season. Maybe 400 teams is too many.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The champs webcast quality left something to be desired. Even if it was not possible to broadcast in 720p with 4 fields running due to bandwidth, they probably could have gotten 720p at least for Einstein.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

There was a high-quality webcast on NASA's website, and it was really good... Better than Midwest's quality IMO.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

There was a link under the VLC/WMP stream link that was an HD flash stream. Also, the best quality stream (up until 6 PM EST) was the Ustream stream that is(I think) whatever's on NASA TV. Sadly, at 6 it skipped to the regularly scheduled NASA programming.

Also, the HD Flash stream was a few seconds ahead of the VLC/WMP stream for me-and it was definitely significant.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Huh, I was watching that stream for a while and it didn't seem to be much better than 480p. I figured that the Blue Alliance sourced its stream from the NASA stream. Or maybe my Internet wasn't doing too well.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm pretty sure they were globally 15 seconds apart.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I wish it were that easy! Sadly, moving to the district model is quite difficult for some regions. Take Minnesota for example. We would probably be a good candidate for the district model because we have the 3rd largest number of robotics teams (I believe highest per capita). Unfortunately, we haven't really hit a high volunteer base yet. If we were to switch to the district model, we would likely have to about double the number of events we hold [citation needed], which would certainly overburden our volunteers. I'm already pushing the limits of the time I can take off work, and I know many of the other volunteers are as well.

There are a few more issues that we've run into when considering the district model here, but I'm certainly not the most qualified to talk about them. I do know our planning committee is watching the other districts closely to see how it goes.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

"The season ended not cool."

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Something to add to the webcast...
It was good up until the point Archimedes
lost audio for 30 minutes.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I loved this season and this game was a lot of fun, but there were some things that need to be fixed.

First, scoring this game was really tough this year, so I am not totally surprised (though still disappointed) that there was a mistake at Einstein. Looking back at some of our own matches, I have actually found some incorrect official scores.

Second, I feel like the goals were poorly designed as many discs simply bounced out. Especially during championships, it became obvious that the chains simply could not absorb multiple shots at once or ones at slightly the wrong angle. I know at North Carolina, we ran into an issue where the chains were too tight on the red alliance goal, which caused disks to bounce off often. When we told the officials, however, nothing was done to try to fix the issue. Now I do not mean to badmouth anyone (overall, everyone involved was excellent), however, it can be very frustrating when those in charge do not even care about an issue.

Overall, this season was still a ton of fun and I hope next season is just as good if not better.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

FIRST Choice crashing and running out of many items, after, it seemed like day 1. We ended buying most of what we really needed and used the FIRST Choice credits on extras

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Working on it :)

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

IMO 30 point climbing either should have been easier or worth more points. Is telling that only one team out of 16 on Einstein could 30 point climb

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm ready for texas to move to a district system. There were so many great teams in texas that we never even got to see, such as the world champion texas torque, or the (expected champion) robonauts. If I heard right from an MC, Texas has the 4th most teams (142), behind California (216), Michigan (211), and Minnesota (181). Why shouldn't we and several other states have our own district system? It would make championships simple and easier. Which also means that championships should expand a bit. I believe in the 6 division system, which might be easier in the long run. There are lots of teams which don't get recognition, and are truly great.

However, FIRST truly did get everything else right this year. This is only a small complaint, as this season was challenging and exciting. Already looking forward to another good season.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I do agree with the other comment, determining the districts is not an easy task. As you have sort of touched there are some remote areas. This is caused both by high concentrations of teams in certain states and by low numbers of FRC teams in a particular state.Between Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa there were 17 teams for the 2013 game. Add Colorado, Kansas and Missiouri to that number and you are only up to 147 teams. Then if you include New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas you reach 218, this is 7 more teams than in Michigan.

That is a huge expanse of land to get a high quanity of teams. How do you arrange the the district competitions let alone determine where the "State" tournament is without making it to where certain teams have to raise a large amount more than normal to even compete? I'm not saying that some of these teams don't already have to travel a distance to get to a regional but that what if it would cause them to have to raise more money than a normal season.

I feel that because of this, as much as districts currently seem like the best thing for everyone FIRST has not grown enough in certain areas to make it a viable solution for everyone.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I am struggling at thinking of negatives. I only got obvious big stuff and trivial.

