Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

Definitely looking forward to Minnesota's first chance to tackle a week 1 event! Perhaps most exciting, for me, is that we're going to have 5 LRI's under one roof that weekend. I don't know of any other regional or district event that has that much experience volunteering to help teams!

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

That's very exciting! Does this mean we're getting close to having the critical mass for Districts? :P

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

I hope not. I despise the districts concept from a volunteer perspective. I'd rather see a fifth regional (Fargo/Moorhead or Rochester) than a dozen district events. I can do three weekends during competition season, but if the area goes to districts the expectation will be twice that and I can't commit to that.

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

St. Cloud? I know there aren't very many teams near the Fargo Moorehead area (something I'm making an effort to change) and there are already 2 regionals in the southern MN area (Minneapolis, close enough). There is no close regional for teams located right in the middle of Minneapolis and Duluth!

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

I agree, the number of volunteers would need to grow. I'm extremely happy that 2512 hosted an off-season event this year as off-seasons are a great way to grow your key-volunteer base.

That being said, if Minnesota were to magically switch to districts this year, I would be curious to see if the cost would be worth the benefit. I did a quick (in retrospect, maybe not so quick) analysis using last year's numbers below

If we assume that district events have 40 teams at them, and that there are 186 teams in Minnesota, we would need 9.3 events in order to allow all teams to have two plays. That means we would need to round that number up to 10 events total (not including state championships) spaced out over 6 weeks. That would give us 400 spots for teams to compete at and there would be 28 spots left over.

If each event has a 12 qualification matches, that is 880 matches total (not including eliminations). Last year, there were 392 non-elimination matches played in Minnesota. If you take a registration fee of $5000 and divide it by the number of matches, you get a cost of $500/match for the regional system and $208.33/match for the district system.

If you were to run the district system in a FIRST Tech Challenge-type style where you have a host team that provides non-key volunteer support and a location to host the district event, I calculate you would need around 35 volunteers for each event, not including the host team volunteers. That is a total of 350 individual volunteer positions that need to be trained for and filled. If run with the assumption at all of our trained volunteers, volunteer twice in a season, that is 175 trained volunteers needed total (this number does not include state).

This is of course all hypothetically speaking and doesn't really take into account that you would need to host a couple of 2 event weekends. Nor does it take into account that we would need an official MN non-profit to run all of these events.

In the end, I think that districts in MN would be a HUGE benefit to all teams but there are a few hurdles we need to leap through before we can get there.

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

You forgot the 250 to 300 Thursday practice matches that were played last year in the four Minnesota regionals. There are no practice matches at district events.

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

There certainly are practice matches at district events, at least here in Michigan. They aren't scheduled for specific teams, but rather it's a "show up and get on the field".

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

True, but I also did not mention that district teams receive additional un-bag time in compensation for that. In addition, most of the time the practice matches are empty and there really is no accurate way of measuring how many teams took advantage of that time on the field.

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

Evan, your numbers are a little low. Every event requires a minimum of 10 inspectors, 15 judges, 5 or more refs, scoring, queueing... I believe we at the state tournament last year (30 teams, 1 day event) we needed over 100 volunteers to make it happen. Even if we get 50 volubteers from every "host team", we won't have enough. And as it stands, those "host team" volunteers would be inexperienced, and having that many learning on the job would lead to poor experiences for teams.

As things stand today, a disproportionate percentage of our volunteers come from the twin cities. While that would make doing a bunch of district events around here easy, going out to Fargo or La Crescent or St. Cloud or Rochester would be extremely difficult. How many volubteers are we going to require to go out for a weekend just to put on those events, especially when their teams aren't there competing?

If we really want to go to districts, and I've heard teams say they do, then we need every team to step up and give us more volunteers. Using LRI's as an example, we have 2 in the cities and one in La Crescent. A couple more prospective ones from the cities, but that's it. Despite looking, I haven't Been able to find someone appropriate from the Duluth or Fargo or St. Cloud areas. We just don't have people from those areas volunteering as inspectors very much. You would think with two regionals in Duluth we could get some local key volunteers, but most of the ones I can think of are from the cities or other areas.

So a word to all MN teams: we have almost 200 teams in the state right now, yet we get volunteers from maybe 10% oft hose teams. Give us volunteers now and we might be able to get on a path towards districts. Without Training up a bunch and having them well diversified across the state we'll never get there. This is the problem those of us attempting to recruit volunteers know we have, but when we come to the teams we just get "sorry, we don't have anyone that can do it this year" emails. You can't ask for something without helping to make it happen.

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

You're right! In my fast math, I forgot to add judges (although I remembered Judge Advisors and Judge Assistants). I updated and typed up my estimates below, do you see any other inaccuracies I could fix? Thanks!

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

Word.

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

You would have to ask Laurie, she's definitely the most knowledgeable person in the entire state when it comes to fully staffing an event. I do know, however, that one wicketkeeper is probably not enough (you want at least two sets of eyes on it to ensure there aren't mistakes), and having only 1 CSA is going to make it very rough for teams who need help. I've seen a single CSA spend an entire afternoon with just one team who was having some odd control system issues (and I was there working with them half that time too)... Without other CSA's we either would have had to abandon that team to help others or leave others waiting indefinitely.

Most of those positions need some level of experience as well. We can't just throw people into them with no on-site Training from someone experienced.

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

Thanks for looking at them! Once the season is over, I'll certainly want to take a second look at them.

With the amount of requests for programming support I've received from MN teams this year, I certainly don't disagree with you when it comes to more than 1 CSA...

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

Team 2977 - Sir Lancer Bots will be at Lake Superior (the Superior regional) once again, along with four other teams from the Seven Rivers Robotics Coalition - all Wisconsin teams.

In addition we are bringing an LRI, Game Announcer, Referee, safety glasses crew, and possibly additional volunteers. Doing everything we can to give back and to build the volunteer base in the Seven Rivers (La Crescent / La Crosse) region.

Re: Double Decker in Duluth
 

Team 3122 here! Lake Superior Regional

Also, we will be doing the live webcast of the competition. You can find more information on http://newulmrobotics.com/webcast and also by following the twitter page @MNDU_Webcast.