Re: What First is missing.
 

Which means there are about 100 students a year no longer exposed to STEM. If there were a viable competitor to FRC it may provide an opportunity that currently doesn't exist for those students.

Re: What First is missing.
 

I think FIRST and sponsors should start not just focusing on inner city teams but other underpriviledged teams that live in areas that don't feature many willing or even engineering companies. There is a lot of scientist and engineer potential that is missed through that.

Re: What First is missing.
 

I don't want to sound rude, but please go understand what the definition of what a monopoly is. FIRST isn't a monopoly. It is an open market and they are putting up no barriers to entry, that is they are not preventing anyone from stepping and competing. There are other competitions that compete with FIRST and they are open to anyone.

FIRST doesn't make money, they get their bills paid. And they run the organization financially responsibly which means they keep a proper amount of reserves for operations.

If FIRST were making money, plenty of investors would be starting competitions to try to get a piece of that action.

To seriously impact the current cost structure would require a fundamental restructuring of the whole program. That restructure might be offensive to other people. That is one of the factors driving the district model. More plays, lower cost, less show, more high school gym, but that is another argument for another thread.

The real issue here is Value.

Anytime we are talking about cost, we also need to be talking about value.

Cost and Value are two distinctly different entities.

If you can persuade your community of the value of FIRST, then there is a chance the cost issue will resolve itself with increased funding.

Re: What First is missing.
 

I don't see how this relates to any of the issues he mentioned.

Re: What First is missing.
 

Amen. When I worked at Linens 'n Things, we had a large portion of product that we called "Value Merchandise". For five years, to the chagrin of my manager, I called it what it was: "cheap crap" -- there was no *value* in it; most of it wasn't worth the pittance it cost.

Value means a high-quality product at a price worth paying. FRC is an excellent product, but I think that the cost is prohibitive for many. If we can maintain the quality but lower the cost, I think that would be one of the greatest changes FIRST could make.

Please file under "easier said than done".

Re: What First is missing.
 

What FIRST is missing is exposure. The type of exposure that creates top-of-mind awareness. The exposure that is enjoyed by major sports, created by massive marketing campaigns.

Newspaper articles, TV news features - they're all neat, and a decent starting point, but they're not enough. FIRST is missing the daily interaction with laypeople. The Make It Loud initiative is a step in the right direction.

FIRST is missing a fundamental change in its own philosophy. Celebrity on chiefdelphi does not equal celebrity in the real world. Having wild celebrations for two months - at college campuses during their spring breaks and an unoccupied stadium - then being largely dormant the other ten months of the year does not create the level of awareness needed to be what it needs to be. Districts and offseason events are a step in the right direction, but they're nowhere near as comprehensive as they need to be. I know of 20 offseason events, which is great, but really less than a tenth of what there needs to be - and I'm just talking about America.

What we have now is similar to the Indianapolis 500 or Kentucky Derby. It's a cool story once a year, but largely ignored and underground for the rest of the time. That is unacceptable.

When FIRST has its own magazine, we'll be on the horizon. When FIRST has its own television network, we'll be pretty close. When Vegas lays published odds on FIRST events, we'll be there.

Re: What First is missing.
 

Re-quoting because I think this is spot on exactly what needs to happen. Also I need to spread around more rep before giving it to Taylor again. Aaron, Gregor, wanna help me out on this one?

Re: What First is missing.
 

Here's some of the stuff I want to see some day:

• Really high quality video feeds of every event, including organized archived matches, dual camera views (full field + one that tracks the action), and high resolution.
• A medium for viewing the video feeds that makes it really easy and fast to access info on the teams that are playing in each match to get some of the context and history that most viewers aren't aware of.
• Official stats kept for every robot in every match, and the availability of real time stats just like you get in a pro sporting event, like in MLB GameCast
• Nationally televised reality TV show that tracks the progress of several teams each year during the offseason, build, and competition seasons
• More exciting Einstein finals (no energy killing extras) that are ready for prime time
• Elimination rounds that are broadcast like a big pro game, with announcers who have access to a lot of info on the teams, replays shown of key plays, interesting statistics shown during down time, and bits of rules shown frequently (with diagrams and bits of animation)
• Automated Fantasy FIRST leagues that are easy to setup on Yahoo like other fantasy sports.