The obvious big stuff:
1) more districts
2) more qualification matches for championships
3) more competitive teams

The trivial
1) keep the sound systems quieter. I went to vex world champs, the sound level was much more comfortable and had all the emotional impact.
2) Why can't more Safety judges be like the Las Vegas ones? They were polite, kind and caring. I was having a good time and so were they. I trusted their opinion completely. I think some other judges feel like they need to constantly catch people not being safe, resulting in some very trivial calls.
3) stop using the 54" (or whatever dimension) cylinder rule. Make it a square or something easier.
4) Can we start getting each regional/district to have its own youtube channel (or equivalent) to post recorded matches? Maybe make it a committee person who primary responsibility is this.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Needed Improvements:

1) A design overhaul to the on-screen graphics. For the real-time-scoring bar at the bottom of the screen, no one can easily see the team numbers unless you're watching a webcast. The Alliance Selection screen does have a limit to the number of team numbers visible, and the Elimination Bracket is impossible to read - even on a webcast. These graphics have been around for years and its time to change these graphics. Someone make a call to ESPN and get in contact with some interns.

2) ...

..uh..

Well I'm done!

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This may not be something easily fixable, and probably not a problem for other people, but for those of us on the upper concourse (the 400 section nosebleed seats), the lights scaffolding for Einstein is placed exactly so you cannot see the score.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Personally, I liked this year's game, but as with all thimgs, there was room for improvement.
Champs:
The match schedule had far too much impact on team standings. The rankings were all over the place, and it seems that a great scheduling system would create a situation where the best rise to the top and the not best settle to the bottom. Maybe it was because there were only 8 matches.

I would also like to see screens that show matches on all fields in the dome as well as in the pits. I personally wanted to get a glimpse of other fields and I found myself walking in circles around the dome a lot.

There are a couple other small things, but generally, our team had a great experience overall this year.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

First, THANK YOU to all the refs, judges, and volunteers. You were all so kind and your work was great and really appreciated! On to suggestions for improvements:

1) Webcasts should be FULL FIELD. When there are 6 robots all playing and with today's technology, a decent resolution full field shot is all we need. Closeups of robots picking up frisbees, joysticks being moved, etc. is extremely frustrating. It's as if the video directors are only used to following ONE game piece (football, basketball, etc.) at a time. With up to 6 flying simultaneously you MUST have a full field view. I love replaying a video of a match 6 times and watching a different robot each time. It's so nice!

2) Agree with the real time scoring being a bad font (especially the match number). Been frustrated with this for years. Also, make the alliance selections and everything fill the screen. There's a LOT of wasted space there.

3) During Einstein, do not blow 5 minutes of our time after every match dancing the hokey pokey or YMCA or whatever while you calculate the score! Just end the match, darken the field a bit, switch over the the podium put in one of the 5 minute speeches while the field is reset and the score is calculated. Otherwise with the 8 matches played there (this year), the day lasted 40 minutes longer than it needed to. Wow, getting out 40 minutes sooner and not cutting one second of speeches out? Why not? Let's do two things at once please.

Thanks again for a great event!

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Einstein is located where it is because of the VIP/hospitality suite there isn't a good location for it on the side of the Jones Dome so they have the current field locations.

My negative for champs was that each field had a different policy on volunteers and VIPs watching the field, while on the floor, as well as each field had a drastically different proximity(just like last year though i didnt think it was a problem till this year) to the stands and robot load in/out procedure. Why can't each field be located in similar locations to the stands as Curie and Galileo and have the same load in/out procedure for the robots?


This isn't a thing FIRST did but what RI3D did. I both loved and disliked the RI3D process. I liked it because it upped the level of game play but I disliked it because it changed the game too much. What I mean by that is if they didn't do what they did, I believe that many many more teams would have been pure climber/dumpers. Would that have made the game better? I don't really know, it just would have been a different game, and I think it would have been the game the GDC designed it to be.

Overall I think this was a good game. Most people have already said my other negatives so I won't repeat.

1. Need more qualification matches at Champs.
2. Better realtime scoring.
3. Some regionals didn't have a visible screen for both alliances.
4. Climbing past 10 points were undervalued.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

It seems like all of the 30 point climbers got taken out by falls before they could get to Einstein.

Why don't they set the fields up like they did in Atlanta. Please someone give me the reason. I thought the domes had the relatively the same size floors.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

See my last post.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Game pieces not being Readily available in massive quantities. This has always been one of my biggest gripes. Quantities are extremely limited and expensive. Give us something that we can get at any national chain of store. Also, while the pyramid was cool, it was pretty unfair to teams with limited build space. Also, the team field drawings for the pyramid were poor at best at simulating the actual pyramid. Make actual field obstacles/goals more affordable for teams with little funding.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Prioritizing VIP suite over 25000 team members is a terrible reason to do it. I would bet everyone who was in the VIP/Hospitality area would agree.

That suit is only good for viewing during opening ceremonies and the finals and is not crowded during either.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The wildcard system is good, but needs work.

Week 1 winning teams don't qualify into the wildcard system. That's just plain stupid.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Agree 100%.

But those are the only "cushy" seats in the house and some even have tvs in front of them so people with bad eye sight can still see the action.

