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

Does anyone know if the meeting is being recorded?

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

I heard that it was being recorded by FIRST.

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

You're not gonna get much out of it... Pretty much 40 min of Steve Chism and Don Bossi evading questions.

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

Did anyone there just record it? Because I forsee FIRST's video of this not going up for quite a while.

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

FIRST was recording it but there was also another personal camera on a tripod recording it

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

For those off us that weren't able to make it to the meeting can someone fill us in on what the jist of the meeting was?

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

From the presentation slides:
So basically - FIRST is unable or unwilling to make substantive changes to the plan, but you can rearrange the deck chairs if it makes you feel better.

Sounds like they barely provided answers to the "Questions" slide - they cited "contract negotiations" as a reason that the community wasn't consulted. Total cop out.

They had a big chart showing that the percentage of teams "that can experience Championship is shrinking". Going from 80% in 1995 to the current ~20%. The cheeky response is that 0% of teams will experience the "Championship" starting in 2017.

Unclear why FTC and FLL are so unloved that it's OK to have a very small % of those programs attend the Championship event, but that's unacceptable for FRC.

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

Wow, that's a real screw you to teams if I ever saw one. Sounds like someone is trying to cover their behind/save their job by trying to convince the FRC community (which is teams, not administrators) that this is good for them.

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

Glad to hear it's all going according to plan.

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

Well that sounds incredibly disappointing.

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

Sounds like they were cowards. If they kept dodging questions then what was the point?

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

Did anyone ask about the potential issue of limited volunteers?

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

Let's establish some truths:

In the long run, FIRST does not care about what you think concerning the prospect of two championships.

In the long run, FIRST is not scared of you.

Your ideas don't hold any weight as long as it is fundamentally different from the idea of the championsplit that has taken hold over HQ since 2014 (I assume)

FIRST thinks they are doing the right thing and those who don't fall in line to this line of thinking
a) are not a threat to the overall mission of FIRST
b) can only become a threat if their wishes are respected and thoughts are considered on equal footing to those who made the decision to split
c) will fall in line eventually because there is no alternative to FRC as far as they can see (which I assume is to the end of their nose)

If they do not fear a collection of individuals who are WFA, WFFA winners, employees of major sponsors, mentors on teams who share major sponsorship with FIRST, they fear no one. If the opposite were true, the town hall would have gone on as it should have in the eyes of the community, and not as planned out by FIRST.

I'm not a mind reader, but this is the perception, and perception is reality.

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

The adversarial stance of the community here on Chief Delphi is helping the situation how, exactly?

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

I guess it would be okay to give them a pat on the back and tell them that we don't mind if they keep making mistakes like this.

I'm sure someone would have eventually, but the session was only an hour, and half of it was Don Bossi's presentation.

Don Bossi actually complimented us on how "constructive" our comments were.

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

Or the displeasure could be expressed in a professional manner. Calling people "cowards" and openly insisting that FIRST should "fear" you and cannot see beyond the "end of their nose" is not constructive. This type of adversarial behavior would not fly in a professional setting. Voice your disagreement and concerns, don't make it personal. It's especially troubling to see this type of behavior coming from mentors.

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

...because currently, nothing the community is doing is really affecting FIRST's decision-making logic at all. Unless the community takes an obvious and impaction stance on pointing out the issues with champs AND rallying behind a straight-forward, obviously superior solution, FIRST is going to give us talk without really DOING anything at all. No single community member or group of passive members, as I see it, is influential enough to impact the doings of an organization that large. It will almost literally take an army.

And, obviously, this whole 2-destination championship means there is no champion anymore. It's like the AFL versus the NFL. Teams can use the metrics all they want, but if it's not settled on the filed, it's never going to be official. People are going to miss witnessing the "true champion" because there's another one being crowned in some city hundreds of miles away. That, and FIRST is going to live on and see a bunch of diffrent teams doing well, and probably doesn't mind a lack of a concluding event so long as "everyone has fun." Well, I only have 4 years I know I'm going to be actively in this program, and I can speak for more than myself when I say that crowning "co-champions" is a rather diluted way to end the season.

That, and we CAN come up with a better solution, but it will take more minds than are in this room right now. (1), and probably some FIRST reps too. That's why we have a forum, and I have an idea.

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

And that "army" can do so in a respectful manner. That army can also understand that the contracts are already signed. There are better ways to move forward than stamping your feet on the ground and personal attacks.

We crowned "co-champions" ever since alliances were introduced in 1999. There hasn't been a "true champion" in more than a decade. The champion alliance has emerged from a sub-set of all teams in which it was impossible to play with all teams since divisions were implemented in 2001.

There's plenty to be displeased about with the championship format. The "true champion" gripe is simply not legitimate. We don't have a "true champion" now as it stands.

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

Never claimed anyone should be feared, just that if they think they should be, they aren't.

As far as the beyond the nose comment, it's a reiteration of the decision makers being unable to anticipate a nontrivial level of detractors at best, and not really caring at worst. It's a flash of ineloquence on a good day and really unnecessary on a bad one, but it's nothing that hasn't already been hashed out enough already. A lot of things that have happened regarding the championsplit have been pretty unprofessional and they don't start and end at post 113 in this thread.

I'm not even stamping my feet, I've already accepted the fate.

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

Numbers can lie.

The better question to ask is why do only 40 percent of the registered teams in First compete in any event?

So to say a less percentage teams are competing at worlds is not a valid statement.

First needs to look at cost of a team to compete in events to gain more participation.


I think the two venues will allow First to have 800 teams participate as there was no venue in one place for this many teams.


So out of 6k teams and 600 of them at worlds they hold a town hall meeting after the fact.

