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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. Quote:
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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.
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However, I suppose if we have the two venues, that may be the best compromise to keep one championship for FRC teams. |
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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. |
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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.
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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.
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Make one city the FRC Championship, make one city the FTC World Championship. At the FTC site, you hold the Good Guy Frank Invitational with 60-100 FRC teams. Some will opt to do it because it's closer, or the date works better, or they've got FTC teams that want to go, or maybe we invite some teams whose district points bubble burst--but you hold a full-fat, top-flight event there so you've got all four programs represented there. Do the same back for the FRC Championship, and you have an undisputed champion and four healthy programs with room to grow. |
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It's understood that some teams are part of multiple programs, but honestly no matter what we do, decisions will have to be made by teams. I feel it would be easier to organize the split of the FLL/FTC and FRC to different venues rather than organizing 2 splits at 2 venues... Teams will just have to decide where they will allocate their resources as far as sending students to these events. Its just like the Olympics...you can't compete in every single event. You may physically be able to, but time does not allow it. |
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My post above describes a way to combat region lock and theoretically one being weaker than the other. This post describes one way to crown a true world champion. Play out the semifinal rounds at each 'championship' and take the finals rounds to this 3rd location. Immediately after the last semifinal match, the winning robots and necessary tools are bagged and shipped(on FIRST's dime) to a one day, televised "true world championship" which would be done on a third weekend in a different smaller arena that is a huge airport hub(Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, Denver, LA, NYC). There would be just 4 alliances to make it to this final level. The teams(a skeleton crew, maybe just drive team and elims pit crew) would be flown out for a single saturday, on FIRST's(or hopefully the broadcast sponsors') dime. You could of course bring the whole team, but it would cost you, and they wouldn't be allowed on the field except for pictures at the end (as is usually the case for elims pit crew). This whole event would take less than 2 hours, and could be easily televised, with interviews with drivers and whatever. Highest seeded north plays lower seeded south, Lower seeded north plays Higher seeded south, winners of those play each other. This final championship is one day, so shouldn't be TOO taxing on everyone. Its free, and awesome, and you would assume anyone would go. Because FIRST has the robots in their control, you could hold this at any time, the next weekend, or even the summer, and the season is essentially frozen in time. Don't allow any witholding allowance for superchamps. Allow minimal time to work on robots so they are in a very close state to how they were at the end of their championship. It also could be an intimate place to roll out a red carpet and really schmooze some sponsors, as well as bring FIRST more into the public eye. This idea is way too specific. I just had to make some arbitrary decisions to write it out coherently, so it of course needs tweaking. Also, its not my idea, I put it together from reading that super long thread |
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How many teams are you planning on for your FRC-only Champs? You can only cram so many into a venue. I'm pretty sure Houston can host 400 teams in style. 600 teams and 8 divisions would start to get crowded. Any more than that, and I think you're going to be disappointed in the results. I'm pretty sure 600 team capacity is necessary, since regionals this year could generate 336 champs slots. So unless you're eliminating some of those slots, you're going to have to have 600+ teams at some sort of championship event come 2017.
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I like the Detroit FLL/FTC+Exhibition strategy. I'd actually suggest switching it so this is in Houston, only because that keeps FRC Worlds centrally located in St. Louis a year longer. That means only 3 years of a Detroit Championship are set in stone, not even a full high school career. Just a thought. |
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I've got a "different" proposal. I'm not going to discuss 2 Championships with 800 combined teams, or 1 with 600+ teams.
I'm going to counter with: "When (not if) does this become 4 Championships, with a combined 800+ teams, with/without a single World Championship Final Event? And, what does that look like?" I'm early, I know. But if you really want to make things "easier" on teams, why go north/south when you can go east/west (or even all 4 directions)? So let's think about this a moment. Say you have 4 championships. North, South, East, West. South is (generally) held somewhere in TX/LA/FL/Ga. North tends to migrate towards MI/IL. West is somewhere on the West Coast (we do have a few venues out here big enough); East is, obviously, somewhere on the East Coast (but biased towards the Northeast). Each championship is fed by teams from a defined area, by some defined set of qualifiers. (For simplicity: the standard 6 teams/event will do, at least for discussion.) Each championship gets at least 200 teams, probably more (200 is too small and too big to work with what's next). As a side note, you should be able to get a 400-team event into any of those regions, somehow. For a 2-championship system, this allows some rotation between cities--and said rotation offers a different batch of teams a better chance to slide in as volunteers or spectators if they don't make it. Per championship event, you will have either 2 or 4 divisions (leaning towards 4, each with 60-70 teams, rather than 2 with 100). See "previous years' championships" for play style. Each event will also have a feed from the other championship events for viewing. At the end, you send all the winners and certain other designated teams to one location--let's just say about 60 teams in all, to St. Louis, because we can. And then... they play for the World Championship. (For some reason, venues that can handle a 60-team event are much easier to find than venues that can handle a 400-team event...) Or you come up with some other way of naming a World Champion--computer simulation, FRC Top 25, highest total points, best win-loss record as an alliance... |
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Folks it's almost amusing to see just how deeply many of us are stuck in the rut of thinking that FIRST Championships (now that there are going to be more than one) will only occur in North America (a few years from now).
Discuss ... Blake |
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Or rather: Name the 4 official regionals that have taken place outside of continental North America in at least one year. (Hint: Brazil Pilot Regional only lasted 2 years; the other 3 are going strong.) That being said, I can see in the far distant future having one or more outside of North America. Exactly where is an open question, though... |
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My counterpoint to your specific points quoted here is that I'll bet a cold Mountain Dew that China jumps into FRC with both feet very soon. Regardless, how long do you suppose it will be before there are 100 to 200 decent teams in a cluster somewhere on Earth, who make a good case for not having to travel halfway around the planet to participate in one of the multiple North America Championships? And instead justify having one of their own? If you want to plan for the future, it makes sense to include that scenario in the possible futures you assess. Blake |
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Here is my proposal:
Since Houston and Detroit are probably required for use because of contracts, the plan needs to be formulated around each. To achieve this, I think that the current form of Districts and Regionals needs to be changed. I think that everybody should move to districts. What this would then allow is a fair way to seed teams to worlds. (For out of country teams, regionals would have to have a format set up) FIRST would then use the same method they use now for district teams to worlds. (In PNW the top 30 or so teams seed to worlds) What this would then allow is a 400-500 team championship event hosted in a single city. This would get the best teams from each event to worlds. We could have the "Everyone is a winner" mentality at the District championship level. This means multiple chairmans winners, but only the winners in the top 30 seed to worlds. (Using 30 as example for each district) This would be the same for all the awards that would normally seed you to worlds. So even if you win an award you would have to be in the top 30 to seed to worlds. This model of all districts would allow for a fair way to seed teams to worlds. It would ensure the truly best teams go to worlds, and allow for there to be one true winner. This would I think also unite the FIRST community and give everyone a legit shot to seed to worlds. With the regional system there are truly good teams that do not make it to worlds, because they just arent on the traditional number one seeded alliance with the 2 teams that always pair up. I think we can all think of the teams in our areas that win every event in our area for as long as we can remember. And I am fine with there being powerhouse alliances that happen every year, but this system would allow for team who are not on those to still go to worlds. (For me personally my team has gotten second place to the same team for 3 years running and still has yet to beat them) I hope you guys consider this idea for a FIRST championship. |
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Once that happens, I would suspect that for the World Championship, you'd simply redistribute the numbers per Region Championship to include the "International" Championship. (Something like the Little League model, give or take a few stretched analogies.) |
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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 |
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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.