Not saying it right or wrong just showing why they do it that way.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The Championship event needs more matches per team. Suggestion:
Increase the size of the playing field or cut the frame perimeters of robots and have alliances of 4v4 or 2v2v2v2, and you can keep the 100 team divisions or even increase it to about 120 while still fitting 9-10 matches per robot for the same amount of time.

The matches need less turnaround time. Suggestion:
I'd recommend decreasing the amount of playing pieces on the field but have them never leave play or enter back into play after being scored. This will keep for shorter amounts of turnaround time and allow for high amounts of scoring.

The field needs mobility. This year was good.
Keep the option to have the playing field wide open. Bridges last year were fine, but the rack from 2007 was way too big. This year was fine since teams had the tradeoff of being big and unable to be blocked or small with a wide open field.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

One part of Championships that has been a negative in my mind the past few years, is that on Saturday (the day most of the outside public would be able to attend) most of the booths and activities in the pits are closed. It seems that if you want to expand FIRST to more outsiders, the main attractions need to be pristine on the day most people would be available. You can't really expect people to take off of work or school to attend during all the action, especially if you are trying to attract people who have never been a part of FIRST before. I remember even as an FLL member attending our local FRC regional on Saturday mornings because that was the only time my family was available to take me.

The logistics of this are admittedly not easy. It does not seem like the FLL and FTC matches could possibly still be going on Saturday morning. However, some of the LEGO booths, scholarship booths (mainly just for students, but it still shows one of the many facets of FIRST), and other fun booths that are either shut down or picked clean by Saturday should still be open and available. Maybe this would mean not having them open as early in the week? Whatever it takes, I think expanding FIRST means putting the best foot forward, and showing everything we have to offer, on the day most newcomers will be in attendance.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This is not a new problem; in fact, it's been around for as long as I've been in FRC: The rankings at the Championship were sub-optimal. I don't think anyone approves of 5-way ties for 1st place (Galileo) or 7-way ties for 2nd (Arch, New). Rankings could be improved in two obvious ways: fewer teams and more matches per team. Having fewer teams addresses both of those two ways. I would not complain about 60 team divisions, let alone 80.

Webcast quality. Frankly, it's pathetic. There's a few places where the webcast quality is great (Canada, for example), but far too many where the webcasts are unwatchable. It's time to standardize the webcasts by including webcasting equipment with the fields and assigning an official volunteer to maintaining it.

If you feel obligated to qualify XXX teams to the Championship, qualify more of them via wild card and less of them via waitlist. Eliminate the bias in the system against early-season regionals. I kinda understand why you don't want to qualify a team based on a Chairman's team's slot, but even the current solution doesn't solve that problem entirely. Winner-then-CA doesn't open a slot, but CA-then-Winner does open a slot. If the goal is bringing more competitive teams to the Championship, then this year was good. But next year, bring even more more competitive teams.

Game pieces should not overflow the goals. This did not happen often, but it did happen and it shouldn't. Make the goals much larger than you think they need to be. Shots bouncing out isn't cool either.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Honestly I feel like this isn't a good enough reason.

I know we want to be nice to VIPs and all, but really, the event is for the teams. They could at the very least let teams onto the first balcony instead of forcing them all the way upstairs where, as somebody else mentioned, the lighting fixtures for Einstein are perfectly in the way of the scores, and you can't see anything too well.

In Atlanta, you could fit all the teams in without having to go up to the nosebleed seats.

If you were to look at how clean the Atlanta floor layout looked in comparison to the St. Louis layout. One looks way more organized and professional. Guess which one.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I am pretty sure the nose bleeds were full in Atlanta as well when I attended 2009 and 2010.

No way.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

They also block off the entire second level so that the VIPs don't have to share the same level of the stadium with the huddled masses. This eliminates many available seats. I can understand insulating your VIPs from the crowd but, I thought that is what the VIP box was for in the first place.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I actually liked sitting in the nose bleeds because I got a birds eye view of the field. In 2011 we sat way lower and I had a harder time seeing the whole field.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

To be fair, the second level ("club" level) doesn't have nearly as many seats as the lower bowl ("concourse" level) or upper deck ("terrace" level).

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

It would be nice to have a quick way for people who are working in the pits and not part of the drive crew to get to the stands so they could watch their team matches then get back to the pits quickly.

Being on Currie and having to walk all the way out of the pits and around to the opposite side of the stadium took quite a while.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

There are actually 4 levels to the Edward Jones dome. The First level where teams are always allowed. The second level was entirely blocked off and is basically the club level. The club level housed the media check in and has seats that are significantly nicer than the 1st and 4th levels. I'm not entirely sure why this wasn't used for teams, but I can only imagine the mess they would have to clean up if highschoolers were allowed free reign of the restaurants and bars that reside on the 2nd level. These aren't like the food shops on the first level while not staffed for FIRST events they are open and hard to sanction off. The 3 level is the boxes where VIPs where and then the 4th nose bleed section.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

hate to help this thread get longer then the positives but here are a few things i noticed that FIRST could stand to improve on.