Poor management decision, should have been held last year and discussed at district's and regional's throughout the year and summarized at worlds.

In the end I think it is all about the money in their account.

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

Based on your post, can I assume you were not in attendance? I wasn't and would like a report from someone who was there.

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

I'm not sure why they should fear anyone. The goals of FIRST and it's major sponsors are aligned. Why would the sponsors care how many championship events there are? They put $$$ into the program because it readies people for the workforce. The goal for FIRST is much the same, get students interested in STEM, get them to pursue post-secondary training in such things and be productive members of society. End of story.

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

Not that I necessarily fall into this category, I feel this is a pretty poor argument.

There is a very big difference between 3-4 teams working on the same alliance to achieve the same goal while getting to know each other, and two 3-4 alliances of teams operated by hundreds of miles which have nothing to do with each other and never actually interact during the season... Ever.

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

No, I wasn't. Text is from the slides that FIRST presented, and impressions are from those who were there. Pretty well captures the spirit of it, and all the key points.

Some information is better than no information, right?

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

I suppose. Really I want to know what questions were asked that were "barely answered."

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

There is a very big difference between a single team beating all of the others in a double elimination tournament and 3-4 teams being crowned simultaneous champions after competing in a subset of a competition than is a subset of all the teams in the world. Yes, two championship events moves us further away from a "true champion," but we've already been very far away from a "true champion" for a long time. We already have multiple winners each year. Those alliances already form from a subset of teams.

You won't find any disagreement from me in terms of thinking the region locking is a negative asset. But I don't think it particularly impacts how legitimate our champions are. Especially given that FIRST is considering some amount of flexibility between the two regions.

Further still, did you skip over the information posted by Scott Meredith than FIRST is considering a post-season event where the two champions face one another?

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

I was at the meeting taking notes, and have some pictures of the slides shown. I'll try to upload what I have after opening ceremonies, but our hotel wifi is super sketchy so no promises.

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

That would be super. Thank you.

--
Let's take the high road with this discussion. The high road consists of mature responses/reactions that contribute to a professional and thoughtful atmosphere. There is no reason to behave otherwise.

This is an emotional and frustrating time for some, perhaps many. Don't feed or fuel the emotions with name-calling and assumptions. In the end, it will only reflect poorly on you and will not accomplish anything productive.

I am very interested to learn more and hope to hear of more opportunities for discussions at the event.

Jane

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

It's likely too late for FIRST to even change anything. I'll bet they've already signed some sort of contract with the cities (or venues) of Houston And Detroit. If they can't get out of it, then everything is pretty much set in stone. But I really wish FIRST would just tell us things for what they are instead of beating around the bush.

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

It is about the KIDS!
In talking with a freshman today, I asked what he thought about FIRST Champs as it is his first experience with an event outside the district model>
Reaction > AMAZING!!! "I love seeing the teams and the different ways they solved the same problem"

For everyone who looks solely at the competitive nature of the event, I want to say: I am sorry for you. The experience that students take away from the event is THE important part of the event. Mentors, we are here to support the students in their endeavors to discover and achieve great things. "More than Robots" - quite frankly it is.

As I sit here proctoring two promising young students AP Chem Test Exams, I can't help but notice the general tone of this discussion continuing to divulge into negativity. Does FIRST accomplish 100% of everything correctly on their first try? < NO. Are they trying to make a positive impact on the largest population of students? < YES

I have seen it on our team > Sometimes students experiencing something like Championships is all it takes for them yearn to accomplish bigger and better things. Who are we, as adults, to suggest that any one team or student deserves that privilege more than another.

Put the competition aside for a few minutes... Think about some of the most amazing moments that you have had as a mentor or a student not at a competition. Do those significantly change if there are 6 "World Champions"?

If you are in it for the ROBOTS and not the STUDENTS > Perhaps there is a better place to be spending your energies.

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

Hi, i am student.

Big thing to think about, 400 teams will be about 800 miles away, never to be seen by you. You will not be able to see them, see how they tackled the challenge, compete against and with them, and learn how they work. Teams like us cant afford either to spend a few grand to go to stuff like IRI or Chezy Champs, so teams like us will never interact with teams in Israel or New York, and vice versa.

For that matter, a lot of my friends (and I) would feel cheated if we were to make it. The feeling of being a "top team" INSPIRES a lot more than people seem to realize. There are people i know who only do stuff like this just to get out of school, or to look cool because we are a decent team. Some students dont realize that its more than just robots, and some wont change that mindset.

Along with that, instead of feeling like you are good, you would just be another team with 800 other teams competing for 1/6th of a title, how fun is that? Or go to a sponsor, "We won 1/6th of a world championship." Not going to go well.

It is about the students, but splitting the championships is not the right way to get more involved, it just annoys and saddens all.

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

There has been plenty of discussion on the split and it's not all limited to the "true championship" argument. To think some detractors only focus on this is pretty one dimensional and insulting to people who have been in FIRST longer than you and me combined. Quite literally, over a thousand thoughts on Chief Delphi are available for you to sift through to help understand where detractors of the split are coming from. While I can easily point out a post here, there are others you are welcome to browse. Don't take false pity on people who made rational arguments against the split.

I will concede that my energies are better spent not performing the internet equivalent of talking to a brick wall.

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

On the subject of potential solutions; I seem to remember Siri floating a "exchange" possibility on the first thread - where teams going to one championships would have the ability to trade their slot with a team going to the other championships.

That would certainly be a start towards solving the "region locking" - I can't see any downsides at the moment. Is there something I've missed?

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

I agree, I think it's a shame that so many people are focusing on the 'two world champions' thing.

The real problem with the championsplit is that those students will not see many of the unique ways to solve the problem. Your students will never see the unique solutions that 254, 148, 118, 1678, 1983, 16 or any of the other great Houston-Champs teams will build.