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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. |
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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. |
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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:
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If you will switch to cold Dr. Pepper, I will take you up on the bet ;>) Quote:
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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. |
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Dr Pepper if you win? - Agreed Blake |
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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. |
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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. |
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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 ;)) |
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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. |
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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:
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- 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:
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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:
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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. |
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I also feel the need to strenuously challenge the term "cool" for engaging in the practice you refer to as opportunistic (personally I'd call it exploitative). This is already possible at a regional level, and I have never seen nor had the desire to apply the word "cool" to it. I usually hear it called exactly (exactly) the opposite. Particularly because most teams do not have the luxury to move even should they wish to do so. Quote:
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Furthermore, if people's opinions regarding the value of the FIRST experience is diminished, such as it would be by the isolation of teams by geographical boundaries***, then teams would be less enthusiastic about bringing others into the program. FIRST seems to have dug itself a nice, deep hole, in between a rock and a hard place. Quote:
It might be worth noting that by moving the FTC championship to a single venue (without an FRC championship) would allow it be greatly expanded to the point where it could be nearly as large as the FRC championship. It might be possible to reduce the backlash from the host cities if FIRST promises, and delivers a greatly enlarged FTC championship in addition to a smaller FRC competition. It might take a lot of effort to effect change of this magnitude, but I think it is possible. Additionally, FIRST could alternate which City hosts the FRC championship and which gets the FTC championship. ***The idea of FIRST causing geographical segregation is quite unpleasant, to say the least. |
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Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
I'm relatively new to First. I've got just two years of experience as a mentor.
My first year was really inspiring to me, and a big part of that was seeing a world championship event, watching the whole world come together to have the best teams compete in front of a crowd of screaming fans. It was genuinely awe-inspiring. You can't have two championships. You can have zero or one. Commitments have been made already. Some things aren't going to change. I don't know which things could be renegotiated and which cannot, but I'm pretty sure a lot of this plan is set in stone and can't be undone, at least for a few years, so I'm not going to say what ought to be done, because I don't know what the real options are. I'll talk about one thing, from my own perspective. There have been a lot of posts mentioning goals and tradeoffs about the world championship events. There are a lot of factors that have to be considered, and maybe when all of them are considered, there really isn't any better way to do it than to eliminate the world championships. (I won't say "split" them. A split championship is no championship at all.) However, of all the goals that are considered, the one that I would get rid of first is the idea that every team ought to have a chance to participate in the World Championship on some sort of regular basis. I feel like I don't have to be physically present at the championship venue to be part of it. When I talk to my students, I talk about a road that ends in Saint Louis, and how we want to go as far along that road as possible. If we didn't get very far along that road this year, we can look and see what we can do to get a little farther next year. We might not make it, but just having the destination in mind makes me feel like I'm part of that big, global, event called the world championships. Somehow, struggling to go as far as possible on the road to a world championship is more inspiring than having an easier path to half a championship. Well, that's the way I feel about it anyway. Others may see it differently. |
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Fields: 800 teams might be doable with the current 8 fields. Barely. Let's use that as a baseline for size on the playing field. Incidentally, that means we'll need a football field, covered, or similarly-sized venue, just for the fields. Pits... at 10x10 for each team, that's 80K square feet without any aisles (which will obviously add quite a bit of space--call it 120K with the aisles as a conservative number). Plus 4 basketball courts for the practice fields, plus about 400 square feet for Pit Admin. Say a good-sized convention center. "Add-ons" like Spare Parts, HoF, Scholarship Row, Supplier Showcase, and the Conference will also need space. Plus space will be needed for the volunteer lounge, judging rooms, and VIP areas. Seating: Many a team brings a skeleton crew. But more bring full teams. If we figure 50 people/team, that means the minimum seating is 40K seats. Not counting VIPs and judges and all, of course (they'll need a hundred or so, at best guess). Now, any one or two of those conditions isn't all that hard to meet. Football stadiums, any college or NFL town will have at least one, and they'll probably all be able to handle 40K seats if the college is at a high enough level. (Or a baseball stadium, though you'd need to make sure that the home team was on the road that week. Soccer might be even better; the field is a smidge larger than a football field as I recall.) Convention centers, even more places have those that could probably handle the entirety of the pits and other similar space, maybe even fields (though seating could be problematic for fields). If tents are allowed, even more areas could be in the running. But... you also have to deal with travel and lodging. Many a team will use a bus, but more will need to fly. This means an airport that can handle international flights (connections at another airport are OK too, but ). And don't forget about 15K hotel rooms for those 40K team members and the volunteers. A lot of major cities can deal with that; most can handle the traffic. Now, the really tricky parts: The whole thing has to be covered throughout the event, and the field area and the pit area have to be pretty close together. And transport to the airport and hotels needs to be manageable. And that's just for FRC. Atlanta did a pretty good job--if FIRST were still there, I'm pretty sure they'd be able to pull off an 800-team event under those conditions. But the Georgia Dome might not be available much longer. (GWCC might still be an option.) St. Louis is rather cramped. I'm not aware of anything of that nature out here on the West Coast--maybe Seattle has something but I doubt it. I've heard rumors of Anaheim but that might be stretching it quite a bit. (We've got good weather out here, so very few stadiums even have a roof--you'd be getting a convention center.) I've heard Indianapolis floated a few times as a possible site, but I haven't been anywhere near the proposed venue so I don't know anything. |
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Please use this thread if you want to vent. |
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While any solution focusing on 2017 and 2018 would assume 2 locations at some 800 team split, I'd look at it from FIRST's perspective. If the solution isn't scalable to years in the future, it probably is a non-starter with FIRST. Thinking outside of the box, I think it would be neat to wrap up the previous season at the next year's kickoff. Having both winners play then solves the problem of no clearly defined champion, low visibility and perhaps "unofficial-ness" at any event other than a championship, fast turnaround travel times for the winning alliance at the early event, and possibly mentor burn-out / limited vacation times, etc. This introduces more problems for the teams that win, including what to do with their robots in the off season and seniors graduating, but I think that could be worked around. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