-Put a live display of the matches in the division pits
-better webcast quality if FIRST is going to grow this needs to improve
-smaller/more divisions, this one really bugged me its hard for ranking to be accurate if you only play a fourth of the teams in your division
-also more matches at champs per team
-less long dance sings between Einstein matches, put in guest speakers to save time during scoring

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

It would still be an improvement though.

Yes, this was quite irritating. But I just figure that's how it has to be, there aren't many options there besides cutting across the floor (unlikely to happen for safety and organization issues), or some system of vehicles ferrying people back and forth (likely expensive, and hard to implement, especially with the hundreds of people constantly going back and forth)

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Yeah I agree. FIRST really needs to fix this next year.:)

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Personally, a little more awareness around the match, in sense of if a robot hit a robot close to a pyramid that was not touching it, that robot gave the other team 20 points. Also the Einstein final matches were a little too over extended with all the songs. Otherwise this experience was great for a rookie team like mine :)

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I don't know if it's been brought up on Chief Delphi before and it is not specific to this season, but I am always frustrated by the seating at FRC tournaments.

The current free-for-all that exists at the beginning of the day is dangerous. After the mad rush and the initial kinks have been worked out and teams are seated as a general group, assuming that they had a group of students at the doors at least an hour before the venue opened, seats are lost throughout the day by encroachment. I found it especially frustrating to get to the stands from the pits only to find that there weren't any open seats by my team. Some kids end up sitting on the stairs. Mentors, parents, students, and team sponsors that arrive late often have to sit elsewhere.

I don't know how to solve this problem. I don't care if my team doesn't always end up in the most favorable seats. I don't care if the seats turn into a lottery based on how many members you have registered to attend an event. I just want some kind of order to allow teams to sit together and prevent the dangerous morning mad rush.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This is a huge problem! I know that at Peachtree this year, the walkways on the bleachers were completely full of sitting kids to the point that everyone had to stand in order to let one person down from the top row of seats. This mainly occurred during finals with the pits closed, but all of the seats were always full. On the other hand, Smokey Mountain had plenty of seats but somehow was the only regional I saw without a live webcast on TBA. These small issues go a long way to helping people have a better experience with FIRST.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I agree, this is something that could really use some work. Maybe there could be some kind of advance sign-up system? Teams sign up on a first-come, first-served basis (just like it is now, except with everybody rushing to a website, not a stadium), and teams reserve blocks of seats.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

We've run into this problem also. At Palmetto, there were 61 teams and hardly any seats, so there were many who acted ungraciously and darted in front of everyone, even going so far as taking other team's seats. What made this worse it the fact that no team was allowed to reserve seats for the next day (though many did it anyways), so this was a daily occurrence. We did not care so much about where we sat as ling as we all could sit together, but with a medium-sized teams with many parents, siblings, and mentors, this was nearly impossible.

At North Carolina, we had a similar issue, but thankfully Team 3196 kindly allowed us to use their empty seats before eliminations. Afterwards, however, our team was unable to sit together as we made a run to finals, which was rather frustrating.

It is probably up to the respective regional directors, but I hope this issue could be resolved at one point.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Not to derail too much, but from talking with Mr. Merrick about this at Northern Lights/ Lake Superior Regionals this year, he explained a bit about their testing process for games-- basically the have their challenge, and HQ builds some preliminary designs (he was very clear that these were not something any team would want on their robot) in order to see how "hard" a given challenge is. I was going to ask him how they tested something like a 30-point climb would be tested, but unfortunately our time ran a bit short.

So no, from talking with Mr. Merrick, they don't test actual match play, but rather individual mechanisms. I agree that some "internal" matches, or even some better analysis (for example, of the "blizzard") might be in order, especially for a game as complex and awesome as Ultimate Ascent.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This was hashed out when the rule change was made, but I still don't get how the GDC didn't see the blizzard coming. :confused:

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I agree, some sort of registration system would help. They did block off the seats in front of Einstein for the division champions, but other than that, it was a free for all.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Holding regionals in expensive arenas with expensive lighting and sound and charging $9000 for two events is a bad model that stunts FRC's potential to grow. Put events in high school gyms with fewer teams per event. Make it possible for every team to attend two events for their initial $5000 registration fee. Zondag says it better than I do in his FIRST in Michigan district system FAQ.

The excessive speeches on Einstein are a huge gaffe that they keep repeating every year. Find different way to honor and thank our generous sponsors that are not counterproductive. Bombarding students with speeches is quite ineffective. At least make them really short and sweet - they are not supposed to be keynote speeches, are they? Or limit the number of speeches to ONE or TWO. And as much as I respect and admire Dean Kamen and all of his contributions to society, his quiet manner of speaking is not very energizing. I couldn't even understand half of what he was saying because he speaks so quietly.

