A Message from Bob Tuttle
 

I just recieved this message and thought I'd share a snipit of it with CD.

Re: A Message from Bob Tuttle
 

At least 10 matches? That sounds amazing, but I am interested in how they will accomplish this. Looking forward to the solution.

EDIT: Corrected my dumb math mistake to prevent confusion for future thread readers

Re: A Message from Bob Tuttle
 

My math says 25% of 8 is 2 which would mean 10 matches.

Re: A Message from Bob Tuttle
 

I like this a lot. FIRST seems to be continuously striving to better the program. Very inspiring.

Re: A Message from Bob Tuttle
 

Still great. A few years ago they vowed to give a minimum of 10 matches, which prompted the move to starting qualification matches on Thursday. I'm glad to see an effort to get this back.

The other points are also good. Shorter closing ceremonies are long overdue

**FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

So, 10+ matches next year at the Championship?

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

I really love the direction FIRST is headed.

Thank you FIRST!

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

With Frank and Bob at the helm, we are really headed in a good direction :cool:

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

Also, I love how amazingly blunt this email is. There is no beating around the bush with anything, no excuses (other than the rain obviously). This is really cool to see. He states the issues like they are, and then states what needs to change. Just plain cool.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

I wish all organizations were this open.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

I'm curious -- what "major venue" was shut down due to the rain? Was there another activity in town that was cancelled and all those patrons came to the FRC Finale instead?

10 matches would be fantastic. We had 3+ hours in between matches on Friday which is excessive. I understand field reset takes so long and there are a lot of teams to play through, but for the amount of cost and effort to come to Championship, give us some reasonable playing time!

By "Team Finale" does this refer to the Einstein Field? I thought the flow of Closing Ceremonies was fine given the field reset times which drove the timeline. Could this have actually been reduced? Also, wasn't sure if Closing Ceremonies progressed following the final Einstein match -- most of us left at that point.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

While I think it is good that FIRST is trying to address people's concerns, I think we also need teams to be more understanding of the situation. Championships is always the big leagues and they are trying to have more of the best teams. There were tons of good teams this year so unfortunately not everyone will make it as far as elims or Einstein. I think teams generally are handling it well, but I have seen times where it's been a big display of just being downright not GP.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

To get more matches without being really frantic next years game needs to have an easy reset. This year that seemed to be the biggest issue with the number of matches that we had.

Big Time consuming things this year:

Counting the frisbees
Getting climbing robots down

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

Reset time was the big factor in determining the number of matches at regional events and CMP this year. I'm confident that they will consider this for next years game.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

TEam Finale is the event after the closing ceremonies, aka the science center event. I think they were expecting people to be both in and outside at the center. The rain drove everyone inside and made the event super crowded

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

I thought I heard somewhere about it being at the Science Center and City Museum, the rain driving away the City Museum because of the amount of stuff to do outside there.

Re: A Message from Bob Tuttle
 

Maybe there will be 4 robots per alliance! Chief Delphi Community, do you think that's stretching it a bit?

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

I wish that FIRST / Steele Meetings wouldn't force team to buy tickets for the FIRST Finale. When our team has gone through Steele Meetings we have never went to the finale because we want to stay till the end of Einstein (which is better then the Science Center).

Possible ways to increase matches at the Championship
- Less teams make it to the championship
- More Divisions
- No Practice Matches, Straight to Qualifications
- Faster Field Reset Times
- Stay Later on Thursday and/or Friday to play more matches
- Etc

-Clinton-

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

There was nothing about that released by FIRST at all this year. It was going to be the St. Louis Science Center and the planetarium and lawn across the highway bridge.

However, even if the outside wasn't ruined by the rain, the fact that the busses let us out at the front of the science center, when most people's final destination was probably the lawn and planetarium to watch the fireworks/participate in all the games and activities (which is BEHIND the science center, but has its own road and bus turn around), the science center would have still been extremely crowded with people just trying to get THROUGH it.

They should have dropped us off at the planetarium. That way, people that wanted to stay outside could do so without jamming into the science center, and those that wanted to see the science center could do so without the crowding of people that just wanted to get through.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

Science Center AND City Museum? They are not co-located and the Science Center requires transportation to get there from the Dome. I'm not sure how you could have a Finale event at both locations unless there was some transportation logistics setup in between, but that doesn't really make sense.

We walked to the City Museum on Friday night from our hotel near the Dome (and I had a ton of fun there).

Re: A Message from Bob Tuttle
 

I think it's real awesome FIRST goes through all this efforts to improve. I haven't been with FIRST for a long time, only three years, but I still can definitely see the difference between the way FIRST ran when I joined in 2011 and the way it runs now. Nowadays, with the new people in charge, and especially Frank, I feel a lot more involved in the organisation, even without doing anything related to it's management. I also really appreciate FIRST's guts in making all of the changes that were made this year, and surprised they all went well.

Definitely. Four robots per alliance will be too hard to watch and too hard to play. It will also demand changing the format of alliance selections, and I can't think of a format that doesn't make alliances 6-8 obsolete.

This is for another thread though... If you want and have the mental powers to search through 700+ posts, I remember a discussion about this in this year's game hint thread.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

What if they had two fields for each division. So when one match finished they next match started. This would require more space, people, a well thought out schedule to be successful.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

Or, more fields per division, which would be the better answer. More divisions would require 4 more, as a championship bracket wouldn't work out very well with just 2 extra divisions unless those 2 divisions had a bye.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

As someone who has been an advocate for a round robin with 4 divisions, it's also possible to have a round robin with 5 divisions where you play 10 matches and the two alliances with the best record play one-two more matches to decide the winner of the event. You also can fit a fifth FRC field on the existing arena floor.

Re: **FIRST EMAIL**/ Good, But Should Be Better
 

I think there was a little confusion between the Finale last year and this year. This year was just the Science Museum. Last year, there were a few other sites on the menu of activities, including the City Museum & Arch, with different buses servicing.

Also the Talent Show was at the Science Museum, instead of the Theater in the America's Center where it was held last year.

But because the finals/closing ceremonies in the Dome ran more than 1.5 hours long, it magnified some of the failure points as discussed in the posts above. I'm glad FIRST has addressed how disappointing this was on all sorts of levels.

11,000 people held wristbands for the Finale.