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Looking at pit layout diagrams, a good number to use for pit size is roughly 250-300 square feet per team, depending on venue layout. There is generally an aisle in front of each pit that is equal in size to the pit, so that gets us to 200sf right there. Plus you need connecting aisles, and routes for robots to/from the competition and practice fields. Pit admin, spare parts, and inspections runs closer to 1000 square feet at venues I'm familiar with. Full sized practice fields probably consume more than 4000sf each, assuming a 15' deep driver area at each end, 10' clear areas on each side, and space for waiting robots. That said, if you assume no limits on money for event buildout, there are several locations in the US with NFL stadiums that would work for the event. Thought exercise for those proposing a larger, single venue event We can easily identify other options for venues that physically accommodate 600-800 teams, so we must assume that FIRST, with experienced event planners, can do the same. In fact, FIRST has the St. Louis location under contract for 2017, which is physically able to handle 600 teams, and has chosen to add a location in that year. Since FIRST has proposed going to multiple events with smaller event sizes, there must be some other resource needed to put on an event that is not available at one location. Any thoughts on what that resource might be? |
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Anything on either coast is out for a single FRC event, as it's more travel for teams on the opposite coast. That leaves the central US (that was the reasoning behind St. Louis, IIRC). At 566,000 SQFT, The Indiana Convention Center isn't much larger than St. Louis, which we already acknowledged is cramped. Tents are a good idea, but I was around for old school FRC at Epcot Center, which was nothing but tents and portable A/C. I imagine several 100,000 SQFT of tents would be expensive. The GWCC might have still been an option. And then there's Detroit and Houston. Now ask FIRST why a single FRC-only championship wasn't considered at one of these facilities (or any others that meet criteria). And, ask why subdividing Championships was preferred over breaking up the established precedent of having all four programs at one event. This is the path to many of the answers as to why this decision was made. What are the goals and constraints of a FIRST Championship event? Define the scope, and look at your viable options for meeting your short and long term goals. That's what FIRST had to do, and we can find answers to our "why" questions if we attempt it ourselves. BUT, you can also ask FIRST their reasoning, too. That why they're holding the town hall. |
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I don't know where to put this exactly, but i'll throw it up here. My vision is more long-term, seeing as I assume that the short-term aspects are already set in stone.This thread was created to deal with the short-term salvation and I think great ideas were raised, yet I think we should also look a little further over the horizon, since clearly FIRST changed their future plans. My long-term plan is similar to FIRST's previous version of expansion, with a little detail.
So, long-term, there are a few limitations on what I would try to plan for. The main issue, of course, is time. The season is limited for many reasons previously discussed in many different threads, and I assume that we would want to stay within the 9 week time frame. This is my main constraint, but I also try to think about money and time away from school. I see everyone moving to districts. All district events will happen during weeks 1-4, where each team gets to play a maximum of 2 events. A team pays according to the amount of events they play. Should they play 2 events, their point total would equal the sum of points earned at both events. Should they select to play 1 event - their point total would be multiplied by two. I am assuming that teams play better as the season progresses, so they will be better during their second event. Should a team not be able to afford/schedule two events - they would be slightly hurt, but not horribly. The good teams will still make it to the next round of play, due to point multiplication. Weeks 5-6 will hold the next level of competition: District Championships, similar to what happens today. Obviously, since EVERYONE is in districts then this can happen during the same time, where each District chooses the week it wants (to give the teams a break during week 5 OR week 6). I think any place with 50+ teams can move to the district system. Smaller places with few teams (China, Turkey etc.) will have to be handled separately. Not sure how yet. Now comes the question regarding time and money. Another level of competition between District Champs and Worlds in week 7 means all teams participating need to travel and pay for playing, food and so on. Yet this seems to be a necessity long-term. Another option is to make BIG District Champs, yet even if there are many teams participating, a smaller amount of teams advances directly to Worlds rather than a bigger amount to the intermediate level - I think this is a question of time, money, and so on. Should we have the Super Regionals, they should be a week 7 event. This allows 2 weeks to prepare for the week 9 Championship. A big advantage for these Super Regionals is that FIRST can just add more once a Region is big enough to split. Should we have big District Champs, they can be during weeks 6-7, instead of the 5-6 stated above. The Districts can also be split, should it be needed to maintain a decent sized championship (so that x% of the teams can attend the District Championship). Finally, the World Championship can occur during week 9. ================================================== ======== While not solving the immediate issue (that coming up in 2 years), trying this out will help transition these two championship events to Super Regionals. If we don't want Super Regionals, then I guess we can use one of the previously mentioned solutions and ride them out until 2019. ================================================== ======== In terms of money, most teams in Districts go to anywhere between 2 (two District Events) to 5 (three District events, District Champs, World Champs) events. With this system, the most events a team can go to is 5 - two District events, District Champs, Super Regional, Worlds. So the payment should be roughly the same for competing. In terms of travel... the Super Regional is probably a little further away than a third District Event, but not HORRIBLY so. Other than that it's a wash to the current situation. In terms of the time of the competition season, we stay within the 9 week time frame, as described above. ================================================== ======== Granted, not all issues are solved here, but once we figure out the short-term ideas to bring up, we should also think long-term :) |
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And, scalability is very likely a factor in championship format. |
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At each FRC regional event, there are several sources of volunteers. I'll walk you through my mental map of each source. The first group are the key volunteers. These volunteers are usually very experienced, trained, and usually return from year-to-year. They are often alumni (either team members or mentors) who continue their participation because they enjoy it. These volunteers are dedicated enough that they will often travel, on their own $$, to a regional to participate. The second group of volunteers at regionals are team-provided volunteers -- both team members and family. The supply of these volunteers is roughly proportional to the number of team members present at a regional, adjusted based on the number of teams that have to travel to attend. The third group of volunteers is community volunteers. A good example of this in 2015 was at North Star -- we had a large group of hard-working volunteers from Target headquarters who helped at the event. When selection a location for an event, the availability of these volunteers is a key factor. In sheer numbers, most of the volunteers are sourced from teams and the community. At a Champs-style event, you have a couple issues. First is that there are a bunch of volunteer positions that you need to fill that aren't needed at a regional, increasing demand for volunteers. The second issue is around team-provided volunteers. Fewer team-provided volunteers are available at Champs, because the total number of people from a team attending Champs (including parents) is lower. It is also possible for team volunteers and alumni to fit a shift or two between work and/or classes at a regional. A good example of this is Robot Inspectors -- the LRI will happily accept you as a robot inspector if you are competent and can help only between noon and 6pm on Thursday at a regional event. In order to compensate for this, more community volunteers are needed at Champs. So you need more community volunteers to run your Champs-style event. What's the problem with that? For a variety of reasons (age, incomes, culture), each community has a limited supply of community volunteers. Wondering why Minnesota can operate two well-run double regionals? Being #1 in volunteering rate, with 900,000 active volunteers in the area has a lot to do with it. St. Louis is no slouch either, with 600,000 active volunteers. But there's probably a limit to how many of those volunteers you can attract to help your event. I know our Volunteer Coordinator in Minnesota has to work hard to staff the events here. So coming back to your question, my concern is around the supply of community volunteers available to support a Champs-style event. Hosting these events in two different locations helps address that by allowing you to draw from two different pools of community volunteers. Quote:
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Regarding your schedule: So a team that plays a full district schedule and advances would play on something like this schedule: Week 1 Week 3 Week 5 Week 7 Week 9 or (worse) Week 3 Week 4 Week 6 Week 7 Week 9 With weeks 5/6, 7, and 9 including travel. Will be a burden for some teams. Quote:
