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Re: Future First Championship News
Oh man, I haven't actually posted in a long time. Also wow, did I really just manage to put off an entire night's-worth of work to read all of this thread? :eek:
Okay, so let me begin by saying the following: 1) I'm not a big fan of the new Championship format for reasons that have have already been mentioned in this thread. 2) FIRST HQ could probably handled this better, particularly in the department of asking for community input prior to (presumably) signing contracts. 3) The data do not lend themselves to the assertion that this move will significantly decrease travel expenses for the overwhelming majority of Championship-attending teams. But for the love of all that is beautifully powder coated and covered by anti-gravity circles, this is not the start of the apocalypse; we all know that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, not 2017: 4) We don't know all of the information, that fact is both explicitly and implicitly stated by FIRST. The unknown information could be bad (e.g. all teams will now be required to build bumpers in not two, but three different colors ::safety:: ), or it could be fantastic (e.g. all teams will now receive corndogs in their KoPs). 5) Please stop with the "FIRST is clearly doing this for the money just to line their own pockets [paraphrased]." Seriously? That is above and beyond pure, unsubstantiated speculation and does nothing but unnecessarily inflame the situation. 6) This change is not equivalent to everyone getting participation trophies. Heck, the number of awards (save the big ones) given out at Championship increased by a factor of four last year and the general consensus seemed fairly positive. But now an increase of a factor of two, two years down the road is the end of the "C" in FRC. (I freely admit that there is a bigger issue with the doubling of awards like CA, WFA, etc., see (1)). 7) We should all recognize here on CD that this change doesn't really directly affect the majority of FRC teams. A giant percentage of teams only sporadically (if ever) attend Championships, so no, they're not going to be disappointed that they're not going to see their friends from the other side of the country and they're also not going to be wringing their hands over exactly who will be crowned THE World Champion. I'm not saying this to minimize people's reservations, I myself am flying to STL to be with my team and to see old friends from around the world. I'm putting it out there so that we keep in mind that most FRCers (as hard to believe as it is) actually aren't reading this thread right now. 8) I am willing to give FIRST HQ the benefit of the doubt here. They didn't make this decision in a vacuum (even if they didn't directly ask for input). You may have noticed that many people in this thread have spoken about how transformational the Championship experience was for them. In fact, many are so passionate about it that they're up at 01:30 writing a post instead of sleeping. But note that they talk about GOING to championship and SEEING and TALKING to the Poofs*, not watching a webcast of Einstein with bated breath or just HEARING about the Poofs' autonomous skillzzzz. So maybe, just maybe, when Don Bossi says "... we want to give more and more kids that 'Championship Experience' that we know is so transformative in their lives..." we actually agree with him :ahh:; even if not in the specifics. I know this is getting super long, so I'll end it with a brief anecdote: In between trying to keep up with this thread I got an email from a newly-minted MARS alum who, in the greatest tradition of procrastination, decided to write down some of her MARS memories for a project that we call 'Marvin's Journal.' And it struck me that for every memory like this: "I remember when we won our first team award at worlds, and screamed “WE ARE MARS” from the nosebleed section. - 2013 St. Louis World Championship" There were two like this: "I remember when it felt like I was changing either Marvin V’s drive belts or polycord belts every match. - 2012 Da Whole Season" "I remember when we lost with MORT, and then became best friends. - 2011 Palmetto Regional" And it reaffirmed my sincere belief that as long as this is how the students experience and remember FIRST, we'll be okay. We may we wish and work to make things better (as we should), and we may even gripe. But at the end of the day I'm still going spend Thursdays crawling under robots with a flashlight and an inspection checklist, and I'm still going hurt my hands clapping for that rookie team who's robot was a true GP-community-effort, and I'm definitely still going to bawl my eyes out when MARS wins Chairman's - and that's what really matters. -Luke Scime *Specific shout-out only because you guys are awesome and have been featured so prominently in this thread. |
Re: Future First Championship News
I have read this entire thread.
