![]() |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Warning: very long post ahead. These are the issues I can see that will come up organized as well as I can at 11pm. (And I thought I was done with pros/cons list after build season...)
Issues FIRST tried to resolve: Size: There are currently about 3000 teams competing in FRC[1], and that number isn't going down. If each team went once every four years (which seems to be FIRST's goal so that every student that joined a team as a freshman and stayed got a chance to go to worlds), that would be 750 teams/year. Then there are teams that definitely going to be going more often than that (prequalified teams as well as top teams). Not to mention that the number of teams has been going up every year. An 800 team event may work for the next few years, but not forever. At some time, either champs has a smaller percentage of teams, or it splits. Location: Finding a location that can deal with 800+ teams is difficult, specifically: - A building that has enough rooms for all the fields and pits - A city that has enough hotels for all the teams (and restaurants, other activities, is easy to get to (i.e. a airport hub nearby), etc.) Time: AP testing starts in early May[2], so all competitions need to be ready by then. Week 7 events end in mid-April. That gives about a two week period to fit in champs / split-champs / super-regionals / other competitions. Cost: Many teams are already unable to get the funding to travel to champs. Having district events -> district champs -> super regionals -> champs is unrealistic in my opinion. Having super regionals replace champs may be one option--teams will get the opportunity to compete with more teams than they would otherwise, and hopefully it's closer than champs--but for teams that eventually qualify for champs, that may again be an issue. Distance: As I said above, doing district champs / super regionals and champs will be two events that are likely not nearby. Even for the top alliance(s) that will have to travel to another location to finish competing, more traveling = not good. Inspiration: FIRST wants every student to get a chance to go to champs in their 4 years in high school. It's a method to inspire them, to make them feel like they've succeeded, to let them see the best (even if just part of it), to make it easier to explain to everyone what they're spending time on, to justify to schools about time missed, and to use to help get sponsors. They're trying to aim this to as many teams as possible, which is generally the average teams that don't normally get to champs. I'm sure they know that mentors on powerhouse teams wouldn't like this idea. But it appears that they've decided to aim this not at the top, but at the average team. Whoever is presenting needs to keep this in mind. Ideally there will be students/mentors from non-powerhouse teams to explain that they too dislike this new idea and so that FIRST understands that it's not just "top team" problem. (Or maybe it is...or a "CD problem"--it's hard to know exactly how most teams think about this) Other possible solutions: Splitting FLL+FTC and FRC: Have FLL+FTC champs at one location and FRC champs at the other. Pros:District champs / Super Regionals: Have all areas convert to districts to have a smaller percentage of teams at champs, and have district champs or super regionals be the event more teams can attend (25%+) Pros:Final matches for Houston vs St Louis: Pros:My opinion: I'm personally in favor of both splitting FTC/FLL and FRC, as well as converting all of FRC into districts and then having district champs / super regionals as that intermediate level. Champs should be able to support 600 teams, or even possibly 700-800, which will probably work for quite a while more. Districts could either just have their own district champs, or combine with other one to get super regionals, just ideally not both. If they're doing the second idea, they can either do several (~7?) that are just a few states together (e.g. CA+NV+AZ (+HI?), OR+WA+ID (+UT?), TX+OK+NM, LO+AR+MO+MS, etc.) or fairly large areas (west coast, east coast, south, midwest) It would mean that most teams would get the chance to see the elite teams in their area fairly frequently and then have that to push towards, with champs being the ultimate goal for everyone. It would add more competitions, but probably not much more than what districts are already having. If there are teams willing to be "demo teams" for FLL/FTC, that could solve that issue. If the two events are already booked for different weeks, it gives the opportunity (and unfortunately this is the point that I don't know how to address properly) to travel to both, although it would be very inconvenient. I hope this gets resolved somehow. [1] Wikipedia [2] College Board |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
I see a lot of people shooting down ideas because of less than ideal trade offs. This is an engineering challenge, and in engineering you have to deal with trade offs. The hand we're dealt is two championship events in two different places. While we'd like to have it a different way where there is no downside, that's simply not the case. Sometimes you gotta make some sacrifices to play the best hand. This may involve splitting up a team's FRC and FTC teams, or limiting the reach of inspiration by separating FLL and FRC students (or dare I say it, including less teams in the championship). If you want to build a strong proposal, you need to recognize what trade offs you're going to be making, accept that sacrifices will need to be made, and provide sound and valid justification as to why these sacrifices are the best course of action for the program overall.