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Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
I'll be writing another post with a more detailed explanation for how I think super regionals and a single champs could work, but first I wanted to bring up this point:
If FIRST is truly determined to have a split champs, the is probably very little anyone can do to change that. Think about it (and I understand these are probably not too relevant to most of you, who are probably adult mentors) like you're arguing with your parents about whether you can go to robotics, or trying to convince mentors that WCD is better than mecanum (examples weren't intended to refer to actual events). You can try your best, but in the end, someone else has all the power. It's not clear how far FIRST is willing to compromise / work with other ideas. Quote:
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What makes the Championship Event inspiring? I think the elements that dissenters to the Championsplit find important are not the same elements supporters or enablers of the Championsplit think are as vital. |
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Volunteers are an issue, but again, this is always an issue - even at Worlds. I assume and believe that if the Districts takes it seriously - the volunteering apect is not something that should break this. As for the schedule.. granted it's not perfect. The teams that find those options not possible, should try to sign up weeks 1 and 4, for example. 1-4-6-7-9 is not horrible. If we expand the season by a week, everything will look better. But there are issue with that. If we drop the Super Regionals and go by Districts that will split, that can work too as it will remove one level of competition and spread the competitions apart. It's never optimal, but it's better than the current plan, I think. |
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One fertile line of discussion here would then be: If we're going to have two Championships, what more can we do to make each of them as inspiring as the current single Championship? |
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Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
OK, I'll start out by saying that I *know* this is not perfect. However, I think it's an idea that hasn't been proposed before, and it has some merit (IMVHO).
It seems to me that one thing we are dealing with here (on CD) is the potential loss of inspiration to the top teams, caused by not being able to win/compete for a true "World Championship" (minor factor I hope), coupled with not being able to visit with and be inspired by ALL the other great ("top") teams at a single event. Let's face it, for the "run of the mill" (RotM) teams (like ours), going to a 1/2-world championship-type-event will be plenty inspiring. Heck, just going to a second regional (with 254 and 1678) was pretty inspirational, in terms of meeting and being inspired by great teams. Also, for RotM teams, traveling to ONE 'championship'-type event, if feasible (in terms of time and money) at all, can be a stretch; adding levels would just make things worse (consider - when VEX recently changed its tournament model here in Hawaii, requiring attendance at more competitions to get to a "big" event, ALL (4 or 5) of our island's VEX teams folded, since they just couldn't afford the multiple inter-island trips that had become necessary to get to the "fun" level of competition they had previously enjoyed). I don't think any mentors from RotM teams are going to quit over this new FRC change, nor are most of those teams going to be significantly less "inspired" by the prospect of attending an event with 400 great teams from 1/2 the world, rather than 600-800 "slightly greater" teams from the whole world; the issues here are coming from the top teams, and they are important - we don't want them all defecting to Vex Pro or whatever, as it will seriously damage FRC for ALL of us. So how to solve THEIR problems, which are: - No chance to see ALL the other inspiring teams in one place, and - No chance to compete against those teams, and Win the World Championship. What if FIRST selected a small group of these "elite" teams, maybe like this: - All HoF teams; and - All Winning and Finalist Alliance Captains from regionals and District Championships (someone tell me how many this is); - The winning alliance from the first Championship. and said this to those teams: If you attend "your" geographic championship, we (FIRST) will pay your way to the OTHER geographic championship - no entry fee, subsidized hotel, travel and food for a set number of people (12 comes to mind). That way, BOTH championship events would/could include ALL the top teams; all of them, and all of us RotM teams, could be inspired by them; they could compete TWICE, against ALL the best teams, for a World Championship; the Championships would be pretty high-level, with less room for waitlist teams; added bonus - the second alliance captain would have a small incentive to reject a pick by the first, since only an AC could attend TWO championships, making the elims more exciting and competitive to watch while still getting the 2nd seed a good chance at a high honor. The downside is, of course, the time and expense for the top teams of traveling to two championships. But they'd get to go to TWO championships!! How cool is that? There could be "the grand rematch" at the second championship, with the same captains and slightly different alliances, or totally different finalist alliances - in which case, the winners of each championship could still be proud of having won at a competition with ALL the best teams. And the top teams are, generally, those with the most resources in terms of people (i.e., 'second string' teams, more mentors), sponsors, money... so if anyone can afford MORE competitions, it's them. Why isn't this a good idea? Someone shoot me down, I can't wait to hear it. |
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Hopefully the Town Hall will help understand what more people think, but considering it's is only attended by people at Worlds, and FIRST didn't consult anyone outside HQ about this beforehand, the truth is we'll probably never really know. |
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In terms of fleshing out a proposal*, how's this: Each season there are n, say 30, "double bid" slots. Teams can opt into this program on TIMS before the season starts. All teams worldwide are ranked throughout competition season on a universal points system using the season's District Points document. This is tracked on the Leaderboard website. The top 30 teams on this list that did (and continue to) opt in get an invitation and free registration to both Half-Worlds. This is an alternative to FIRST covering travel costs, which could also be proposed by might be trickier. Separately, if we're looking to enforce an "equal swap" rule for the lottery, District points may be the closest way to assess equality short of a by-name qualitative decision. *A proposal that may or may not address real issues and may or may not conflict with non-negotiables within HQ, and overall cannot be weighed cost/benefit due to lack of information. (This isn't meant as a bad thing. At least not for the proposal; for HQ's methods I lack my own tact.) |
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I also like that you hit the nail on the head with identifying the cost problem associated with adding another layer, like superregionals, to the mix. I've thought a lot about this since I saw the announcement. It's a hard problem to solve, for sure. I think there's a reason that high school sports in general don't have national, much less world, championships. But for those who have to figure out what to really do, the point I would raise to them is that it is not just the "super" teams, i.e. those who might realistically compete for a world championship, that are inspired by the event. No little kid has ever dreamed of winning 1 of 2 gold medals to be handed out at half of the Olympics. You don't have to participate in those games to be inspired. The existence of that world championship provides inspiration, even to run of the mill teams. The existence of a very large competition with lots of people at it including teams from half of the world, not as much. Maybe there is just no way to solve the cost problems associated with holding a real world championship as First grows. Let's not pretend, though, that we can hold two events, call them championships, and they will be the same thing. |
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Honestly, I chose the term "bait-and-switch" because that is how FIRST's actions would be perceived if they attempted to change the terms of their contract with the Host cities after it was signed. Also, perhaps "spite" was a bit strong of a word to have chosen, but I Don't feel that its use invalidates the rest of the post. My intent when writing the the first section of the original post was to acknowledge the fact that FIRST will likely be unable to meet the expectations of both the FIRST community and the host cities at this point, and that compromise is probably the best course of action. The second section of the post was the compromise that I was intending to present to the FIRST community. My intent was for the idea to be criticized and possibly improved upon by others. Instead I was criticized for my word choice. I will do my best to avoid similar misunderstandings in the future. -Alan |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
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Another very long post...
