FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...Kickoff-Taping


Interesting how they're letting each district choose how many of each award to give.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

This is obviously a hint. Important parts highlighted in red.

Seriously though, I like the variability allowed in the awards.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

He's talking about the pyramids, of course

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

There's three pyramids this year. Three dots, three pyramids. We've figured out the hint, now we can all go sleep for 3 weeks.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Ellipsis - a series of dots indicating an omission.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis

Quick, how many wacky game ideas can we generate? Morse code? Falling? Leaving stuff out of goals? GO!

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Dean assigns homework at CMP, hardly anybody does it.
Frank mentions sending in shirts for the video, six score teams do it.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Well, no. he said "especially impressive was the," not were. It's singular. There's some singular impressive object or structure on the field. Likely central, probably similar to 2007.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Good point. Maybe there's three tiers to the pyramid. Oh... wait a second.


Taylor, I don't want your post to become lost in the jocular comments about this "hint." While I don't have time left (in class :o) right now to comment, I would love to see people's thoughts on this. Reasons for lack of participation, how to improve participation, etc.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

To be fair, making a good video (during a time of year when everyone is likely doing everything else in their life that doesn't involve robots) is magnitudes of effort and difficulty more than sending in a t-shirt.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Quoted again for truth. Although we don't KNOW how many teams did it.If I were running a district, I would choose as many EI winners as possible, since there is a monetary award as well.

Anyhow, to te obvious game hints:
That incorrect apostrophe is surely a game hint. Coupled to the ellipsis, it is clear to me that there is a grammar element to this year's game, specifically punctuation.

Or maybe it's just a mis-spelling of ellipses, those oblong circle thingies...:p

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

I thought the NASA award excluded districts last year? Am I wrong, or thinking of something else?

You mean footballs? Clearly, football game piece.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

It excluded winners at individual District events, not winners from the overall "District/Region" (it's a matter of phrasing)

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Number of FRC Team's that submitted Dean's HW: ~50
Number of FRC Teams that sent in shirts: 123

Although 'six score' does make it sound like more, it's only 2.5 times more, and as for the bigger picture, compared to the 2,500 FRC teams that competed last season, both still just barely scratch the surface.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

I think he's trying to say the NASA Grant applied to FIRST Championship registration, but not District Championship registration.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

For MAR - here's the distribution that was given at the 10/26 meeting

18 Slots:
3 MARCMP Event Winner
2 Chairman's Award
2 Engineering Inspiration
1 RAS
10 "points" slots

There are only 5 rookie/1st year teams in MAR, Michigan has 89!

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

I for one am very sad to see the reduction in the number of Dean's List Finalists being sent from the Districts as well as the Woodie Flowers Finalist. I know that I will be corrected that it is not about the number of previous regionals that are being replaced. However, last year we would have had 14 Dean's List Finalists heading to Champs from NE regionals and now it is a max of 6... and from 7 Woodie Flowers Finalists down to 1. This is a very large reduction (more than 50%) even if you take into account that mentors and students from outside of NE would/could have won some of those spots in previous years.

I just feel that these awards are about celebrating those among us who are role models. Granted these people do not make choices based on how it will look to an awards committee, they do what they do because they believe in the message of FIRST. Reducing the number of these awards just leaves us with less to celebrate. :(

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Not necessarily. You can celebrate your students and mentors any day of the week :)

Keep in mind how difficult judging becomes at the Championship level for these awards. I don't see it as a bad thing to become more selective.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

I can see I'm going to have to adjust my vocabulary. Until now, I thought FIRST was calling the areas running a district model "Regions" -- the Mid-Atlantic Robotics Region, the Pacific Northwest Region, etc. I've been very careful to follow that usage. Now, however, it seems they're being labeled "Districts".

Except I thought that was what they called the smaller areas within a larger region hosting district competitions. I'm confused.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

The only time I've ever seen a map actually divided into numbered districts" was a map of MI, and I think was to show how teams are/were divided into "home districts" ie. one they are arbitrarily signed up for. There's been no such division like that in MAR, but the 'first level' of competitions has been referred to as "district events'.

My guess is this is just to further distinguish/seperate the district model from the regional model, so instead of going to "regionals" or "regional championships", you're going to the "district championship"

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Totally.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Maybe I missed it in an earlier post but I don't see the total number of teams advancing from each District Championships to the FIRST Championships.

Applying the multipliers/rounding implies PNW & NE could be sending 22, 23 or 24 teams. I vote for 24 :)

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

From an earlier blog:

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Thanks. I obviously didn't read all the way to the end of that post!

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Oh boy a Coopertition Pyramid!

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Stop that.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

This actually gave me quite a chuckle.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

In PNW we consider ourselves the Pacific Northwest District. The qualifying events district events and the big event District Championships of DCMP. In PNW there is no geographic divisions within the District any team is allowed to register for any event, until of course slots are filled. Of course most teams registered for the closest event as one of their two. I've heard that one of the reasons for the fiM home events was to determine which event they were eligible to present for Chairman's, of course now teams are able to present for Chairman's at all events they attend whether District or Regional.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

One of the advantages of districts is so that for more teams, they can travel to/from home to at least one event instead of needing hotels. It was my understanding that home events are actually the event closest to you. By ensuring that you get your home event, it ensures that you don't need to book hotel rooms.

However, I don't recall reading this anywhere and the briefest of searches didn't show much. Can someone from FiM explain home events better?