My personal takeaways are... I have to attend the last world championship in 2016. IRI in 2017 and onward is going to be even more prestigious as it truly becomes where champions are crowned. I am not worried about the double championship, or the potential additional championships in the future. More teams attending these massive championships simply means more people will be inspired. I am happy that FIRST is continuing to grow. :) |
Re: Future First Championship News
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Either school of thinking is counterproductive when taken to extremes. Championship needs to be diluted enough to be reasonably inclusive, yet competitive enough to be credible and provide an on field product that keeps sponsors, VIPs, and eventually the general public entertained. There also needs to be outreach and rookie teams there for various inspirational purposes. FIRST HQ has the tough job of attempting to find the right balance to advance STEM. Problems arise and mistakes get made, even with good intentions. While there are good reasons to go to this format, there are uncertainties and issues with it that make me question if the change is worth the risk of alienating people and degrading the championship experience. FIRST really needs to respond to the concerns of the community to at the very least inspire confidence that there is a bigger, better plan waiting to be enacted. A lot of the community here(myself included) has been motivated by trying to use the pursuit of robotic perfection as a way to advance their students' abilities as future STEM workforce members and humans in general. By lowering the ceiling of success, a bunch of students and mentors find it much harder to justify sugh a high time commitment involved in trying to build their team into Co-sort-of-World-Champion-of-<City>. Yes, it's still about the students, the sustainability of the team, and the values of FIRST, but when you take away the ability and some of the (admittedly slightly egotistical) incentive to Aim HighTM, the enthusiasm levels and ambition will falter. Judging from this thread and awesome interactions with the FIRST community in the past, we're not short on passion and by extension enthusiasm. I'd rather not see FIRST make decisions that endanger these qualities. |
Re: Future First Championship News
That explains this years game. With a new championships, there's a lot of totes and not a lot of volunteers.
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Re: Future First Championship News
None of this makes any sense to me. None of it.
Cost: Spreading out any event/convention/championship does not reduce the amount of money needed to conduct it. Even if FIRST doubles the amount of teams involved (FLL, FTC, FRC) - you still need double the amount of the Volunteer Army needed to make this happen. Yes, I know that volunteers are unpaid, but there is still the issue of housing and transportation... This is a very simplistic analogy - but most FRCers know most effective and cost-effective way to win a game of Risk: take Australia. Why? Because it is a bottleneck. The quickest way to lose Risk? Try and hold Asia. Now, this analogy is better served if we compared Australia to South America. Same amount of resources, double the expense. With one Championship, FRC had a bottleneck. Number of teams: Here in is the real problem. Many teams struggle to get to a place where they can afford to make it to two Regionals ($9000). Now we are looking at doubling the amount of teams that can make it to a Championship event? That means that twice as many teams are going to be looking to their sponsors or their students to fund another event hundreds or thousands of miles away! We all see the threads on this forum about teams struggling to make it to Championships now - can you imagine if 800-1200 teams are qualifying for these events? Watered down: Yes, the Championships this season seems watered down by allowing another 200 teams to qualify/waitlist. I will state this, my team made it in 2013 by winning our regional and being our region's RAS. Either way that we made it, the experience was profound on the development of our team. I think by keeping Champs open to the 6 awards offered up in each regional was sufficient. in 2014 we did not qualify. We came back this season with the best robot that we ever built. It was beautiful. The practice robot did everything we wanted it to do. The drive team practiced for 20 hours each week. Yet, come competition, our Comp Robot failed to connect properly with the field. We couldn't move properly until round 9 - and even then they only stacked two totes and placed a Container on top. This was a failure for FRC 4607. We knew that we had no shot at Champs, and this was fine with us. We just wanted to showcase what our robot could do... and we never were able to fulfill this. To my kids credit - they want to build a better drive train and figure out how we prevent this from happening next season. (I will be honest - I have been in a near-catatonic state ever since...) What I will state is this - our robots work great now, so look out those of you that compete at MRI and Minne-Mini. Other Outlets: FRC would be wise to promote other outlets such as IRI, and the Minnesota State Tourney. Case in point - last season we missed out as we lost in North Star's Semis. It sucked. The kids were pissed about the ruling. But you know what happened? They came back into my shop and had a fire in their belly - they