That would create something that people can follow in the way that people currently follow sports. The webcasts that we currently get are making some progress, but they still suffer from some issues that make them hard to follow unless you already have a decent idea of what's going on.

I'm not saying all of that is going to happen tomorrow, but if it did, I bet a bunch more people would get hooked on FIRST. They'd start out being hooked on the competition aspect, and some of those people would probably end up getting involved as volunteers or mentors or students.

Re: What First is missing.
 

Sounds a lot like what VEX and FTC are intended for. Some areas don't have the financial means/mentors/build spaces available to support a program on the scale of FRC in every school. Grants are often available to get teams started, but they don't provide the means for these teams to be self sustaining once the grant money runs out. I saw this happen in Boston with the Smith Foundation grants- we had something like 23 rookie teams in one year. The next year, all but a handful did not return.

FRC is and always will be expensive, and not just financially. The tools, space, mentor and student hours (not just during build season, but planning meetings, organizing fundraisers, public outreach and demonstrations, recruiting, etc), parts, other materials, and competitions all have fairly high costs associated with them, and not all are monetary. Any competitor on the scale and of similar mission to FRC is very likely to have similar requirements in terms of time and material.

VEX and FTC appear to be designed to avoid such requirements. With primarily bolt-together components easily assembled with hand tools, much more relaxed time requirements, reduced system complexity, and dramatically lower cost, these programs were started with the intention of getting STEM into schools where FRC scale teams are either impractical, or unfeasible. These "100 students per year no longer exposed to STEM" don't need something on the scale of FRC to be inspired if their school/community can't support it, and a competitor of equal flashiness and cost likely won't change that. Practical alternatives do exist, if the powers that be are willing to consider them.

Re: What First is missing.
 

I'm well aware of these programs and these problems (I've publicly announced a distaste for rookie grants numerous times). The primary barrier to entry for Vex (I'll get to FTC in a minute) for me is the lack of scholarships. I can start an FRC team, doesn't matter how bad they do, my students are now eligible for a lot of scholarships. Vex doesn't really have the range of scholarships. For FTC the primary barrier to entry is less but still there, many scholarships are written for FRC not FTC.

For me, viable competitors do NOT exist. My students need to pay for school and FRC is the only game in town for that.

Re: What First is missing.
 

FIRST needs to start with a consistent high quality webcast of every event. They need to require a standard set of criteria for broadcasting an event and then it needs to be SUPPORTED and FUNDED.

A minimum production value standard and equipment list will raise the broadcast standards and attract more viewers. Viewership will not increase overnight, but this is playing the "long game". Lets also pay what ever fee it takes to eliminate all of the incredibly annoying commercials.

I need to be able to tell outside people to watch a webcast and not worry about what they will see. Some of the broadcasts this year were just flat out embarrassing. So many were bad this year that I stopped telling people to watch. If you do not know anything about FIRST, you are not going to watch a pixelated, commercial filled, webcast from a cheap robot camera struggling to figure out what you are watching.

It can be so much better.

Re: What First is missing.
 

+1 and QFT. This should be a top priority.

Re: What First is missing.
 

And add to this camera operators that actually know what to watch for in matches. I honestly think that, just as refs are trained for each game, camera operators should be "trained" as well. I know every team deserves to be given spotlight on the webcast, but I really dont want to see two robots sitting at the pyramid doing nothing and the 3rd struggling to get their robot to shoot into the low goal when the other pyramid has a robot climbing to the 3rd level with 15 seconds left or dumping in the pyramid goal.

Re: What First is missing.
 

This is one of the most irritating parts of webcasts for me. I can distinctly recall a match where during autonomous I listened to the announcer call out the blue alliance as they made 1 autonomous shots, while the camera operator focused on the red alliance which had one robot shoot 2 disks over the 2 point goal. It was incredibly frustrating. I completely agree that the camera operators need some sort of training on where to point the cameras. If FIRST is going to spread, we need to have webcasts that are more exciting and better quality. I swear some of these must be filmed with a potato, they are completely embarrassing to share with people outside FIRST.

Re: What First is missing.
 

Although I could be wrong, most of the webcasts are usually filmed on decent cameras (if they are streaming the video shown on the audience screen), but streaming high quality video becomes a problem with bandwidth constraints and other problems. But I agree there were some pretty low quality streams that I saw.