|
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
My position comes from watching Chairman's Award videos and reading Chairman's Award presentations from around the country. Most of these were from HOF teams. It also comes from my observations of the Houston FIRST scene. I see many of the same faces at the FLL and FRC events, including many of the key volunteers that make these events possible. I suspect that this split will affect the larger, more established teams the most. The driver for a Houston area team that has won 3 regionals this year was a co-coach for his younger brother's FLL team. They run one of the best FLL events in Houston and sponsor something like 5 FLL teams. A team member from a past World Championship team is one of the mentors for an FLL team going to the World Festival this year. A third local powerhouse team, that has also won 3 regionals this year, used to run some of the FLL tournaments until they switched to VEX-IQ as their feeder program. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
Those of you who are practicing engineers probably have to make difficult choices between several less than ideal solutions in your day job. You probably also have to deal with less than ideal initial conditions, resources, constraints, etc. Sometimes you can turn those less than ideal starting points around and end up with a superior result. Often, putting aside one's emotions to look at the numbers and the facts leads one to arrive at the superior solution, a solution that one's emotions would lead one to reject. I am not happy with the direction that FIRST seems to be taking but they have said that they are open to dialogue. It is also likely that FIRST is not happy with some of the choices that they have had to make so far. What is inspiring to me and many students is seeing the many ingenious solutions to the same problem (game) that many of the great teams (and some rookies too) come up with every year, even if we only see them in a video. As a community of some of the brightest and best minds, we should use this opportunity apply the same ingenuity to make these programs better than they were. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Generally, you'll want to avoid making logical fallacies in your argument. Good decisionmakers (Dean, Don, and the board fall into that category) are adept at sorting fallacies from facts.
Instead, you should say "when trading off goal A vs goal B, I think B is more important, and here are my reasons." That recognizes A as a valid option, and presents an argument on why B is better, all along admitting that the choice is based on your value judgment. That's the best route to persuading people to come to your point of view. Rachel Lim's post is well though out, does a good job of examining the tradeoffs, and is persuasive. Others thinking about making a proposal should read hers carefully and emulate her style. Please don't take my feedback below as "your proposal is bad," but more "here are questions or facts that you need to consider to make your proposal better, or observations about your persuasive arguments." Well-argued proposals based on facts will be the most effective way to adapt this decision to team needs. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
If you will switch to cold Dr. Pepper, I will take you up on the bet ;>) Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
I have a thought exercise for you. Your team has attended champs based on merit in 9 of the last 10 years (congrats on Chairman's this year, BTW!), has a larger than normal membership, is from one of the wealthiest areas in the US with average family incomes well above the national average, and has a dream list of sponsors, so you're going to have an unusual perspective, compared the more common team profile. It can be hard, but please try to think about this from the perspective of a team without your resources and track record of success. Look at the record of this team (randomly picked as about halfway between 0 and the highest team number on TBA), and think about what your statement means to them. Imagine making a presentation to them, justifying your statement. That is what the leaders of FIRST will be thinking and doing. Quote:
1) the only people who know today whether a 600 team event is going to work in St. Louis are those at FIRST 2) the people "in the know" felt so strongly that the event needed to be split that they proposed something they knew would be very controversial. Specific facts that support this statement: a. They added a location to St. Louis in 2017. That is likely the earliest date that they could engage another venue, and in the convention business is a fairly short lead time for our size of event. b. The announcement is signed by Dean, Don, and the co-Board chairs -- the top decision makers in FIRST. A trial balloon would be a blog post by Frank. This is not a trial balloon -- it is a decision. c. It is accompanied by an announcement video, which only accompanies big announcements. d. It was done 2 weeks before champs, so that they would have an opportunity to talk to the community face to face about the change and why they think it is necessary. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
Dr Pepper if you win? - Agreed Blake |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
This is not a perfect proposal whatsoever- teams with world class qualifying FRC and FTC teams have to choose which of their programs deserves the true championship, and which gets the lower tier Open tournament. However I think this is byfar better than both programs getting a lower quality championship. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
|
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
If you were in their shoes, and invested time, money, and political and business connections attract such a big event, and got something very different than what was promised, would you not be upset? (Honestly, in typing this, I realize this is likely what many commenters feel has happened to them with this announcement.) To be blunt, reshaping this agreement and awarding only one city the championship that both cities were promised will leave the other city snubbed.* That will ruin the reputation of FIRST, and make it that much harder to negotiate with other cities in the future (if you don't think this type of thing would be spread by mayors, tourism chiefs, etc., you're wrong). I really think allowing qualifying teams to opt in to a "swap lottery" has a lot of potential. It allows for cross pollination, gives qualifying teams a special privilege that they earned, and would protect against stacking one Championship at the expense of the other. The host cities involved would also likely welcome a more diverse pool of teams traveling to their cities. *To be clear, calling an FTC/FLL championship a "snub" is NOT meant to disparage these programs. It's just obviously not what either host city signed up for. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
FTC should have more than 1 Championship, most definitely. FTC itself isn't so competitive on a national level that I don't think teams care which event they go to in order to claim "champions".