wanted to showcase the robot in the Minnesota State Tourney. They did just that finishing just behind team 2175 - the Fighting Calculators. Our alliance put up a great fight and we walked away with Runners-up at the MSHSL tourney. That Banner now hangs next to our 2013 State Champs Banner and the 2005 Girls Basketball Champions Banner in our gym. FRC 4607 went from 8 kids interested in robotics in 2012 to over 50 kids this season. However, we did not make it last year or this year. Yet, next season we already have 40 kids grades 9-12 signed back on - and we had 12 seniors! What FIRST needs to realize is that they need to practice what they preach. This is a competition - we want the champions. We want to know what we are up against. And as I always tell my kids: Failure is always an option. It is what you do after you fail that defines your character. |
Re: Future First Championship News
Its been a while since I've posted on CD and i havent been directly involved with a team since 2011, but for what its worth:
I can't speak for "higher level" teams who's goal is to win a world championship. I see how you're disappointed in the split. I'm not saying you're wrong for wanting to win big and be the definitive winner. But, I'd like to remind everyone that FIRST IS growing. Would you rather have one, proportional championship event, with no wait list and potentially nearly 1000 teams attending one event in several years? Or would you rather have more, equally competitive teams spread between two events? Or force teams to travel three weekends in a row at the end of a season to attend a district championship, then a super regional, then the world championship? Even two weekends for a super regional+worlds would be bad Remember that these venue contracts have to be signed a few years in advance, and while the propositon may seem unreasonable now, it may work a lot better in 3 years when there are more, more competitive robots, from fantastic teams. You cant wait until growth happens, and then change the model that year, or even the year after. From my perspective, FIRST is just planning ahead. Would you be more disappointed if you were a crucial component of a winning alliance and had a high performance robot, but could not attend CMP because only first round picks were invited to attend to keep the number of teams attending down, but you were the second round pick of the #8 alliance? When I was in high school, my team's sole goal was to make it to eliminations of any event (regional or district). Our robot wasn't great. Heck, a couple of years we just wanted a working robot. Even with our bar set low, we were still inspired. It didn't matter to me who was crowned the best, all I see through my poor-performance-goggle is "those teams are awesome", not "omg 469 won CMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". 1189 is currently very much in the running for one of MI's bids to CMP. The team has not attended a Championship Event since 2005. We have had two full four-year generations go by without attending CMP. Last year, the team was one of the top teams in the state and had the opportunity to go, but couldn't for financial reasons, since they had not planned for success. They no doubt deserved to go. Its obviously a slightly different view being based out of metro Detroit, but I think 1189 can relate highly to the east coast and Midwest teams (which is quite a lot of teams) who now have a closer CMP to attend with a smaller travel budget. They would be thrilled to just be able to attend. I imagine this viewpoint is probably very different than that of a team who performs well every year and qualifies for CMP every year. Even if FIRST had split east-west, nobody would win besides those within a 10hr drive time radius. Those in the midwest would still be faced with large travel times, just as how the west coast and other areas are still faced with high travel times for the new model. There is no perfect solution to make travel reasonable for everyone, and I fully support FIRST in their choices of cities. With the current competition model, Michigan has a huge number of teams and is sending a lot to CMP, and Texas has also seen significant growth in the past few years. A LOT of teams come from the east. If we're basically splitting east-midwest+everywhere else, I don't know how someone could argue that Detroit is better than STL diatance-wise when considering convenience for the majority of teams attending, assuming that teams will be able to pick their preferred event (and we don't know that yet). Fact: there is a higher density of teams along the east coast and in MI. Think about the big picture. Perspective is everything. |
Re: Future First Championship News
To me, this is sad is a lot of change, however I can't rationalize at all this decision. But, to be blunt this decision was made over a long period of time and work. As someone who books large events, you don't sign contracts five years out in multiple cities without serious time and energy put into it.
All of our complaining isn't going to change a thing unfortunately. Even if FIRST decided to 'listen to the people' they would have same major PR Issues enormous cancellations fees. Maybe in 2021 we can re-visit... :( |
Re: Future First Championship News
Coincidental timing that I just made this post in another thread this week, that attending a World (or Half/Quarter/N-th Part) Championship will not be a realistic goal for teams forever with the growth of the program.