After considering this some more, debating various options with myself and some of my friends, reading through the various threads on this topics again, and generally trying to organize what I've been thinking, these are all the ideas I've come up with so far. Feel free to criticize them, pick them apart, or otherwise tell me what's wrong with them. Almost everything depends on how much FIRST is willing to compromise on this. Goals: These are goals that I'm trying to address for all of the following ideas, some are general ones that I've heard, and some are just things I personally think are priorities. - Have many teams able to attend a higher level of competition where they will be inspired (higher level = champs, split champs, district champs, super regionals, etc.) - Have a single final competition so the "sport" part of "sport of the mind" and "competition" part of "FRC" is kept - Have as few levels of competitions as possible so students miss less school and mentors miss less work - Have it end at least a week before AP testing starts - Minimize traveling distance to make it accessible to average teams - Have a way for FLL, FTC, and FRC to be together - Have final matches at the competition itself so more people can watch them Requirements: These are requirements for all ideas so that they are actually realistic. - Include locations that can support a large number of teams (enough hotels, an airport, etc.) - Include locations that have a large volunteer base that can run the events Idea 1: Super-District Champs Introduction: This plan will depend on FIRST being willing to listen to another proposition other than a split champs, which may or may not be true. If they are willing to, though, this is by far my favorite. Outline: 1. Convert almost all areas to districts. For areas without the team density to create districts, they can choose to either stay with regionals (but will be considered part of the nearest district for the rest of this idea) or join the nearest district. Below is a map of the density of teams by state (and including Ontario, for simplicity I left out other provinces/countries for now): Attachment 18830 2. Draw "super-district" lines combining several districts but not creating too large of a geographic area. Below are two maps, one with larger (500-540 team) areas, and the other with smaller (170-340 team) areas. The issue with the second one is that single states with a huge density of teams (i.e. Michigan and California) skew these numbers, so unless these district lines divide states, some areas will have many more teams than others. Attachment 18831 Attachment 18832 3. Replace district champs with "super-district" champs (or give them a different name). Although it will require some traveling, it hopefully won't be much more than it would be with district champs, especially for the smaller area one, and it will be a chance for more teams to see some elite teams and have it easier for them to get to than champs. Also, a split champs will be splitting up the top teams anyway (although admittedly into only two sections). 3.a. Each of these super-district champs will have ~200 teams for the larger version (~35% or more) or ~100 teams for the smaller one (~0.33 - ~0.5%, size will probably vary by the district in this case). Somewhere around 1000 teams, or ~0.33% of all teams using this year's numbers, will qualify. This will allow more teams to attend more frequently, thus expanding the impact these events can have. 3.b. Each of these will have FRC and FTC (and FLL if possible?). I'm not sure how many FTC/FLL teams normally attend champs, but each event should still not have more than ~350 teams max, so hopefully there are more locations that can support this many teams. 3.c. Each of these events will likely be held during week 7. Below is an example calendar of April using this year's dates: Attachment 18829 4. Have a single world championship with ~400-600 FRC teams and the usual number of FTC and FLL teams. This percentage will decrease as the number of teams grow, but the super-district champs will be the one to adjust. Champs will play out as usual with one winning alliance, one set of top awards, and so on. Questions: - How many locations can support ~200 FRC teams + FTC/FLL? What happens if that number goes down to ~150? ~100? - A point I've seen brought up regularly is that average teams, the ones this split champs is aimed at, aren't as concerned about seeing every top team as being able to experience champs. If that is true, will having these super-district champs give the same/similar experience? Is there anything that can be done to help this? - What type of arrangements has FIRST already set up with cities? Is there any way to negotiate to this type of event structure instead? Pros: - Reaches many teams, possibly even more than a split champs would - Keeps a single champs and the competition/sport aspect of FRC - Keeps FLL, FTC, and FRC together - Minimizes travel distance - Minimizes competition time - Builds on an existing structure (i.e. district champs) - Seems to be going where the split champs are going anyway - More, smaller locations makes it easier to find volunteers Cons: (Besides changing what they already said) - Teams will be more restricted by geographic area, likely even more than with the split champs - Requires more venues - Teams not in a location that will convert to districts, or far away from any of these super-district lines (i.e. teams outside of US/Canada) will either have to travel twice or depend on qualifying for champs to be in a higher-level competition Idea 2: Split FLL/FTC and FRC Introduction: Would require FIRST to view keeping FRC champs as a single event as more important than keeping FLL, FTC, and FRC together. Outline: 1. After a regular season, whether it's in regionals, districts, or super-districts, have all FRC teams attend a single FRC champs and FLL/FTC attend another one. Questions: - What is the most number of teams Houston / Detroit / St Louis / other locations could handle? 400? 600? More? Pros: - Simple (this one was so much faster to outline) - Keeps the two locations FIRST set up - Doesn't change much to the existing structure of events within FRC - Doesn't require the addition of more districts, or of super-districts - Doesn't change traveling time Cons: Besides having to change what they told cities they would get (i.e. a mix of FLL/FTC/FRC) - Splits up FLL/FTC and FRC (both for the inspiration and for student/mentor overlap, although having combined super-districts might help with some of this) - One location may not be able to host that many FRC teams anyway (may still have to be combined with super-districts or another idea to reach more teams) - Doesn't deal with traveling distance - May be harder to find volunteers Idea 3: Final Matches between Split Champs Introduction: This is one method to try and keep the sport/competition aspect if FIRST isn't willing to change their split champs. Since these are smaller, related ideas I'll just list them all below with individual notes. Possibilities: - Have the winners of the first champs fly (expenses covered by FIRST) to the second one to compete in a final match, which one is first is alternated. Pros: doesn't create a second event- Have the winners of both champs attend another competition to play it out Pros: no advantage to being at either competitionGeneral pros: - Keeps the competition while keeping FIRST's split champs - Very few other changes to competition schedule General cons: - Makes the competition aspect smaller, as not everyone can watch the final matches - Additional playing time for the winning alliances - All regular split-champs cons (not all elite teams together, issue of whether teams can choose which one they attend (and for the first possibility, it does become a much larger issue), gets rid of the goal of attending "the world champs," etc.) Idea 4: Leave it as it is Introduction: Because it is technically a possibility, even if I don't like it. Pros: - Is everything FIRST said it would be Cons: - Is everything that has been complained about No, I'm not writing them here. This post is long enough as it is. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
I think I stumbled onto this thread before I stumbled onto others that are discussing general complaining, so probably some of my discussion should have gone in there. Sorry about that. In this post, I'm going to offer an actual suggestion that I haven't seen yet.