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Funny, we've always needed a hotel for our home event. I mean, I wouldn't want a 3+ hour commute to our home event.</serious sarcasm>

Now, our team is in FiM, though I don't know all the specifics about what qualifies as home event. I think it is closest, but I could be wrong. About the map of "districts" within the district, I think that mostly serves as a way to assign district contacts or some such thing. Otherwise, FiM is a district, with district events and a district (state) championship.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

That's why I said more, not all. And besides, it's your fault for being in the wrong part of the state. =P /sarcasm

Seriously though, because of the way Michigan is, the district structure actually makes it harder on teams in the UP because there is no short, cheap way to get to the bulk of the events in Michigan. The event in Escanaba is closer for you guys, but a hotel room is still a hotel room. All it saves you guys is gas and travel time.

*Internet hugs* One day, we'll be able to teleport, right? =/

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

I feel like lately Region and District have been used interchangeably, at least in the community. I've heard the Championship event tier in a district system called the District Championship and the Region Championship. Just like I'm still not sure if I'm technically in the New England Region or New England District. Even though the local entities have somewhat settled this, there is clear inconsistencies across FIRST with this.

While I understand this isn't exactly the most pressing issue at hand, it wouldn't hurt for FIRST to come out with a standardized set of terms to settle this and avoid a little confusion down the road.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

I'm glad FIRST gave some sort of directive on this... but also think it's real cool that they gave individual districts some leeway too.

For New England, I'd personally say 3 Chairmans', 2 EI, 2 RAS, 6 Dean's List.

Have the award qualifications to Championship been announced/standardized? I apologize if I'm failing to remember a piece about this from the Standardized District Point System announcement. Basically, do the Chairmans', EI, and RAS winners at DCMP all auto-bid to CMP? Also, do the DCMP Winners also get an auto-bid?

I would agree with auto-bidding the three FIRST culture awards, but I am personally not in favor of auto-bidding the DCMP Winners... If they don't get enough points by winning DCMP, they probably shouldn't be going (last year in Michigan the lowest-place team to qualify for CMP by points had 133 points. Winning DCMP gives 90.) One could argue this makes it a fairly irrelevant point... I'd have to quietly agree and sit down. :-)

While I do agree that it feels wrong to send so many fewer DL or WF finalists, they are approximately in line with the other awards... 1 Chairmans', 1 EI, 1 RAS, 2 DL, and 1 WF would go from each Regional before. Now that is scaled up by 2-4 from Regionals to DCMP awards. Except WF... this little part surprises me personally and I do agree that we should be able to send 2-3 Woodie Flowers' Finalists. That said, I do agree with wanting to send only 50% as many award winners to CMP... I'm sure the pool of candidates at CMP is tremendous! Whittling it down a bit more beforehand has got to be helpful from a CMP-standpoint.

It is about celebrating the role models around us... and I had this same objection until I tried thinking about it in more dimensions. I think this celebratory aspect is actually being improved by the advent of districts... In New England there will now be 9 Chairmans, 9 EI, 9 RAS, 18 DL, and 9 WF winners... at the District event level. This pool will get paired down a bit more at DCMP before joining an enormous pool of applicants at CMP that are paired down even more. FIRST went from 2 tiers of awards to 3 tiers. We're upset that the "DCMP-tier" is smaller than the "Regional-tier," when they've also made the lowest tier bigger. All-in-all I think this is better... More people will win awards, then there will be another level of distinction (winning at DCMP), before the FIRST-wide winners are determined.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

The way I've always looked at it is that it is irrelevant to send more than one Woodie Flowers Finalist to the World Championship from the District Championship. Only one person can win the Championship Woodie Flowers award, so why send three or four from your district when you can just send the best one?

But that's just my opinion, I get the idea of celebrating all of the wonderful people involved with FIRST, but that's why all of the nominees are called down at the district event that they are nominated at, and (at least in the past in Michigan) all of the Woodie Flowers nominees are called down to the field at the District Championship before the winner is announced.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Given that every judging panel is different and who best embodies the Woodie Flowers award is a bit of a subjective thing, I see why it would be viewed as an advantage to send more than one person... I'm guessing it's anything but a clear-cut decision who the single best Woodie Flowers Candidate is at the DCMP level. If the DCMP panel prefers a heavier team-level commitment but the CMP panel weighs involvement throughout all of FIRST more heavily, there's an easy example of where sending two or three candidates would be helpful.

That said, I don't envy the job of the CMP judging panel for any of these awards... it's got to be exceptionally difficult to come down to a single winner! Having fewer candidates get to that level can't make it any harder to decide on the single best nomination.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

This is true, I was just suggesting what their thought process might have been.

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

This is actually covered in the Standard Points Document:

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

:yikes: Quick! Every team recruit an English teacher mentor!
1529 and 3176 are sure to dominate this year. :cool:

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

Team 910 has one of those as well. I knew I would come in handy eventually :p

Re: FRC Blogged- District Award Allocations and Kickoff Taping
 

From what I see from the submission criteria right now, it looks like neither the DL or WF will be awarded at the individual district events. It looks like they will only be awarded at the DCMP event for each district. This truly reduces the visibility of these awards and the number of people who will get recognition. Personally I have never been at an event where the WF nominees were brought onto the field before the award was given... and even more so the DL nominations are not recognized either, only the finalists selected at each Regional.