I wonder, how many people were inspired to build a PTO after seeing 254's climber at champs in 2013?

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

It doesn't help either that the community "against" two championships doesn't exactly have a unified idea on why two championships is bad. We waste our time talking about individual preferences which may or may not be the biggest issue.

This is the fundamental issue. The world isn't coming to one spot to compete and inspire. The community is cut in half no matter how much you try to "stitch it together" with spots for the other side of the world to join your championships.

Then you have good teams trading to one side or the other. A conspiracy to make the "real" champs where the good teams go, and the "bleh champs" where everyone else goes. You could do it completely randomly, but then... no travel cost reduction.

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

I believe that that is one of the things FIRST is looking at--see the recap posts earlier in this thread.

My personal preference would be that two "exchanges" would be in play.
1) Region exchange. Basically, random-draw the regions every year, or swap X regions every year. Somewhat easy to manage, if it was done early enough (let's just say in August).
2) Team exchange. Teams that for whatever reason want to (or need to) go to the "wrong" championship can trade with teams at that championship with the same dilemma.

That being said, I think that the effect on teams of the announcement--and then any perceived stonewalling at the town hall--is a very definite negative. Having a little bit more openness--including an announcement about how "changing eligibility to maintain a reasonable size at Championship is very difficult, so we are looking at other options, does anybody have any ideas"--from the start would have been, I think, much better received. And they'd have gotten a lot more constructive feedback before making the call--now, I think they'd have made the same call, but there are different ways to put things that can give a much different "reaction". See "spin" in the politicians' dictionary.

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

I don't have a strong opinion about how to solve the growth problem. If you want to start with thousands of teams, and narrow things down to a single championship match, you have to have various "layers" of competition (i.e. districts->district championship/regional->8 divisions->4 rounds at Einstein.)
As the number of teams grows, you either have to lower the number of teams that advance to each new layer, or add layers, or knock off the top layer. If you add layers, (like with super-regionals) that means extra cost and extra time off school for students. There's no "easy" answer of how to handle that growth.

Nevertheless, it disturbs me that some people who have chosen one solution to the problem don't even seem to understand, or even want to understand, the tradeoffs involved with the other solutions. In particular, an awful lot of people who favor the "two championship" model, don't see to realize that there is something lost with that solution. An awful lot of people, including what would appear to be the people at HQ, seem to think that the "single championship" model has something to do with determining the best team. It doesn't. Sports don't really do that, ever. Some sports come closer than others. Our sport doesn't even come close. There's a huge amount of luck in most of our games, and the alliance selection process totally destroys the idea that the winning alliance is made up of the best teams. No, it is not the best teams that end up with the blue banners.

And that doesn't matter. What we are doing this weekend is still a real championship, and what we will do in 2017 will not be a real championship. That matters.

Does it matter enough to make one decision better than the others? I'll leave that to the professionals to decide, but I would feel better about it if I were convinced they understood why it matters.

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

Furthermore, of all the concerns it is probably the single easiest item to fix.

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

I don't understand this logic at all. I've seen others make similar statements about not being able to see all the teams, so please don't take this as specific to you.

Let's do the math:

4 days of competition (half day Wednesday/Sunday, full days Thursday/Friday/Saturday)
24 hours/day
60 minutes/hour

If you have 800 teams at one location, that gives you 4*24*60 minutes to meet with 800 teams. Assuming no eating, sleeping, walking between teams, or actually competing, you end up with a best case scenario of being able to spend 7.2 minutes per team. In that timeframe, how can you "...see them, see how they tackled the challenge, compete against and with them, and learn how they work." Even if you go to 400 teams, you're still at 14.4 minutes for a best case scenario.

Now that's only for you. What about those top tier teams? Can they deal with new people coming to their pit every 7.2 minutes for 4 days straight? Maybe think of it this way: at 7.2 minutes per person, a team could only meet/talk with 800 people.

FIRST estimates 3,000 teams this year and 75,000 students involved. If you took 800 teams to a single championship and the proportionate number of students, you would have 20,000 students. That does not include mentors, family members, and the general public that would attend as well. How can a small fraction of those meet all the teams they want? It's impossible.

If you want to argue that you might not be able to see your favorite teams, I can agree with that. However, you will have other teams you will get to see that you normally might not.

And sure, it's cool to see all the different robots. I get that.

This is change and people don't like change. I think it will all work out in the end. After all, is there ANY sport that claims a true, single WORLD champion? The World Series winner never plays baseball teams from Cuba or Japan. The SuperBowl champions never play teams from Finland or Belarus (I just looked those up - they play football or gridiron). Stanley Cup winners don't play Latvia or Sweden.

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

Cant deny that, its not exactly possible. That doesnt mean you cant at least marvel at their robot for a few seconds, and talk to only the teams you really want to talk to.

With the other 400, you just dont see them, and that is truly missing out on some great teams, which is one of the main issues.

Both Baseball and Football are predominantly american, and we (and we i mean the viewers of the sport) dont exactly want outside competition in those, i cant say the same about hockey.

There is also Olympic versions of these too. you can consider those "World Champions."

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

The most famous sporting event in the world (probably beating out the Olympics, even) is the FIFA World Cup.

I also don't think anyone has wondered why they didn't go for a single 800 team venue. That's insane.

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

From the notes I took and some personal thoughts about the meeting:

FIRST said they would open with about half the meeting explaining their thoughts and what went into the decision. The discussion would try to answer/cover what they deemed the 5 most frequently requested questions of:

Questions:

- What are FIRST's objectives with this decision?
- What process was used to make this decision, and why wasn't the FIRST community asked for input?
- How does this reduce travel costs, especially for West Coast teams?
- Doesn't having two championships weaken the competition aspect that helps make any sport exciting?
- What elements of the decision are set in stone and what elements can the community still help decide?