This is a long term suggestion, as I think at least 2017-2018 has certain elements set in stone that cannot be altered. Have a single championship event, but add 1 or 2 days to the time of the event. Create a "preliminary round" in which teams are eliminated from the competition more quickly than they currently are. In other words, today, we have competitions Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in which everyone competes. Then alliance selections happen and we have an elimination round. Change that to half the teams compete Wednesday, and some are eliminated. Others compete Thursday, and some are eliminated. The teams that are left come back and compete in a two day competition. This is based on the observation that of all the constraints, I think pit space is probably the most difficult to deal with. One obvious downside is that it makes everyone stay an extra day, adding cost. Another is that it actually requires teams to move in and out of pit space during the course of competition. That's a major hassle. The up side is that it retains everything we like about the competition that exists today. A variation on this theme would be to add one or more secondary venues in the host city. Some teams compete in the secondary venues during the preliminary round. There are obvious down sides to that scheme as well, but it does solve some problems. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Is there a database or spreadsheet that lists every active FRC, FTC, and FLL team (globally) with their name, number, city, state, country? The OPR spreadsheet would cover FRC for 2015, not sure about FTC and FLL though.
I ask because I would like to create a GIS picture of team locations vs. departure and arrival airports for St. Louis, Houston, and Detroit. It might be very helpful to have these facts and data vs. current state of the discussion on the "global travel cost minimization problem". Not sure if i can get it done, but I am willing to give it a shot. I have pages of other commentary I could write on these topics, but I'm still gathering information and forming my opinion. Yes, even after three whole days since the announcement. |
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That would certainly be interesting, Have the Championship Matches followed by a release of the new game and unveiling of the New Field Setup. Giving kickoff a new meaning, and new relative importance. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Rachel, here are some notes based on my experience with double regionals in Minnesota that might be useful in thinking about your super-district proposal. Our local committee presents two double regionals, each with 124 teams participating.
The regionals in Duluth are held in the DECC arena (curtain between the two events), with the pits in the attached two convention center spaces. We use the arena and the two convention spaces in the lower right hand part of that map. One of the two regionals is space constrained, based on the square footage available in the City Side facility, which limits us to 60 teams in that regional. The regionals in Minneapolis are held in adjacent facilities. 10000 Lakes is held in Williams Arena, which has an attached Sports Pavilion that can accommodate 64 pits. Across the street, North Star is held in Mariucci Arena on the arena floor. That regional accommodates 60 teams and is very tight space-wise. The football stadium is probably the only facility that could accommodate a 200 team event. It's possible that it could be held in the convention center, with a scaffolding grandstand for the field. Regardless, at 200 teams it would probably be a four field event. It would be about twice the size of event that we currently staff with volunteers, so you'd need some transition strategy to build up the volunteer base for the event. I'm not aware of any local committee (run almost entirely on volunteers) presenting competition events larger than 124 teams. IIRC the next largest local event is FiM, with 102 teams this year. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
I snipped this from a post of mine in the "We are Listening" thread (and added a bit more)...Just some thoughts, suggestions, conversation.
_________________________________________________ If you build it they will come. And come they (we) are, as we all spread FIRST far & wide with outreach (we / FIRST reward(s) that outreach, inspiration, and growth with the very highest awards FIRST has to offer...HofF, CM, EI, WFA, and much more), and along the way, that growth will have extreme costs (and HUGE Planetary HUMAN REWARDS),....So change is inevitable, we grow it, we must change with it. FIRST will never be able to please ALL THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME, they know it, and we know it....Now, lets work together to solve the problems caused by our metoric growth and expansion of The FIRST Mission & Ideals...Which we should be celebrating, instead of cringing (or being angered), from/by its results. FIRST is listening, and we as a group (a huge community), are some of the largest problem solvers I have ever witnessed in my 58 year lifetime. If you can design a system to snatch 2~4 of those RC's off the shelf in .02 seconds, this problem should be a snap to come up w/ a reasonable solution to determine a world champion in 2017, and far beyond. ___________________________________ This year 600 Robots in 8 divisions in one place, 20% of all participating teams represented, next year the same (hopefully, but may drop again to 17% w/ more growth), and the following year (2017), 800 Robots in 8 divisions in 2 different places, 25% of all teams represented again. (FIRST may need to actually back off that "Geographical Assignment or Placement," add in a single lottery the first year to determine whether each team is N/S, w/ 400 evenly & randomly going to each location in 2017, and after that add an odd/even last digit Team # switch of location every 3rd. year (odd the 3rd year switch/even the 6th year switch, or even 1/2 teams switch each year by lottery at season beginning), to mix up what teams play where each year so that all teams qualified & attending will have exposure to all other attending teams throughout a 4 year run). Someone else could run the math to get fair & equal exposure to all, exceptions could be made for financial hardship cases only, & on an even trade request basis only. Add 1 final place in 2017 and beyond, mid-June (maybe FIRST HQ), where those 8 championship competing teams are rewarded w/ an all expenses paid (see the $50.00-$100.00 setaside from all 800 Championship Team entries idea below to finance that program), face off to determine a FIRST FRC World Campionship Title, in a Nationally televised best of 7, or best of 9 match event to see who the real World Champions really are. (I would go 1 further...allow after the 2 N/S event Winners~Just the last 8 Teams Standing, an unbag period of 3 weeks before the mid-June event, allow both Alliances to effect repairs, practice new drivers if graduating seniors cannot possibly move on, strategize, & cheesecake all they wanted). Or, if that isn't agreeable, just ship all 8 of the robots to NH immediately from the N/S events bagged in the crates untouched from last match/no holdout allowance. 