Question 1 Could FIRST split up champs with FRC/FTC and FTC/FLL? The FRC-based FTC competition would have the FTC teams which are part of larger programs and/or have older students. The FTC competition at the other event would be for FTC-only programs and/or younger students. I think this type of split would better-serve the types of teams which would wind up at either event given the criteria above. The teams would probably more likely have more in common from a team management, funding, and goals side than is at the typical FTC championship. It also gives FLL teams something to aim for. FLL teams who have nearby FRC teams are probably inundated with demos already, so I don't think there's much inspiration lost if they attend a FLL/FTC-only Champs. It may also open the event up for even more FLL teams. Question 2 What data is FIRST looking to gather in order to support any changes? Is FIRST looking for flow and 'feel' of a 600-team champs, are they trying to figure out what the multi-venue split will do this year, etc? Is FIRST looking to gather specific data on alumni, local politics, or other region-centric data which will help them decide geographic boundaries (etc)? Question 3 As is the case with district implementation, there may be a few fringe cases where it doesn't make sense to do the 'new' thing since it is entirely counter-productive to how the team is managed, located or few-year forecasts the team has done. Will FIRST allow these fringe cases to be handled on a case-by-case basis, or are the boundaries going to be as strict as districts? (Note - my team is not currently and would not become one of these fringe cases) Question 4 Be honest: is the 4-tier "super regional" still the long-term plan? (P.S. my wife doesn't yet know there are 4 potential events next year under the district system. I seriously doubt she'll get on board with 5 events unless one of them is in Vegas or somewhere tropical. Houston doesn't count, at least I don't think it does. No offense Houston ;)) |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
And, Re: "Honestly, in typing this, I realize this is likely what many commenters feel has happened to them with this announcement." — hear, hear. Quote:
*This isn't necessarily a comment on team geography, just the statistical likelihood of two quantities like this being equal. However, you can examine the historical geography of Worlds Division finals. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
|
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
I agree that finding volunteers is an issue FIRST has, but I'm slightly confused as to how having two "split" events requires more volunteers than two "mixed" events. If anything, this will allow volunteers who only can/want to help with one event focus on purely that (e.g. if you want to volunteer with FLL, now you don't have to pick one) Quote:
Quote:
- How are these teams currently doing it? Do they have a lot of overlap between the programs or have separate groups of kids/mentors? - District champs / super regionals could have multiple or all programs together - For teams that don't qualify / can't afford to go to one, there can be a demo section for FRC in the FLL/FTC and vice versa Quote:
Quote:
The one aspect of this split champs that probably won't directly affect my team is who wins worlds. We've played in elims once, 5 years ago. I'm writing this as a student on a team that won't feel like we won "half a championship," because the chances we'll win is basically zero. But if I dislike that, what is the chance that an average team will dislike some part of this? But in general, yes, remember this is aimed at the average team--the teams who are not represented here. Having posters here argue against it is like having mentors on top teams say mentor-run teams are inspiring to students, or strategists on top teams say cheesecaking is beneficial to everyone. It may be true, but it's not that convincing. Quote:
Quote:
|
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
|
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Having said that, I look forward to seeing an enlightening and constructive town hall that embodies the values of FIRST. Lets aim toward that goal. |
| All times are GMT -5. The time now is 22:50. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright © Chief Delphi