Einstein should be shorter. Give out more of the awards at a different time such as the opening ceremonies. Maybe give out a couple more awards at the division level, or heck, give all of the awards except CA and a couple others as division level awards. For the time slots that need to be filled between Einstein matches, how about some compelling videos? I think a well made 1-2 minute video can be more effective at delivering a message to high school students than a speech by the CEO of a company.

Let's get rid of the 6 week build season (also discussed in Zondag's FAQ). We built these robots in 6 weeks... except we didn't. It took my team the whole time leading up to the Championship to get our robot to where it ended up. We used the withholding allowance and installed stuff at each event. It is pointless to make us bag it and work on a practice robot - it simply consumes a bunch more resources and slows us down some. I think the attachment to the 6 week build season is mostly sentimental.

It has been a great season overall. I posted in both threads, and I listed a bunch more items in the positive thread than I did in this one. Great job on 2013. I hope FIRST continues to make some changes in places where it makes sense.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

One major negative thing that I am seeing is that FIRST had too many teams at champs this year, yet a major positive is the wildcard system. Yet these two have a direct correlation. How are we going to keep the wildcard system (allowing more teams/regional finalists to come) and have less teams/more competing time? I have seen proposals for more divisions, but the only way they would fit this in is if we (shudder) moved some of the divisions to the pits. Longer competing time? This means that all of the volunteers, who are already have to give up a whole lot of their time, would have to lose another day of work or school. The wildcard system was awesome, we want to keep that (but that is for another thread).
I do see the the concerns that many teams have, with the massive seeding ties and fewer matches, but I am not seeing a viable way to fix them.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I have to say this year, the game was quite impressive. While it may have been slightly boring (shooting game, 5 out of the last 6 games have also been shooting games), it was an incredibly fun game to watch. This will be one of those games that they use film from in promos for years to come.

The refing from throughout the season was quite inconsistent. Trying not to bash too much here, so I'll be breif. I don't mind bad calls, but if there's going to be bad calls, call them consistently. Don't call qualifications and eliminations differently.

Then again: GDC, please make an easier game to Ref. :)

One more thing, someone in FIRST needs to run workshops for the cameraguys as to what part of the field they are aiming the camera during the webcasts. I saw a lot of matches yesterday where a lot of exciting play was happening on one side of the field, and the camera was aimed at the other side where nothing was happening.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

They had too much confident in the atheltic ability of the FRC community ::safety::

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Woe is me, the game! It was essentially the same thing as 2012 with the same drawbacks. Except this year, the GDC over-compensated for last year's end game by NERFing this year's end game. Games have been unoriginal since 2009- altered versions of previous games. That's what bugs me most. Oh, and 100 teams per division. That's just silly.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

FIRST compares the competition to the sports world and Einstein is the Super Bowl of the mind. With this thought, the matches on Einstein should be the most approachable and entertaining matches for the general public. However, the long delays between matches remove the excitement and tension of the moment. The result is a series of matches that become tedious for outside viewers.
A reason sports are entertaining is the tension created by the pace at which things happen. It is difficult to sustain the excitement for eight 2 minute matches across 4 hours. To change perceptions and culture the matches need to remain exciting for viewers across all backgrounds.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

They should run two "Einstein" fields! ;)

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I agree with this. As a first time viewer of champs in person (I watched online in the past but was lucky enough to qualify this year :) ) I was able to see how unengaged the students in the stands became. I personally still enjoyed every minute of being there but had to remind students around me to do the same. Many seemed to be more focused on their phones or making paper airplanes by hour 3. After the last match had been played people immediately stood up and started rushing out to get to the last hour of the Finale that they had paid so much money for. Before the confetti had fallen teams were already out of the stadium. I know Einstein has the most viewers and it makes sense to announce all of the awards, hear important speakers, and give the most important messages. There just has to be a better way to condense it. The huge delays in between matches completely lose interest of the students, even if Gangnam style is being played during that break haha.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Just get rid of the waitlist. Wild cards can stay; with wild cards in play, I believe we had 378 teams qualify for championships. Let's leave it at that.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Someone really needs to reign in Dean Kamen's speeches before they cause the whole friggin' event to run two hours late. His first speech during the opening ceremonies was a great, touching speech. His speech before the final matches, however...ugh, that was terrible. The fact that you couldn't understand 80% of the words in the upper-level stands didn't help.

The field to the right of Curie (can't remember which that was) had use of the actual field speaker system for its award ceremony, and Curie did not. The result was that, as both award ceremonies happened simultaneously, it was nearly impossible to hear anything said for any of the Curie awards.

Did anyone at all think through the logistics of transportation to/from the finale? Christ, that was terrible.