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That said, I preferred where FRC was going with the District and Super Regional model, and think they are jumping the gun on giving up on a single World Championship (we've probably got close to 10 years before we really need to think about that). This could be a stepping stone to Super Regionals (the two events do work out for North/South SR as others have pointed out) but if that is the goal I think FIRST would be better off keeping St. Louis as is through 2017, then starting with Houston and Detroit as the Regional Championships in 2018 with a FIRST World Championship still happening. Two more years of growth is probably enough for each Regional Championship to be a 300-400 team event, and then the World Championship can be held with a smaller number of teams (200). Additional Regional Championships would be added as needed with the World Championship staying at a capped size. With this model you get the benefit of keeping the Super events capped at a size that can be more reasonably hosted in a typical sports arena/convention center combo, which is important as the 600 team event being attempted this year severely restricts your location options. I think 200-300 teams is the ideal to shoot for and whenever you push up against the 300 team limit you add another Regional Championship and reduce the At-Large bids from each that make it to the World Championship. In the end whatever happens won't make a huge difference to me as the teams I've been with haven't attended Champs in close to a decade now. I understand the outcry from those who can count on going almost every year (the majority of ChiefDelphi's user base), but for teams that rarely qualify (the majority of FRC teams) I don't think this will change much. I just wish that the geographic repositioning would have brought things a little closer to each coast, to me the new events are still very much in the center of the country. |
Re: Future First Championship News
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However, the goal of FIRST is bigger than that - that is the magic of this program. The moment we all let go and allow regional championships be the end all, be all - we may lose everything else that makes FRC great. |
Re: Future First Championship News
It is possible to justify moving to a two-venue championship (eg a stop-gap to deal with intermediary scalability problems). The two big problems from this announcement are:
1) How FIRST sees its programs (presumably including FRC): Quote:
Both those are "problems" not because they are inherently wrong or broken, but they form a "big picture vision" of the future of this program that at least a significant subset of the community passionately disagree with. With those priorities, this may only be the beginning of a series of decisions with similar goals and reaction. |
Re: Future First Championship News
Drawing from my own experience of going to champs for the first time last year, the drop in competitiveness is what scares me most. As was said earlier, this kind of change could very well reduce championships to a glorified convention. My team earning a spot to champs after our first regional win in 11 years was huge to us, and the most valuable part of it to me by far was the pride in seeing how we really could hold our own amongst the best teams in the world. Knowing that we earned our place defined my experience there and my desire to earn our way to champs again.
Inflating champs to such a huge size will mean qualifications will no longer be that world class level of competition; it will be downright saturated with underperforming teams. 600 really feels like pushing it to me, but 800+ is very obviously too far; there simply aren't enough competitive teams to fill even half that quota, and the minority of downright admirable teams will become drastically scattered across the events/ fields. I can’t imagine how disappointing it would be for new students go to the world “championships”, and witness that 20%+ of the robots in their division barely (or don’t) work, and less than five robots are really worth following; that just sounds like a weaker regional. I’m particularly irked coming from NC, because it’d be nearly impossible for my team in future years to see real world class competition anywhere other than a competitive championship (IRI will never ever be in the budget, and NC is turning into its own district next year). Plus, transportation to champs would still be nasty. Besides the actual competing aspect, there will be a lot less for teams to learn from at champs. For example, my team is using this year at champs as a building opportunity to focus on learning from others how to improve our infrastructure/ sustainability. If champs were split in two, such an effort would be much less fruitful, because half the teams who know best about that stuff (mainly powerhouse teams) would simply not be there. |
Re: Future First Championship News
When I saw this announcement yesterday I was more disappointed with the locations than the splitting of the regional. As others have said, adding Houston doesn't do anything for travel for us. Detroit will cut travel time in half if we decide (and can afford) to go there.
I understand the disappointment many people feel with the split. I think they probably should have started this in 2016 instead of 2017 for one reason - the sooner they start, the sooner students who have experienced the single championship model "age out" of the competition. In 4 years, there will be no students who know the "single championship" model and "dual championships" will be the new normal. I think dual championships might drive some different team dynamics and attitudes as well. If this change eliminates the goal of "world champion" and "win at any cost", I can envision how that might change the goal of gracious professionalism for the better. |
Re: Future First Championship News
Food for thought:
