Originally Posted by Citrus Dad (Post 1274306)

Those two extra usually are needed to manage the scouting system on site--remember that WiFi is illegal in the venue and that the system either needs to be hardwired together or paper passed to a central person after every match. (I'm curious as to your alternative proposal for data management with only 6 people sitting together.) Also in our experience, 6 scouts can only follow a portion of what happens on the field. We had 2 additional strategic scouts and what they provided was the extra part that made our alliance selection strategy work so successfully in Curie. One additional point--the team needs to be able to rotate scouts--there's no way that anyone can pay attention straight through for hours without a break. 10 is a minimum.

Originally Posted by ICanCountTo19 (Post 1274239)

I find this entire topic almost laughable.

I understand we do not have the best system for seating at events. I hate to be a the pessimist, but do you really think FIRST is sitting around thinking what type of raffle system would work best for seats? Somehow I get the feeling they have bigger concerns. Not only that, but if FIRST actually needed to design an elaborate system to assign seats I would feel silly as if I was back in elementary school. Quite frankly, I'm not convinced the idea is possible nor desirable to be organized on a FIRST wide level. The variation in venues etc makes this questionably feasible.

On a humorous note how about a "15 Minute Parking Section" meant for teams to just walk up watch their match and leave.

Social experiment: Section off a small, but easily accessible area in front of the field, with a sign that looks official saying "These seats are available to teams while their robot is playing on the field, please remain no longer than is appropriate." See what happens.

In all seriousness you should probably ask somebody in some sort of position of power before you try something like that, but I would like to see how trustworthy our fellow FIRSTers are.

Originally Posted by jamierose (Post 1274506)

There was a section like that at BAE Granite State Regional and it actually worked pretty much perfectly. I don't know how well it would work at champs, though.

Originally Posted by ICanCountTo19 (Post 1274239)

I understand we do not have the best system for seating at events. I hate to be a the pessimist, but do you really think FIRST is sitting around thinking what type of raffle system would work best for seats? Somehow I get the feeling they have bigger concerns. Not only that, but if FIRST actually needed to design an elaborate system to assign seats I would feel silly as if I was back in elementary school. Quite frankly, I'm not convinced the idea is possible nor desirable to be organized on a FIRST wide level. The variation in venues etc makes this questionably feasible.

Originally Posted by Cory (Post 1272357)

I fail to see the problem here. You want good seats, get there early. There should be staff in the venue during the mad rush that kick teams out of seats they are trying to occupy with flags, banners, pom poms, signs, whatever. That solves that problem. We had our entire team up extremely early (as did 3-4 others) in order to be one of the first teams in. All our mentors were up past midnight every night too. If you want good seats, that's what you've got to do.

The real problem is that it's a complete madhouse getting in and totally unsafe. Everyone has heard stories of students getting shoved, knocked down, hit, trampled, etc. One of our students may have fractured his foot on Saturday morning due to the mad rush when the doors opened.

This year security actually tried to enforce a line, up until about 6:30-6:45. Right around then the 1 person they had out there was completely overwhelmed by the massive quantities of people showing up and effectively ceased to have any authority. This resulted in the 4 teams who were there hours early getting in first, the people who showed up at 6:45 and line jumped getting in next, and the 20 teams who got there after the first 4 (and stood in line like they were supposed to) getting in about 200 people after they should have. This is completely unfair to those who followed the process but failed to be at the very front of the line.

Solution: more security outside, instead of inside.

Security likes to play the "guess the door" game. Stop being coy about which doors will open. Clearly label the doors that will be opening (and limit it to maybe 2-3 doors at the start) and it will be much easier to enforce the creation of a line. Teams will also have less opportunity to start sprinting once inside. If you got in front of the wrong doors 2 hours early you were just as screwed as showing up when the doors opened. Or teams (again) showed up at 6:45, stood in front of an empty doorway, and then that doorway opened when there had been no previous indication it would do so.

Stop counting down to the doors opening. This is incredibly dangerous as it actively encourages people to start shoving and running once the doors open.


I think some kind of coupon system could be wise. Barricade off the courtyard outside the doors, institute proper lines (maybe by division) and be there at 5:00-5:30 AM to distribute tickets to the first x people in line for maybe 2-3 "zones". When you get to your field, you have to show your tickets to go down in the seats. This wouldn't be terribly difficult to do and only needs to be enforced for the first few minutes. The teams who get there first get the seats they want and nobody needs to run because anyone who jumps them in line won't have the right "zone" tickets.

That still adds complexity to a situation that just needs order outside the doors, though. After 20 years you'd think FIRST could figure out how to make people form a proper queue. If they could do that and have fewer entrances for the first few minutes then everything would get a lot better.