Also, giving out awards between every single match on the Einstein field is a horrible idea that did nothing but try everyone's patience. They don't do this at regionals, and no one complains about the regional award ceremony procedure. Why do it at championships?

All that negativity aside, championships were a blast, and I truly hope to get back there in the near future.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Hmm. This will be a bit of a rant I guess, but most of my complaints were larger items overall. This being my first season, perhaps I just haven't been around enough to appreciate the smaller issues :)

- For lack of a better adjective, "better" webstreams overall, to get to a larger audience of lesser-dorky folk (read: people like my mother). I've seen some events on Youtube which were streamed in very much an ESPN style, with some volunteer announcers + between-match commentary, fancy scorekeeping, interviews, etc. I'm aware this would cause a manpower issue, but it'd still be nice to have if we stirred up enough demand.

- Faster match resets with less clunky live scoring. I don't really get why bins were chosen over, say, a coin-slot system here. The weights seemed to have nothing but problems, whereas a mechanical switch would be much more reliable. The only plausible reason I suppose is space to get a return pipe for any slots made for counting. And resets... wow. A match every 10 minutes (or more) isn't a great way to keep energy going.

- On the energy note... a little less time spent between Einstein matches would be nice. While there does need to be time for sponsors and awards, I think speeches between almost all QF/SF matches was overkill. Why not run through Chairman's and EI and similar between QFs and SFs, and GP, EE, etc. between SFs and Finals? Longer bunches of speeches, yes, but would make the actual match structure more fun to watch in my opinion.

- An extra day of CMP would be fun, too. Not just in the "cool, more time around dorks just like me!" sense, but in the "can we please play more than 8 matches?" sense. As a scouting application developer (IPA from #3138) I have to admit it's sometimes a hindrance to only have 10/11 matches at a regional to average out with, let alone 8 at Worlds. Also, as was noted above, not playing over half the teams in the division at CMP is a bummer - with 8 matches, assuming you never duplicate teams, you're playing with/against 40% of your division. Yikes! Compare that to 3138's two regionals this year, at Crossroads we saw every team there if I'm recalling correctly, and at Queen City we saw all but about 10 I believe.

- A flame-inviting complaint I'm sure, but the WiFi war really needs to end. I understand the issues with Einstein last year, however if I read right the Rev. B DLink was to fix the deauth attack issue, which was the issue as far as I recall. "Interference" is a pretty simple fix - run the robots on some 5GHz channel way out in uncommon territory. However, I'm also of the opinion that routers do a pretty darned good job of eliminating cross-talk, and as such the "please shut down your hotspot" bit is probably unnecessary. A related side note, having FTAs walking around the stands with the sensors was... interesting. I understand there were FTC fields having issues, however (ignoring my rant about WiFi radios above) patting me down with the little triangular sensor like they were the TSA as I apparently looked suspicious enough (and was within the general vicinity of an iPhone hotspot) was interesting if not a bit awkward (there wasn't even a shared laugh afterward or I'd have thought he was just messing around...) Again, I might be only eclipsing the scope of the WiFi issues, and if anyone'd like to enlighten me a bit more on this one, I'm all ears.

Overall a fun first year for me, even with these few complaints.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Something I haven't seen so far on here...
Why must regional events operate on a Thursday-Friday-Saturday schedule (or Fri-Sat-Sun in NYC)?
While waiting for my team's week 6 regional, I enjoyed watching the webcasts on Friday and Saturday, but for the rest of the week all there was to do was read threads here on Chief Delphi and occasionally meet with the team. And on weekends where two of the teams I wanted to watch were competing in eliminations? Most of the time I ended up going with the higher quality webcast. I also would have liked to see webcasts from the weekend we competed, as a lot of exciting regionals were scheduled for that weekend.
I understand that many mentors can only get the two days (if that) off from work, but why must we have ALL of a week's events running at the same time?
What if we made some events Sun-Mon-Tues?
Even if we assume we can't get fields turned around and moved to a different venue overnight, something like Minnesota's two regionals in the same building simultaneously could be done back-to-back. This would certainly lend itself to the district setup, as two smaller district events could be run back-to-back in places like New York City, to name just one.

tl;dr: Sun-Mon-Tues regionals in addition to Thurs-Fri-Sat

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I would say this year's game piece concept (frisbee) was pretty decent, but I must agree that they could have gotten it standardized. If Wham-o "sponsored" FRC this year, they could have used one of their brand name ones that anyone could easily pick up at the store. However, the nice thing with these custom frisbees is that each graduating senior (high school) member and (college) mentor received a signed frisbee. But overall, I do agree.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This is actually a neat idea that I've never read anywhere before.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

In addition, don't leave teams waiting to get to the seats. There was a mob of people that just swarmed around the Edward Jones dome staff trying to prevent them from going there.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think there's a reason for it.