1 or 2 Truck(s)/ 2 weekends (Houston to Detroit, then...Off to NH w/ all 8 crated bots & 8 Sets of Team Tool Crates, etc)...Teams will see them in NH in 3 weeks or so. (Hey, I know where FIRST could find a whole lot of Grey/Yellow Totes to pack those tools in after this years Champs! They now own them). Now that...is true Recycling! ______________________ There are other ways beyond the existing signed contracts years (I had discussed something like this w/ my wife last Fall)...1 Event site 4 Days 400 Robots/Teams. Then out w/ the 1st bunch...In w/ the 2nd. Bunch next 400 Robots/Teams...You (FIRST) stores the robots and pit gear for the winners only of days 1~4, they fly home/then back in for the finals on the last Friday PM/Saturday AM. Just the drive team and essential personell paid for say 12 of each (Each of the 4 teams can/may send the rest of the team on their own dime if they wish). The venue goes dark 1~2 days (Sunday~Monday), for cleaning & admin. to breathe. Back at it again big on Wednesday ~Saturday (Championship Matches Saturday Night like usual). That way, the same venue/hotels/fields, etc. can be used, and it is still a true single location FRC World Championships. You move that around between 4~5 geographical locations N/S/C/E/W. (You are only inconveniencing 4 total teams...4 teams w/ a 50/50 shot at a WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!) How many would actually turn that down? How many of us wouldn't help them if they really couldn't afford it? Not many! (FIRST could set aside $50.00~$100.00 of all 800 teams entry fee to Champs to create a fund for the returning 4 teams=$40~&80K=10K per team in financial help to return to battle 1 week later for the World Championship Title). 12 Team Members Ea. X 4 Teams X $600.00 Flight Avg. per person=$28,800.00/1 night hotel 48 X$100.=$4,800.00=$33,600.00 Total (gas money to get home or food Bal., or addl. airfare $6,400.00) =Very Doable! (Of course as FIRST, I'd be hitting up a Major set of Airlines or Other Major Corporations wanting top billing exposure, to Sponsor the returning teams playing for the Championships myself for both the home & back round trip flights! And building the returning teams 1 room night into the actual event contract.) </;-)~ (TV Rights could add to the revenue & 4~8 returning team help stream, if billed & sold properly). (There would be no strategy that would help any team, as nobody would know who plays the week 1 winners, until they were even back in town and ready to play again on Einstein). Just attempt to strategize when you have no clue of who you will actually play. If a later date is chosen like mid-June, both alliances would know immediately following the 2nd. event...Strategize to your hearts content. Then meet on the Competition Field and playoff for the Wins & the Title. But, if there is additional travel involved for those 8 teams, make it a big battle, make it the SuperBowl Championships of FIRST FRC! OK, there would have to be a televised production of the Championships, so the rest of those playing week 1 and back home would have viewing access as usual to the following Saturday Championship Matches. Invited Teams are rotated based on when they last played as far as week 1 or 2 at Champs (or by simple luck of the lottery draw each year). With 8 divisions this year, you may visit other teams pits, but you won't really have much true exposure to many outside your actual Division. And in 3~4 days, can you really visit 599 other teams? (Working fieldside this year, I may even catch a glimpse of my own team occasionally...maybe! But I will get a good look at 1/8th of the teams present, about 10 minutes at a time. In retrospect, if it were 2017, that would be 1/4 of the teams present). _______________ Just throwing out some other future ideas here. (They promised those venues and cities 2 FIRST Championships in those contracts no doubt...Don't expect that suggested often FLL/FTC~FRC split to fly....Big chances it cannot now, no matter what! Nor, I think, would USFIRST ever want it to). 1 more thing...FIRST has never to my knowledge said it was a FRC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP (except "The 2015 FTC World Championships" this year I just noticed on the main FIRST page logos...LOL) (The community did that all on their own), they bill it as "The 2015 FIRST FRC Championship!" Do the banners this year actually say "2015 World Champion / 2015 World Finalists?" I know what participants say...But, what does FIRST bill it as? They are the Creators, they are MANAGEMENT. (We are Customers, The Community, Volunteers, Invested Owners, Participants). We are growing, growing, GROWING! BIG Change is HERE! (So, get used to it!) Be the problem...Or.....Be the solution. Rant over. Ideas put forth...Take them, leave them, toss them all. There's my $0.32 cents after reading 815...ummm, NO, now over 950 postings in 1 single sitting. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Although I am not attending the Championship Event and will not be able to attend the Town Hall Meeting (sadly), I am hoping that it goes well and that concerns are expressed clearly and information shared readily.
This would be my personal check list for participation preparation. It may sound like an elementary school lesson but, it helps. 1. Rest and food before the meeting. Make sure you are not hungry. Rest at the Championships is very difficult but, it can help. Send someone in your stead if you are already ready to snap. 2. Buddy system. Bring a buddy. That second set of ears is very helpful when going over the notes taken during the meeting. Also, an elbow in the ribs can be quite helpful at times such as, right before the snap. 3. Writing materials for taking notes. My preference is pen and paper; it allows me to doodle while I listen. 4. Listening ears. We are all guilty of wanting to say what we want to say and not actively listening. Here again, a buddy system can work wonders. 5. Draft and fine-tune a list of questions and concerns/comments that you would like to ask/express. This keeps you on task and helps control emotions during the meeting. Have 5 to 10 questions/comments prepared. #5 is for this group. Use this thread, or a new one, to draft your collective questions and concerns. Keep them concise, allowing time for needed responses from the Senior Leadership. This was a similar approach that was used for the Transparency letter that was drafted/sent a few years back. Again, this will help keep everyone on the same page and will allow opportunity for keeping random wastes of time and emotions in check during the meeting. It also shows unity. 6. Keep the FIRST community spirit of Gracious Professionalism alive and well. Woodie's Grandmother is watching, I'm sure. By preparing for the meeting, you have prepared yourself for any other opportunities that arise for discussions/conversations/interactions. Jane |
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Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Not ideal, but a possible temporary solution until everyone has migrated to Districts...
World Championship: crowns undisputed FRC World Champion (which is important, especially to robot-centric FRC teams) invitees*:
World Festival: crowns undisputed Chairman's Award Winner (which is important to all FRC teams) invitees*:
Each year Detroit and Houston swap hosting of the Championship and the Festival. Pros: - eliminates "co-champions" issue - at both events FLL and FTC can be present, compete and be inspired - opportunity for teams at both events to meet others from around the world - increases the level of competition at the Championship Cons: - does not address travel costs (makes it worse depending on the team and their location) - is there a better way to divide teams from Districts - based on how they earned their points? - what about teams that qualify in multiple categories? - at each event Rookie All Star and EI are awarded at the division level only *the number of teams shown in each category are rough estimates only. Someone more clever than I would have to confirm/adjust. |
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One challenge - what to do with teams that qualify for World Championship, but also are Chairman's winners? It would suck if they had to choose, but on the other hand, if you could win World Chairman's from either event, the World Festival loses some catchet. |
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This would preferably use the same set of CA judges at both events (at least as much as it does now), but this could be a relatively small number of volunteers specifically selected ahead of time in part because they're free on those days (wouldn't have to be all of each event). That's a heck of a lot easier than coordinating a back-to-back for qualifying teams. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
I haven't seen this proposed yet so let me throw it out there: final match at the White House?
