Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

Since no one else has started a new thread to prepare for the discussion at Champs about the future of FRC, I have stepped up here. I am not advocating a particular position, nor will I be involved in the actual preparation and presentation. This thread is NOT about complaining about FIRST's announcement--it IS about constructing positive proposals.

I strongly urge that many of you who are concerned about this organize yourselves to make a set of coherent alternative proposals to present at the town meeting. Given the likelihood that the locations are contractually locked in, keep those sites in your proposal structures.

Use this thread to organize this presentation, and select specific presenters. Also prepare presentation materials, and even budget and manpower estimates. The more professional and complete, the more seriously it will be taken.

We should take Frank at his word (see below) and engage in constructive discussion.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

Personally, I believe this is the wrong point to discuss during the meeting. The issue isn't that they're two championship alliances, but rather that the whole FRC community will be split. I think the focus of the meeting should be see if there is a way to have only one FRC championship at one of the locations, and have the other be for FTC.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

FLL and FTC at one location. All FRC teams at the other. Vendors, speakers, workshops can be more specific to age and needs this way.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

The one thing i don't like about this proposal is FTC and FLL teams won't get to see FRC teams and the "big kids" and their robots. The other thing I loved to see at champs was the lower programs and how excited and inspired they were.

However, I suppose if we have the two venues, that may be the best compromise to keep one championship for FRC teams.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

Agreed. A final showdown would be nice and all, but it's really not the issue. At a meeting like this, it's just a distraction from the far more important and difficult to resolve problems.

Part of me is a little bothered that it was the only issue to make the blog post. It's mostly a red herring compared to the real and far more intractable challenges these contracts created.

My first suggestion: cross-event switching, e.g. where a Houston-bound team can trade places with a Detroit-bound one.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

I agree with this idea. FLL and FTC have grown beyond belief and the programs are getting better and better. I believe that they have reached the level where they can expand out and have their own location for a combined championship. I believe that Houston should be for FLL and FTC and Detroit for FRC. So that we can continue to have all FRC teams in the same housing but in a much larger venue.

For those concerned about the other programs not seeing FRC, you can always have an exhibition tournament at the FLL/FTC championship, and the same thing with FLL and FTC at the FRC Championship. Just an idea at least.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

One of the big concerns I've seen is that the "Championship experience" no longer happens in a stadium except for opening and closing ceremonies. With how the cities are laid out, there doesn't seem to be a way around this, but if anyone can think of some sort of alternative...


I think that qualifying teams could easily sign up to switch places under the current geography plan.
Create a list for Houston teams who want to go to Detroit/St Louis and a list of Detroit/St Louis teams who want to go to Houston. As soon a team qualifies for their championship event they can put their number at the bottom of their respective lists, and as soon as a team exists on both lists, the affected teams will be notified and will be swapped.

Once they had been swapped, this decision would be set in stone, but until a partner shows up, a team can cancel their request and go to their originally scheduled championship event. It sucks if you're qualifying near the end of the tournament, but its at least something.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

It is not as simple as that. Some of us are involved in FRC and one of the other programs. Two road trips on two successive weekends will be very difficult to make work. Many FRC teams have these two other programs as significant parts of their outreach (think Chairmans) so their team members may have to choose between being with the team they are coaching or abandoning them to participate in the FRC event. We have already seen this happen when an FLL tournament was scheduled for the same day as the FRC Kickoff. Lastly, many families have students participating in programs other than FRC.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

To those making a proposal, observe that you are engaging in a classic product definition exercise.

Prior to thinking too much about a proposal, it is worth spending some time thinking about what attributes a proposal might be judged on. Here are attributes that were discussed in the other thread:

. Cost of attendance for teams, including travel
. Presents FRC as entertainment
. Venue availability
. Event volunteer availability (both key and regular volunteers)
. Team mentor availability
. Team member availability
. FRC staff availability
. Fits between New Year's Day and AP test day
. Number of teams participating
. Avoiding events developing persistent easier/harder reputations
. Equipment (field) availability
. Economic feasibility
. Every team has the opportunity to attend, at a minimum, once every four years / number of students inspired by event
. The result of the annual competition is a single champion alliance
. Capacity of event to inspire students
. Ability of teams to decide where they compete
. Ability to inspire FLL/FTC teams via co-location

Ideas for others?

One might then consider building a House of Quality to compare various proposals on these attributes.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

Even more time, money, and school missed? Sounds like a fantastic solution!

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

I recommend you take Citrus Dad up on his suggestion and start working out a proposal for how this would work. FIRST has tentative plans for and knows how a 400 FRC team Champs would work at each location. You're going to have to convince them that either:
1. An 800-FRC team Event can work at one of the locations.
2. A smaller FRC Event can work at one of the locations and is in the best interests of the program.

If you show up and all you have is a demand/suggestion that we split FLL+FTC and FRC because you really want a single FRC Champs, that's probably not going to get as far.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

I agree with Kevin. Start with the premise that (1) FRC will have an 800 team championship level (remember that Frank already noted last year that FRC was going to quickly outgrow the 600 team field when they announced the field expansion) and (2) none of the contracted cities (nor anywhere else) will be able to accommodate a single 800 team field. Start structuring your proposals from there.

You can create a separate proposal that shrinks the Champs field to fit into 1 stadium but understand that you will have to develop a full season proposal.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

The problem of splitting FRC and FTC/FLL is that you make it highly unaccessible for a lot of teams, because now the Championships aren't centrally located. If our team got invited to Houston we would have a much harder time than we are with St. Louis. One way we could have a top winner is to work a little like the NCAA March Madness where Midwest/West and North/South never meet until the title game, So the winning alliance would come from Houston to Detroit/St. Louis, maybe with some FIRST sponsoring, for the final matches, since the two events take place on two weekends. Not sure how cost-effective and time consuming this would be, but the team would really only need to be there Saturday. And to keep it fair they wouldn't have much time to work on their bot between the two competitions.

Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
 

I'd like to see the actual numbers on how many this would really effect.