Let's assume that field transport isn't an issue (say you're running back-to-back regionals in the same building, don't bother tearing down the field).

First, for many many people, Sunday is a day to go to church, and they can't go another day. (Saturday is also out for a number of people, though a rather smaller number unless you're attending the Israel Regional--which is held Sunday-Tuesday or Monday-Wednesday, I forget which.)

We'll assume the the second possible reason--Monday "here's what you need to work on this week" meetings/assignments for both mentors and students--can be worked around, though that could be an issue.


But the #1 reason not to use that schedule is...

NO spectators! That's right folks, if you run an event Sunday-Tuesday, the spectators are most likely to come on PRACTICE day! And we all know how awesomely inspiring it is on practice day, with one or two robots at a time thinking about moving or testing out their new doohickey that manipulates the whatsit or interacts with the whodijingle. Eliminations are where the excitement is--imagine no non-FIRST-affiliated spectators showing up for finals.

And if we're trying to inspire people, and get them involved, having your most spectator-friendly day be on a day when most spectators have to go to extra effort to come is not going to help.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Also, the pyramid was an obnoxious field element; it was prohibitively difficult to built an accurate mock-up of the corner, you needed access to a skilled welder and metal shop, which is not something that all teams have or can easily obtain. If a game element cannot be accurately simulated for testing with means available to the bulk of FRC teams, it should not be on the field at all. End of story.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

When We arrived on Thursday we saw that Curie and Archimedes were very close to one another at one point causing a huge pinch point that would have made it very difficult to que teams. So I worked with Dave Ferrreria and Marin Kobin to come up with a solution that would help both teams flow in and out of their fields more easily. In order to do that we had to have both fields flow in opposite directions to one another so the pinch point could only be used as an exit much like a freeway on ramp.
We did not get the opportunity to help Becky(her last name slips me at this early hour) with her Galileo setup and the first thing I noticed was they lost their back alley I had last year when I was running the field that allowed teams to que up on the blue side and use that gate and they were only able to use one gate to get in which slowed them down alot.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I know that we rarely get any useful information from game hints, but this year the game hints were very very random, and I dont think anybody learned anything from any of them.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I actually think this is a terrible idea. When funds were getting low at the Wisconsin Regional and there were ideas of downsizing it to a college gym, I shuddered at the thought! There is something so awe inspiring about being in a huge arena, running robots instead of watching someone playing sports. Seeing the huge event just for robotics was so inspiring to me when I was a young freshman, something that could only be topped by attending the World Championship in Atlanta.

Since so few teams get to attend the World Championship, (and everyone seems to want to continue downsizing that number) if you start just holding events in dinky gymnasiums, all that inspiration goes away. While attending more events like the district system for a lower cost is a really great idea, I think bringing down the magnitude also reduces the impact of FIRST around you. Instead of helping it to grow, I think you are impeding growth by having FIRST events wither away from large, very public venues to small high schools that are in all probability off the beaten path and not nearly as inviting to outsiders who we are supposed to be attracting to FIRST.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I want to invite you to do two big things:
1. Read this link, provided by Jim Zondag, that explains the district model. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...postid=1253411
Zondag likes to say that districts are like watching your favorite band in a small venue. It's more compact, but the excitement is higher because it's more intimate. It's also already proven to help FIRST grow.

2. Come to Michigan and check out a district event! I suggest the Grand Blanc, Waterford or Troy events. All three of them are amazing examples of how exciting Districts are.

This year, I attended a Regional for the first time in three years. It was great, but I much preferred the Districts.

/derailing this thread.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm with you, I really love the feel of the arena at Wisconsin. I think it goes a long way towards "legitimizing" FIRST as a "real" sport. When I was a new student to FRC, I too was inspired by the scale of the regional. I think if it was held in a gym, it would really lack that impact.

In a gym, FIRST looks like a "small" organization.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Can we please keep this thread about the Negatives of 2013, and not districts? There's plenty of threads discussing districts already.




And if MSC is an example of what a regional should be like, I'll take my "tiny, two day events in a dinky high school gym" please.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

* Scoring was atrocious (real time scoring was a failure, and the system for manual counting was ad hoc and error prone particularly at early events). At every one of our events other than Championships, we have evidence that at least one of our matches was not correctly scored. But this is the ONLY bone to pick with this otherwise great game.

* The diminished frame perimeter, 54", and 84" restrictions (and their reinterpretation halfway through build season) were the most frustrating rules to deal with. Even more so because in practice the 54" and 84" limits were nearly impossible to enforce. A little more leeway in these departments would have let many more teams climb successfully.

* 8 matches at a Championship is unacceptable. We need fewer teams, faster cycle times (working scoring system would have helped here), and/or better time management. Why not intersperse divisional awards with playoff matches? Why the enormous time gap between divisions wrapping up, and Einstein beginning?