***************************************
Don Started with Objectives and Core Values and the importance of the organization to stay mission focused.
They wanted a solution taht scales. They wanted more kids to have access to the life changing experience of FIRST and FIRST Championship.
Enable more teams to participate in the FIRST Championship by reducing travel distances and transportation costs for a significant number of teams.
They reviewed a nice graphic that showed the growth of FIRST and the relative portion of population that attend FRC championship throughout the years.
Don brought up the desire to get to around 20% (up from 15%), and cited the 600 team events this year and next as the current method followed by teh 2 event as the follow on method.
Don frequently stated that in the 9 months of working towards the current plan, they did not find what they felt was an ideal solution, but did feel that what they found was the best options that they had.
Don mentioned some of the dificulties from a venue size and more importantly availability out through 2020. Don mentioned that the convention industry has had a lot of growth since their last contract award (IE going to St. Louis) which only makes sense from an eceonomy standpoint. (In MY Opinion, Don seemed to reference that some locations they really wanted were just not available until some time after 2020).
They mentioned again that the locations were chosen in part due to the number of teams within a given mileage (600 miles), that they cited as the range for persons to drive to the event. They basically cited that they felt really bad about California, and especially PNW, but it sounded like their hands were tied from venues standpoint.
There was some commentary on the weakening due to two events, but frankly that one was glazed over during this portion and they went into what was set in stone vs. what was flexible:

Non-negotiable:
2 "Championships" through 2020
400 FRC teams at each event (800 total)
Must have FIRST Progression of programs at each event (IE FLL/FTC/FRC).


FIRST is "exploring":

- Options for a post-season, broadcasted, event between winning alliances
- Opening a percentage of slots at each Championship to teams from the other Championship region
- Other options for adding to the value of Championship for teams

At the end, they covered that FRC used the bulk of floorspace citing about 80-90%.

This opened to Q&A. People were asked to go to Mics (there were two), they asked persons to keep their questions to about 30 seconds, and they would be allowed a follow up if they didn't feel their questions was adequately covered. They did remind people of "Gracious Professionalism". People giving Questions were asked to give Name, Location, and team affiliation. I will save names and teams, but will cite location as it seemed relevant for some:

From NH mentor: Asked if there could be a focus on conferences and other Championship items be brought to District Champs and Regionals.
I believe Frank ansered that it was an idea that would be investigated. NH mentor asked how to get involved and Frank asked her to email him.

CA mentor #1: Asked why "Community" was not engaged in decision making process. Don Bossi cited the need when negotiating for venues that they cannot involve everyone, but the survey they sent out hopes that they can keep the good and important stuff of th championship at both events. My notes are bad on CA mentor's follow up as it was something about Michigan Model and FIRST Core values (more on this later).

NY Mentor- FIRST time at Champs wanted to know more about location selection. ?? cited that FIRST from a geopgraphy standpoint would have liked Salt Lake City Utah & Detroit, but that could not be worked out.

CT Mentor: Brought up the need for this to follow the sports model and the need for a Champion (1 champion). Compared this to a divorce and splitting up the kids. This was more of a statement than a question.

CT Mentor/Student: Brought up the importance of international teams and cultural exchange, and wanted to know how their location was decided. ??? responded that they were still working through details on that. Additional exchange about the importance of international with accidental "rip" on Canadians not being real international, but was OK as the person was Canadian... A small chuckle from the crowd, but only answer was "we understand it is important, but are still working through those details."

CA Mentor #2: Asked about Super Regional model rolled out a couple years ago, and why that was not being followed. Answer was that FIRST thought districts would be more widespread by now. Some discussion about local leadership needing to take on District efforts, and that FIRST could not force their hand. Some good back and forth about districts from mentor that posed question. Follow up question asked how many FIRST Alum are on FIRST Board. Answer was "0", and mentor mentioned that was an issue.

North Carolina Mentor: Brought up concern for Safety and bringing students to DETROIT. Don brought up the extra efforts FIRST does with Cities to ensure Safety. Brought up the extra police, and some of the newspaper reputation St. Louis has. Mentioned he has been to Michigan and Detroit and felt safe. Some back and forth with the mentor about concerns about Detroit. Concern about finding safe lodging "just outside the city" was follow up. No real answer by FIRST.*
*As someone that lives in Detroit Metro, I can assure you there is very very nice areas in the Metro area that are very reasonable drive to the city. I lived at 9.5 and Woodward for 5 years and loved the area. Downtown Detroit is actually really nice, but there are dangerous parts/areas, but that is pretty much every big city.

CA Mentor #1 Round 2: As this mentor had already discussed 2 topics, FIRST asked other questioners if they were OK waiting. They were, so CA Mentor discussed the District model, referenced people from FiM, and "its proven ability to generate new growth" and thus why 1 winner is needed. FIRST disagreed that the growth was primarily due to having a champion and instead cited growth as primarily FiM having a growth goal culture, engaging schools, sponsors, and engaging Gov. Snyder and State legislature to provide funding support for new teams. CA Mentor #1 referenced the need for 1 real world champion and the goal for that is a major driving force in his efforts.

NJ #1 Mentor: Asked why FIRST did not engage experts in decision. Cited airline experience and Detroit being a shrinking Hub. FIRST asked him to get to his question. He cited concerns about bringing kids to the most Dangerous City in the US. His follow up question was asking which FIRST member has vacationed in Detroit. FIRST cited some similar items about safety as earlier question, and the Mentor asked again who had vacationed in Detroit to which no one had.

