Originally Posted by Koko Ed (Post 1272650)

They always exclaim what good fortune it is that the seats at the bottom of the stands are readily available and gleefully sit there. Then they realizes that everyone crowds around the field and learn to sit up higher like everyone else.

Originally Posted by Koko Ed (Post 1272650)

They always exclaim what good fortune it is that the seats at the bottom of the stands are readily available and gleefully sit there. Then they realizes that everyone crowds around the field and learn to sit up higher like everyone else.

Originally Posted by Gregor (Post 1272664)

Yep...

Originally Posted by Ryan Dognaux (Post 1272023)

But really, it's as easy as citing the manual and just sitting down in the seat.

Originally Posted by Koko Ed (Post 1272676)

Everyone who has never been to FLR before always learns to sit up higher.
We don't control the crowd around the field. Makes the joint louder and FLR rock. Especially during the elims.

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.

Originally Posted by JB987 (Post 1272695)

Just a question that hasn't come up yet in this post...how absolute shall the adherence to the rule be? If we follow the letter of the rule, then a scout who runs to the rest room and is gone for only a couple of minutes is out of luck? Same would be true for anyone in the stands? There are teams like ours that have scouts (laptops) linked via ethernet or otherwise need proximity with the other scouts to exchange paper match data. Perhaps this is one of the strongest arguments for at least reserving seats for scouts?

Originally Posted by Marc S. (Post 1271091)

I think the GP card could go either way. Yeah your taking their seats that they are trying so hard to defend, but they are trying to save seats with almost no one there.

At SVR I talked to a rookie mentor from another team, and he mentioned to me how ungraciously professional he thought the pink team was for taking up half the stands in the center section of the stadium. "Their spirit people take up the same amount of room as the scouts from 20 other teams." he said. Its an interesting thought, 90% of their seats went to cheerers who loved to stand and block the view of people behind them, but they did get there first. I only mention the identity of this team because they ironically won the championship Gracious Professionalism award.

So it begs the question, what is more graciously professional? Is it, "we only need these higher quality seats for our scouts", or "they got their first so we should respect their right to take up as many seats as they can"?

Originally Posted by JB987 (Post 1272695)

Just a question that hasn't come up yet in this post...how absolute shall the adherence to the rule be? If we follow the letter of the rule, then a scout who runs to the rest room and is gone for only a couple of minutes is out of luck? Same would be true for anyone in the stands? There are teams like ours that have scouts (laptops) linked via ethernet or otherwise need proximity with the other scouts to exchange paper match data. Perhaps this is one of the strongest arguments for at least reserving seats for scouts?

Originally Posted by Aidan S. (Post 1272067)

What I meant by this is that we send a smaller group (say a dozen) students early (usually around 6am) to get in line and participate in the "race" so to speak, but the remainder of the team still arrives before the doors open. So there is a small group to stake out the ideal section, and when they find one, the entire team will be there to join them and sit there and get started on the day's activities. This allows the students to rotate duty in the early crew.

Originally Posted by CENTURION (Post 1271120)

1306 is working on this :D

Anyone interested should check out this thread

We rolled out the CrowdScout system at the Wisconsin Regional, and in Curie Division this year, and it worked wonderfully, so we will definitely be continuing development of the system (streamlining data entry, making things easier for teams), and the organization around it (deciding on what data is needed, etc.)