* I know it is contentious, but as invitations to Championships get harder to come by, we need to start making hard choices about who gets in. There were many Championship robots that simply were not Championship caliber, and this combined with the 8 matches-per-team format meant that an unlucky alliance pairing could wreck an elite team's chance of seeding where they should.

* Another contentious one (considering many of the posters on Chief Delphi fall in this group): "Special Invited Guest" and "Media Passes" are handed out like candy to team mentors who know the right people. When I see a half dozen mentors from the same team scouting matches from the floor right beside the field, I just roll my eyes.

* FIRST needs to get Einstein to end on time. That means reducing the gap between Divisions and Einstein, or being more selective about the number/length of corporate backslapping speeches, or doing a better job of spacing them out, or simply altering the schedule so Einstein is designed to end later so teams can plan accordingly.

* As much as I love the functionality and weight of plastic air tanks, there were several cases of these tanks exploding due to over tightening threads or spilling solvents on the tanks. Of course well-mentored teams will treat the tanks as they should and will not have problems, but giving a bunch of under-mentored high school students access to these tanks is a disaster waiting to happen. We either need to outlaw the tanks, or come up with some sort of legal "sleeve" to at least contain the shrapnel if something goes wrong.

* Practice field policy at Champs worked fine after Thursday, but on practice day lots of teams just needed to plop their bot down in front of a goal to dial in their shooters, and the line for this was insane on the Newton practice field. The two additional fields in the annex were absolutely necessary, and it would have been great to have even more (especially some with enough carpet to practice midfield autonomous modes). Also, on Friday morning our full practice field started to turn you away if you weren't 10 minutes early to your scheduled time, which was not well announced prior to the change. By Saturday morning it was better communicated that this was the policy.

* Refs had to make a lot of judgement calls (ex. what is a 3 point foul vs. what is a 20 point foul for contact with a protected FCS), which makes things more difficult for everyone.

* Pyramids varied in tolerance a lot from event to event, which is almost certainly an assembly issue. Need more precise instructions for field crews so that they are correctly assembled every time. A similar thing happened in 2011 with the inflation of game pieces.

* Pyramids were among the most expensive and hardest to build field elements teams have had to build.

* FIRST Choice had numerous issues this year (already beaten to death in threads months ago)

* FIRST Finale was so crowded that it was unsafe.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This is garbage. FIRST is not about "elite teams." It is not about the finals on the Einstein field, though they certainly are fun to watch and an integral part of the experience. FIRST is about an engineering challenge, a program which allows high school students to gain actual engineering work experience and which inspires people to seek careers in STEM. This is why the Chairman's award, not winning the championship, is the most prestigious award in the competition.

When you lose sight of this, you lose sight of the entire purpose of FRC. If you honestly think that your success in the tournament better matching your robot ability should rank higher on FIRST's list of priorities than allowing teams you deem "unfit" the opportunity to attend and compete in championships, then you do not understand FIRST, and need to fix your attitude. Shame on you.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

A couple of things that might help seating. One is a scouting block of 6 to 8 seats per team, which I know has been tossed around. I realize it doesn't solve having the whole team sit together but properly placed in the best seats for actually seeing either the blue or red alliances, it sure does help with scouting.

Another is if people would not move during matches. Sit tight, and then get up and do your moving around between matches. It's always always always a huge issue trying get people to remember to stay "down in front" when EVERYONE is trying to watch and collect scouting data.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

You do realize 341 is a Hall of Fame team right? They get what FIRST is about and I personally saw nothing wrong with his post, since as a team who got in off of wait list I would much rather have not gone and allowed for less teams thus more matches for those who did go.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

If being from a HoF team immediately makes your posts Word of God, then I guess I'm uninformed.

Bear in mind that his point was not to reduce the number of teams for the sake of event logistics or increased number of matches, it was purely because he felt that teams were being "cheated" out of their "rightful seed" because they had the terrible experience of being paired with a team that isn't "elite!" Oh, the horror!

This clique-y nonsense has no place in a competition whose ostensible goal is to spread interest in STEM, and I don't particularly care who it's coming from. Neither should you. If you find the idea of a FIRST in which a small number of "elite" teams get to compete in nationals more appealing than a large number of not-so-"elite" teams, simply because you value the competition more than the engineering, then I contend that you do not understand the point of FIRST, no matter how prestigious your background. Get off your high horse and realize that FIRST is not about winning the tournament, nor has it ever been, nor should it ever be.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

As someone who has never remotely come close to getting to Einstein or to being an elite team, I disagree with this post 100% when it comes to the World Championship.

Jared is absolutely spot on with what he said.

Re: 2013 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I agree. Having been to both Seattle and Spokane regionals, I enjoyed Spokane, which was held in EWU's gym, more because the seating was closer to the field.