*It should be noted that I believe there is a FIRST regional in or within 20 minutes of 7/10 of these most dangerous cities in the US, and St. Louis, current World Championship cite is #4... Just sayin....http://lawstreetmedia.com/crime-amer...ties-200000-2/
**Note there are several nice "I'm so tough I vacation in Detroit" T-Shirts available at various stores...

I got up to ask a comment/make a statement. I believe there were 2 more questions, one from:

CA Mentor #3, but I did not take notes.

NJ #2 Mentor, I also missed notes for his, but I think it was more of a comment than a question.

At that point, time was up.

These are my notes/shorthand. Overall, I thought a reasonable effort was given to explain their decision and their rationale. Like most town halls, there seemed to be a fair amount of airing of grievances and ensuring ones voice is heard. I admire the passion that all of the presenters and question askers showed for their topics.

I talked with one of the question/statement persons with regards to the need for 1 Champion. It was not terribly productive as I was trying to cite the "IMO" need for mindset beyond winning, and her and several supporters made it clear the need for role models that are pointed out by them winning.

As far as dodging questions, I really only felt that the "need for 1 champion" and "where are internationals teams going" were dodged. In general, the "need for 1 champion" weren't really questions and instead were statements of concerned persons. I can see how this may have come across as "dodgy", but again the comments seemed more like statements than questions when poised. In this scenario, those answering were likely wiser than I as they didn't try to change anyones mind, just asked if they had a question to follow their statement.

************************************************** ***
The statement that I wanted to bring up, but ran out of time was that the citing of Michigan growth was not due to crowning a champion. FYI, at MSC, you have 1 Champion alliance, 3 MSC Chairman winners, and 1 team that has the most points (often but not always a MSC event winner). Since 2009, I have never heard any of the 3 MSC CA winners complain abuot getting a dilluted award. I have heard others talk about how unfair or difficult it is to win and MSC CA, but no one I talked to was sad when they won. IMO, the really important part of FiM was giving every team an opportunity to compete, improve, and compete each season (which all districts currently do), and a focus on improving middle and bottom tier teams to make a stronger overall community. This lead to more widespread support which in turn lead to more events and more cities being involved which lead to more impact to the community which eventually lead to getting the Governor and other Legislative persons engaged in supporting FIRST in Michigan.

************************************************** ***

My favorite set of questions was CA Mentor #2. I too prefer the Super regional model and was curious why that seemed to go away. During the explanation, I sensed a great deal of frustration that the "District model" has not taken off in certain areas. I also thought that the question of "alumni" on the board was a very good point/question to make. When I was in high school, I was one of 2 Junior Leaders that sat on the fair council meetings. While we were outnumbered by adults, it was occasionally beneficial for them to get/understand the student perspective for decisions. I think having a former student or having a panel of say Dean's List students weighing in on some important questions might benefit FIRST a lot.

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

I was in the meeting and thought the notes posted were pretty accurate of the meeting. I guess what bothered me a little is that the only thing not really set in stone is what to do with the winners. Seems like there was no way to have them consider moving FLL and FTC into their own event and no one is world champs and one is world festival idea. It was really mostly just them telling us most things we already knew and hearing the communities complaints and saying okay. They also mentioned they expected backlash maybe not quite as much as what happened but went with it anyways without really letting us know.
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I know they were talking about contracts and stuff but unless they sealed those last minute, I don't think there was a reason to not inform us. I know deans list winners are usually asked their opinions on major change ideas but this time we heard nothing. I wasn't even aware how they were doing the Dean's list ceremony. Alumni network hasn't gained much traction as far as I know but honestly Chief Delphi is the best alumni network we are going to get and is fine in my opinion. Maybe not the one FIRST wants but it works the best.
/dlw rant

Anyways though, it seems like nothing is really going to change and the meeting was more of a this is how it is going to be, get your frustration out now. Maybe they didn't intend it to be that way and so hostile on both ends but that's what it became and was.

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

I'm curious to know if they explained why each championship had to have 400 FRC teams, and some number of (J)FLL/FTC teams. I know they started off by saying that it's non-negotiable, but I want to know why. The 2 championships I understand cannot be changed due to contracting issues, but I don't see why they absolutely have to split up the teams within their own competitions.

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

Im glad this was addressed, I was very curious myself. Salt Lake seemed like the logical location but if you cant get the venue you cant get it.

Gosh I wish people would stop ragging on Detroit. As you said, so many Events are hosted near "dangerous" cities, our lovely St. Louis being one of them.

Very, VERY good point.

Thank you greatly for your notes. I hope someone recorded it- I would love to see everything not-shorthand. Ill take what I can get, as it stands I was neck deep in sorting out the queue behind the curtains when this was going on. Thanks much for the time to write it all out :)

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

They mentioned the progression as a core value and cited that FLL and FTC are a small portion of the footprint of an event.

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

From what I gather, there was no discussion of an "open/world" model?

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

You know what I still don't understand? The question about why the community wasn't involved beforehand and FIRST answers by saying that it was because of contract negotiations with the venues. That makes sense (kinda) but why not ask the community how they felt about splitting up Champs well BEFORE starting contract negotiations with the venues?

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

One ray of hope I can imagine in all this is that maybe FIRST could move back towards the super regional format in a few years by scaling back these events and adding back a true championship.

And then we would look back at the 2017-2020(?) as the dark ages of the big mistake.

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

Learning curve. Possibly, a steep one.

The response regarding thinking we would be further along in regions moving to Districts holds merit. This change could possibly help move that forward. I'd love to see more discussion about that.