In 2008 (I picked an arbitrary year), 340 teams attended champs, out of 1499 who competed. That means the percentage of teams who attended the event was 22.6% of all teams. So almost a quarter of teams who competed in 2008 attended the event. 3 years later, in 2011, this had decreased, to 17.1%. 351 teams attended champs, while 2053 teams competed. In a 3 year span, FRC saw a near-600 team growth, but only 19 slots opened at championship. This trend continued further, into last year: 2014. In 2014, 397 teams attended the championship event, while a whopping 2696 competed overall. That translated to 14.7% of competing teams qualifying for champs. The point I'm driving at is, a smaller and smaller chunk of teams get to experience championships every year. People keep driving at, championships are going to be less inspiring because all the best teams aren't going to be at a single one. But what's more inspiring; seeing a "watered down" championships, or not seeing champs at all? For me, at least, as a former student turned mentor, champs was about the energy. The passion. The electricity. I don't remember a single match from when I was student at champs. But I remember being with my team, I remember running around the stadium. I remember seeing signs and decorations, hearing guest speakers celebrate us and what we do. It was the time of my life. Just being there set me down the road to where I am now. A mentor, a volunteer. A guide to these students. Words can't express how proud I am of that. That brings us to 2015. Almost 3000 teams are competing this year, 2892. We've already been told that we will be hosting 600 teams at this event. 600/2892 = 20.7%. The highest percent we've had attending since 2008. Which is a great step forward. After an 8% decline over 7 years, we gain 6% back in one year. But what are we sacrificing to accomplish this? We are literally packing two championship events into one arena. 8 Division, two Einsteins. I'm not a logistics person, but that seems like a lot for a single venue to hold. FIRST is growing, and with that, it is becoming harder and harder to provide as many students as possible with an experience like mine. We're already packing 2 champs into one building, so doesn't the next logical step seem to be expanding? Consider this: In 2017, we'll say 800 teams attend champs, 400 per event. let's ballpark the team count that year at 3500. Just an estimate. 800/3500 = 22.8%. Boom. We're back to where we were 7 years ago. FIRST will have more than doubled in size but we are still providing the same percentage of teams with the championship experience. Diluted? Yes. But to students who have never gone before, inspiring all the same. I am as hardened a competitor as anyone else. My students constantly tell me to take a chill pill. But I can't. Competition is in my blood and I love pushing and driving my team to improve and do better. Yes, I would love a centralized event where the elite teams can play-off. Maybe with some relaxed rules. Some corn dogs and goats. But hey, that can't be possible, right? Oh. Competition is exciting for me. But if we start depriving kid's learning and experience in FIRST for the sake of competition, then what have we really become? Everyone asks me if what I do is like Battlebots. And I proudly tell them no. But if FIRST is all about competition, then isn't it the same? I'm in the program to help kids learn and grow as people; a lot of people are in that same boat. And if we are going to accomplish that goal, then we need to get kids exposed to an event with the passion and energy of a world championship. |
Re: Future First Championship News
This thread is expanding much faster than I can read it. I don't mean to step on anyone's toes if I'm repeating ideas.
My thoughts as I've read through: 1) Having Super-regionals and then a Championship event adds at least one, probably two, and possibly even three weeks to the competition season (Having back to back competitions that you have to qualify for and can't plan for ahead of time is simply not feasible). The length and intensity of competition season as it is now - at least in the district model- already stretches a lot of student's resources. With a super-regional model, we'd be running into graduation season for many people by the time champs rolls around. We'd also be looking at more mentor and volunteer burnout. Not to mention that smaller super-regionals won't be able to offer the full CMP experience, see my next point. 2) People seem to be mostly upset over a lowering of the level of competition and not being able to find out which is the best robot in the world. I'm obviously pretty alone in this sentiment, but to me, World Champs is a lot more about the gathering of the teams to learn from one another. I get a lot more out of volunteering, attending the conference talks, and perusing scholarship row than I do watching the Einstein matches. Obviously, the finals are ridiculously exciting, but for overall benefit, it's the rest of the week that I'm there for. I know that a lot of people will argue at this point that it's the drive to be the best in the world that inspires them, but... I really don't think that that ultra-competitiveness is in the spirit of FIRST. Mostly I want to yell at people to put the rulers away, that finding out who has the biggest --, ahem, the best robot is not the overall goal of this program. (In case you haven't heard, it's Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). From the tone of the announcement, I think I'm on the same page as FIRST here. 3) The stated reasons for this change is Quote:
But the other point? I think that's valid. It's no denying that FIRST is expanding, and there are a lot more kids and teams that should benefit from the CMP experience than are able to currently go. The system as it is is already pushing the accommodation resources of a major city to the breaking point. You can't get any more teams to CMPs without splitting it up. tl;dr: *The 'solution' of adding super-regionals will extend the season, ultimately leading to student, mentor, and volunteer burnout. *Champs is about a lot more than who has the best robot *FIRST is expanding and Champs needs to as well. Finally, to get to the constructive bit, here's my suggestions: 1) Get as many teams as possible into the district model before 2017. 2) If you absolutely must know who has the best robot, have a smaller event during the summer. Or, you know, there's always IRI. 3) As an alternative to everyone just dealing with the horror of multiple world champions, split the two events into FLL/FTC and FRC. |
Re: Future First Championship News
In 2017 first is turning world champs into regional champs. So why can't teams get that same inspiration at a District champs model?
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