It is not surprising that the focus is on furthering the mission and that all of the programs need to be represented/involved at both events. Core Values are Core Values and the progression plan is important. It is what makes FIRST, FIRST. FRC is a part of the whole, not the whole. The program has continued to develop over the years and I don't see that changing. The development is off the field as well as on the field; it has to be that way. STEM initiatives and developments don't take a vacation. That means that FIRST has to continue to evolve to keep up and remain relevant in its mission.

Jane

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

This is SUPER INFORMATIVE! Thanks so much! How many people showed up? Was it a packed room? and, were there a lot of people waiting to ask questions, because it reads like one person got to ask questions twice.

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

The room was actually not very packed. Definitely less than half full.

Periodically more people would go in line to ask questions, but I would say each side never reached >5 people.

My thoughts exactly. Announcing "we're considering having two separate Championships" is different than announcing "we're in negotiations with [Venue(s)] in [City A] and [Venue(s)] in [City B] to hold two separate Championships on [Dates A] and [Dates B]." I can understand keeping the later under wraps, but the former?

I'd say it was somewhere around 15%. And that was just the lower level of the theater. The upper levels were essentially empty.

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

How does that compare to other conferences they have held at champs?

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

My main concern now is how to "undo" this for 2021, in such a way that will continue to satisfy the FIRST objective mindset that told them this was a good idea. (Don't get me wrong - I'm still plenty peaved that my son's senior year will be a "half-championship" year if we get to go...and all the incoming Freshmen that year will get to experience nothing other than "half-championships" during their tenure.) But the real question and task becomes how to put the necessary changes in motion so that a switch from 800 FRC teams, plus the cumulative representation from the other programs back to whatever number a single venue can support will not be considered a backward step by either the teams or by FIRST. Further, while some incremental change would be necessary (universal districts, or something like that) there will also need to be some kind of major change for that season to either increase or at the very least maintain the number of teams gaining what FIRST is currently calling the "Championship Experience."*

I have a nagging feeling that something like a new government program was just created...and once it is created it won't go away.

*(By my math...607 FRC teams are receiving the full "Championship Experience" this year...thus 607 * x = 607x...in 2017 800 teams get half...thus 800 * .5x = 400x The Championsplit results in a 34.1% reduction in experience.)

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

I hope this incident this afternoon sways FIRST into moving away from a violent city....I hope nobody involved with FIRST was involved in the shooting.

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

Please prepare a list of potential venues in cities with no violent crime.

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

Although I'm certainly not losing sleep over it, St. Louis and Detroit are in fact #3 and #1 in the nation for violent crime (cities with population over 250,000). And not much better by the other metrics. Asking him to find a city with no crime is pretty disingenuous, when *every* other city (sans Oakland) is in fact safer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...me_rate_(2012))

If you want to look at the data for cities <250,000. Salt Lake is the only one I remember offhand that people mentioned as a WCMP site.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr..._2012.xls/view

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

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mlj45jggj/1-detroit/

Something not in the top 10 would be nice for a change.

I'd personally like Indianapolis. I have no problem with the championship in Houston

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

Granted, I am a big fan of Detroit sports, so I wouldn't mind going to a Tigers game. The immediate area around the stadiums isn't bad and I would feel fine walking around there, but it gets seedy REALLY quick. There are simply not enough hotels in what I would consider the "safe" part of Detroit to support a championship.

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

This ^
I believe FIRST thought the majority of states would be on the district model by now. I don’t think they expected moving to districts would take so long or meet with the resistance that it has in some areas (which begs the question of why they were surprised that there was so much backlash over the schplit but I digress). It is human nature to be fearful and angry about things we don’t understand or that we feel have come at us from out of the blue. The problem they have encountered with the move to districts IMHO right now is several-fold:

1. A lack of understanding of the district model (which I am very guilty of myself but am taking steps to rectify for me personally)
2. Concerns with the costs of moving to the district model (who is going to pay for everything and how)
3. The geographic density of teams (in some states it is sparser than others)

Jane, I agree, I think that this is a huge push to make districts happen by ’17 and I think that this all goes back to the fundamental vision of having FIRST everywhere.

*Sidebar*
As far as the complaints about Detroit and Houston only time will tell if they were the right choices or not but I will say this: Please remember, this is a public forum and we are setting the tone for which these two cities will accept us as a community. If I were either a Detroit/Michigan team or a Houston team (which we are...kind of the red-headed step-child but it's our home regional :D) I might start to get a little miffed at all the negative rep our HOME has gotten here on CD.

Thank you guys who did attend the meeting and try to get some answers. They may not have been the answers we wanted but at least you were there and took the notes!

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

This had a lot to do with being scheduled during lunch of a qualifying match day. Lines were long and food was not permitted in the theater.

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

That was going to be my followup question. thanks for the info.

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

One point that I still don't see answered is why is this the lowest hanging fruit for making a higher impact "Championship Experience"? It takes a tremendous amount of resources to have a single FIRST Championship, and now they are trying to put on two Championships. That's going to put an incredible amount of stress on the volunteer pool for FRC, and quite frankly I anticipate it is unrealistic that these events will match the inspirational power of the single Championship.

FIRST could stand to do a much better job marketing, televising, and really bringing the Championship experience to many more people by putting together truly professional media coverage. I know they have tried to do this with Einstein the past two years, but something more like the FiM television program would be more ideal for "making it loud". That is such a high production quality program that is fun to watch AND it can captivate even non-FIRST affiliated audiences on a public broadcast. However, FIRST currently has a lower production quality, difficult to find, and low experience webcast that fails to even show a full field view of Einstein matches (there is a whole thread on this...).

I have to believe an EXTREMELY well done televised cast would require less resources, reach more people (both within FIRST and outside of FIRST), and "make it loud"er than trying to make 2 Championships happen. I admittedly don't know all of the details, but it just seems to be lower hanging fruit for a bigger FIRST impact in my opinion.

Another interesting outcome of the Town Hall is the fact that places aren't going to districts as quickly as FIRST had hoped (...shocker). This is particularly intriguing from my perspective because I look back at where Michigan was in 2009 (based on CD searches) and where New York is in 2015, and it seems to me that districts make as much or more sense in New York now as compared to Michigan when they first went to districts. There's a whole thread on this particular situation, but the resistance to change is a real barrier to FIRST's scale-able growth in the future.

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

Well they should fear us and care about what we think.. we are paying 5000+ to compete yearly...what is all FRC team get together and decide not to enroll until we have a say in something regarding the program? or is that too much to ask for? At the end of the day this is not a free program we are all in a way paying customers.

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

I still think the single biggest problem with the championshplit is that the lions share of the inspiration of the championship comes from being able to schmooze with the best teams in the world.

By geographically dividing them, the best don't end up in one place and that necessarily reduces the total impact of the event. Are DCMP's inspiring? Sure, but not as inspiring as WCMP. The championshplit takes WCMP and turns it into 2x something a bit bigger than MICMP.

Not only this, but the most inspiring super-elite teams (like 1114, 254, 148, 118, and many many more) build their FRC robots around the goal of winning the championship, and by removing the cohesive goal they strive toward, their impact may be reduced.

Its easy to say that HQ is making these decisions to get maximum impact for maximum number of teams (and so getting more teams to a CMP-class event is good), but not if it comes at the cost of watering down the impact of the top teams, because IMO, that's where most of the inspiration comes from.

I remember a couple of years ago in 2013 listening to 1114 explaining their reasoning behind Simbot BA Baracus not having a floor pickup. They had built their robot to be the best cycler and 30pt climber, because they knew that 7 disc autos would be prevalent among the top teams, and they wanted to be first pick of the #1 captain. Two 7 disc autos wouldn't help an alliance, but a really fast 30pt climber would. They werent concerned with how to win regionals, but rather, how to win CMP. It made perfect sense. Their plan worked, too. They built a robot to be first pick, and it was.

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

I wonder if the leadership understands this comment. If they do, then they will be able to fix some problems and do the best job they can to make the experience everything it can be, and patch up some relationships in the process.

My initial emotional reaction to the two season finale events was intensely negative. After reading a little bit about things, I saw that there really was a problem for a lot of teams, and having two season finales might really be all about offering an affordable experience to more people.

A couple of things have happened since then that make me think, though, that they just don't understand the problem. One was the town hall presentation. If they had understood the problem, they never would have led with what they did. It's just a non-starter. It shows that they didn't understand their audience.

A second thing was my own championship experience, from a few hundred miles away. When the system for updating the match results went down, they didn't fix it or find an alternative. A way of posting scores and linking to that on a web site is not a major technological challenge in the 21st century, but First didn't seem to think it was important enough to get it done. (As an aside, thank you again, Blue Alliance)

It seems almost as if the leadership doesn't understand what they've got. They put together a fantastic backdrop for a fantastic event. Getting everything together, the stadium, the arrangements, the exhibits, the ceremonies, the concerts, that's all fantastic. No doubt such a major undertaking took a huge amount of their time, effort, and resources.

I have to wonder if they didn't forget what was the backdrop, and what was the event. Yes, all those things are great, and offering them to more people is a worthy goal, but they're the backdrop. Without the event, they wouldn't be so spectacular. They might even seem out of place.

We shall see, I suppose. If they come to understand the problem, I'm sure they'll find a way to make it great. I look forward to helping with a great event in Detroit. For those of you who are afraid of coming to my adopted home town, your fears are misplaced. We hosted a Super Bowl just a few years ago. We can do half of a First Championship, and with 350 teams from Michigan to draw from, there will be the best volunteer staff you could possibly imagine. See you there......Well, half of you, anyway.

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

If this is true, than that's pretty sad to me - FIRST is hugely focused on STEM of course (it's in the name) but the entire program has so much more depth than simply preparing people for the workforce. I have never built a single part for my team's robot, but have done a ton strategy, PR (website & social media), and some CADing (hmm you might be able to consider that as indirectly building a part...). The highlight of my season is always competitions, culminating in World Champs. What's special about FIRST is that everyone can have a role whether or not they like engineering; think of how many teams have a business/media/awards side and an engineering side. FIRST is a well-rounded program, and it's always "more than robots" as they so like to say. I for one do not plan to pursue a career in STEM, but I do plan to stay in FIRST for as long as I can manage. FIRST needs these kinds of people - students who become alumni who become key volunteers - but as passionate as I am about FIRST, having the two championships from 2017-2020 (putting that end date because I'm hoping it'll change for the better after that) is frustrating and disheartening because it won't allow me as a mentor/volunteer to provide students with the same experience that made me fall in love with FIRST in the beginning :confused: /endrant

The room/theatre was a lot less packed than I expected it to be. I attended Karthik's strategy talk and the theatre was almost full. In comparison, the seating during the town hall meeting looked sparse and disappointing. Also, I knew a meeting would take place during Champs, but didn't know when it would happen until I saw a tweet by the Cheesy Poofs, so I'm wondering if some people just didn't know it was happening (it could've just been me though :rolleyes: )

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

In most cases I would say the change to districts is not the fact that regions don't want to switch, its the fact that...

- They don't have enough volunteers
- They don't have enough venues
- They don't have enough money

These are far more likely assessments.

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

Volunteer need scales to fill available space for the most part. What good does FTA training do someone if an FTA already covers all events in the area and/or the only events in the area are ones you attend with your team? Replace "FTA" with almost every other position. There's likely a rough gap year, but any other issues with volunteering probably center around issues outside of a talent pool.

Venues can be shaky. I know Ontario isn't home to the mega-gyms you see even in places like Indiana.

Money is an odd complaint. There are startup costs, sure (like buying your own field perimeter, I think FIRST sells the electronics to you directly??? I need to read up) but regionals aren't what one would call a low cost solution.

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

I'm not sure if anyone's posted another version, but I'm grateful that 1640 recorded the hour-long session.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FFh...ature=youtu.be

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

Popcorn's in the microwave. Thanks, 1640.

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

Thank you, 1640.

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

Thank you guys so much for recording this.

I also gotta say, the guy leading the town hall meeting, re-iterating about GP right after Shawn stopped talking, that was pretty dang rude to him.

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

Link for the lazy: https://youtu.be/8FFhhPlrRvM?t=3179

Don't forget when the moderator was rude to Mike Corsetto, after he fairly got back in line after asking his original question: https://youtu.be/8FFhhPlrRvM?t=2892

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

Their growth expectation of FRC seems absurdly high too. They want 5-10x growth over the next 10 years. I think FRC only doubled over the previous 10. Sounds like they expect FRC to be at 20,000+ teams in 10 years. I sincerely doubt FRC gets past 12,000, if even 10,000.

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

"How do the two people behind you feel about you being up for round 2?"

Honestly, I would have been okay if the entire Q&A was just 30 minutes of Mike asking questions.

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

I feel worse after watching that, than before. FIRST leadership is obviously disconnected with the community.

FTC is growing exponentially (Why), lower the cost of FRC (the robot is the cheapest part) and you will get more teams. With the availability of more and more COTS parts, even teams without dedicated engineers can be competitive.

They want STEM leaders to be celebrated by the world, but they continue to disrespect and take for granted the STEM leaders that make their program successful.

What they should be doing is petitioning states to help create the district model nation wide, the message will be louder coming from FIRST than from "mentor X".

The body language on stage told it all, for the most part they seemed annoyed.

I was a volunteer and didn't have time to attend the town hall during the day.

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

He's probably one of few people there who was articulate enough to ask questions everyone was thinking and receive occasionally dubious answers without having his calm severely damaged.

The whole exchange is simply baffling. This whole year has been baffling. There are people in FIRST who have put a lot more faith into the organization than I have and the last 5 months or so I have felt it evaporate from under me. What makes FIRST what it is? Students? Mentors? Volunteers? Staff? Those who we can reach out to? The board of directors?

I'm going to yell at the proverbial brick wall until I'm blue in the face: this is a partnership. If mentors do something that is not in the interest of students, the partnership can be damaged and disintegrate. If staff and volunteers cannot communicate information to students and mentors, that partnership can (and has in the past) turn hostile. It is paradoxical for the board to act in the best interests of FIRST over the interests of the community of FIRST, but that seems like the move they made here. If volunteers get overworked, they'll burn out. If staff get overstretched, they'll quit. If mentors feel like this program's moves do not align with what they hold to be true, they'll move on. If students don't have mentors, volunteers, or staff, what do they have left? A board that can give them a pat on the back?

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

Thank you Isaac for these notes. Like many other volunteers I was a bit busy during the time the Town Hall was scheduled so I did not get to attend. I also enjoyed watching the video that 1640 made and linked in this thread.

What came through most clearly to me in the video was Don Bossi's preamble, in which he contrasts FIRST's mission to that of the NFL. The latter exists primarily to serve the interests of team owners, while FIRST's culture changing goal is directed to inspire a whole generation of students to become leaders and innovators in science and technology. FIRST programs currently reach only 20% of US high schools, and a smaller fraction internationally, so the mission is mostly directed toward students that do not have access to FIRST programs now -- NOT only to the interests of teams that already exist.

Culture change, and the FIRST program growth that will drive it, will not happen without sustained engagement of strong teams. The inspiration provided by FRC games, and by winning at those, is a major piece of that sustained engagement.

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

We've also got photos of the slides now, if anyone wants them.

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

Seconded. The voice of the top 1% of teams needs to be heard by FIRST leadership, and 1678 has almost certainly entered that elite group. The FIRST leadership is walking a very fine line here, trying to keep the highest level teams engaged while attempting to bring in even more teams to the championship events. If this decision causes any of this 1% to leave FRC, then I hope the FIRST leadership will realize what a horrible decision they have made. Any one of those teams provides more inspiration than 50 waitlist spots at an event that has an exciting name do.

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

Food, lights, AV, sometimes venue renting. It adds up quickly.

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

The bigger issue right now is not only the actual money, but the fiduciary responsibility. Currently, even though RPCs are responsible for paying their own bills, all the cash runs through FIRST's bank accounts, and FIRST takes all of the legal responsibility. FIRST is a large and established organization financially that if something was to go south at a regional, they have the ability to sustain hits.

When you move to districts, its the local legal entity, spearheaded and ran by the local leadership, that is entirely responsible for the entire operation of FRC in your area. This includes not only raising the money, but having your own bank accounts, being legally responsible for the events instead of HQ, and all the issues arising from that responsibility (insurance, legal protection and fees, etc.) It's a lot of extra overhead and responsibility for local volunteers to take up.

It is understandable that local leaders are scared to take on that responsibility. In New England, we're lucky we have a great board who did what they had to to make the creation of ingenuityNE happen. Other regions already in districts have had the same luck. Not every region is in those positions though.

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

This would work, but I think part of the reason they're splitting champs is to possibly get 800 FRC teams at champs, returning us to the 400 FRC teams per venue, 100 team divisions we have seen in years past. If they want to do this, I think it's be better to randomly assign teams to the different events, and have a provision for teams that can't attend one of the events for funding/travel reasons.