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Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
I think I have a great idea to organize the Town Hall meeting. Check this out:http://crowdmics.com
Thoughts? |
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If you're looking at polls, though, my math teacher last semester used something like this, except through socrative. If I remember correctly, we just went to that website on a phone/tablet/laptop and used a password to join and I believe it was free for everyone. It was an interesting experience, although I'd be cautious about using it, since it can easily make those who vote in the minority feel excluded, especially here where there isn't a "wrong" answer; cause make it easy to jump to conclusions and assume the poll is representative; and (this is mostly based on that class) it always seemed to take longer than was planned for and thus became a sort of distraction. However, it was a great way to visualize the answers we gave, and according to their website, they have an open response question that could be used to gather questions. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
Remind me not to make FIRSTers angry... this thread, as well as the others that followed the 2017 announcement, has an incredible amount of content, and a ton of great ideas! I'm very proud to be a member of the FIRST community right now.
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Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
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Only 16 failed to geocode correctly (they're all at lat/long 0 / 0). I attached a North America picture (low team density in other countries requires too much zoom to make a useful picture). The pins for each team can pop up with whatever information we want to embed, such as "nearest airport" or "distance to Houston". There are a thousand possibilities. Going to do some more work to elaborate on this and then of course will publish it, even outside this thread and the CMP topic it might be a very interesting thing to see. But probably not going to do more about it until after CMP. Good luck to everyone attending, looking forward to seeing you there. |
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I think a way to discern between whether a team qualifies for the FRC World Championship or the FRC Open Championship is by normalizing district points systems to the regional model (this year with the change in how teams earn points from seeding rounds, you don't even have to do that). The top half of qualifiers from a regional qualify for Champs and the Open, and the bottom half qualify for the Open. This means that if a team turns down a spot at Champs to go to the Open, the next team in line at the regional gets the slot to the Championship. I believe VRC is similar in that everyone who qualifies for their World Champs also qualifies for the Open. This means if you are a team based out of Houston that qualified for Champs in Detroit but didn't have the money, you can still go to the Open. Fluidity of the waitlist causes a lot of issues, as does the somewhat vague objectives FIRST has for it. To get a nice even 50/50 split across a district or region, the actual time to plan travel for a WL team or any team may be slim to none. I would like to know what current HoF teams and their mentors think about a change to the HoF induction policy to roll out in the next couple of years. Teams with x RCA/DCCA wins and or y consecutive RCA/DCCA wins go up for consideration for induction to the hall of fame. Anywhere between zero and N teams can be inducted annually. This year is what I think could be the most wide open race for HoF induction in 5 years. I think anyone who has been on the block for a while could have given you 3 or fewer numbers for every year since 2010 or 11 of teams that would be inducted and probably get it right every year (I can tell you that the '12. '13, and '14 winners were the favorites before their awards team even put words to a page). The openness of '15 and on isn't a sign of weaker teams, it's the opposite. Over the next 5 years a lot of really impressive candidates for CCA are going to hit the judges table, to the tune of up to a dozen worthy candidates per year. If FIRST is going to open the floodgates for postseason play, might as well let some more HoF inductions trickle out since that's what we are supposed to be celebrating even more. Switching eligibility of HoF teams to get a certain number of guaranteed entries to champs followed by a recurring point bonus after 5 years (I want to say at least 40, since in the district system a DCA/DCCA winner nets 40 points). Some other points to make if anyone still remotely cares about what I'm saying here. -FTC World Champs and FTC World Open should happen at the FRC World Open and FRC World Champs, respectively. Flipping cities is a good idea. -Let winners of the World Open qualify for World Champs the following year. -To clarify HoF talk, induct teams as necessary at each event they attend. -Another clarification: all teams that qualify for the Champs also qualify for the open. Those who forgo the Champs give the first Open team their slot. Teams that forgo both Champs and the Open send their spots either down the rankings of their event or district system, or they get turned over to FIRST for waitlisting, idk. There is a fair argument that the idea of creating two distinct levels of postseason play would mean no one would want to go to the Open. The only way I know how to fix it is if you give a bid to the next World Champs to winners. Also, the idea of the two champs having disparate quality will exist regardless. We'll probably only get a concession that allows swapping between events, but this plan might work. |
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I've been quietly mulling over my thoughts on these developments and this is extremely close to the best compromising solutions I could come up with to the issues everyone has already discussed. Essentially a kind of NCAA and NIT breakdown between venues which make each event more competitive and inspiring for the team's in attendance, but with different focuses that highlight different awards and overall aspects of the competition and FIRST experience. While not a perfect solution, I think there's enough good here to use this as foundational building blocks for a compromise that would potentially be an improvement for the overall championship experience and competition as a whole. |
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I believe this idea is a fantastic place to start. |
Re: Preparing for the Town Hall Meeting on the New Championships Format
I'm going to guess that this will be unpopular.
You are not looking at a request for comments or a request for proposal from FIRST. You are looking at a done deal. Two champs (and feel free to call them Half-Champs) with FRC/FTC/FLL all sharing the Championship Inspiration is what FIRST is offering. What they want. They are not going to listen to "but Mom, this isn't the way that I want this". You need to go to the town hall and listen. You need to ask who, what, when, where, why, how questions. (And not What were you thinking when you came up with this). -- What was your goal -- What were your criteria -- How were they weighted -- When do you think events will happen -- etc. When Government has town hall meetings, they expect people to come and whine and then they do what they want. When politicians have town halls, they have people that ask carefully scripted questions to elicit the "correct" answer. Watch for these people, let them ask their questions, they may add a clue. And then they do what they want. When companies have "Town Hall Meetings" the expect to explain to people what is going on at a glossy high level" -- Your job is to sit there and nod, but it's possible to ask questions that will reveal the next level down of details. But remember they then do what they want. Reminder, FIRST is a company, but they are somewhat political in the way they act since they have sponsors, etc. But they have decided. If you are thinking of standing up and suggesting a change, let me suggest you stay in your seat and let someone that will ask a "nice" question to help us learn more. Your idea isn't worth anything to them. They have decided. We need to learn more about why they did this and what the goal is, driving factors, pain points, etc. For example, lets call these half-worlds or super-regionals or hemisphere championships. To move to a World Championship can be carting 6 teams to a location and playing. To inspire millions of roboteers and want to be roboteers it may mean another 400 team event. That is painful and expensive if they wanted that, they would have said so. Once we know the details then we can help make it great. I'd suggest that this thread die and a new one start of "things we would like to know". We know FIRST reads CD, so maybe if they have a list of questions before hand they will have answers. I look at this like standing in front of the GDC on Saturday afternoon. "Totes? Stacking Totes? Like some factory drone? Really, what is the competition in that?" and here we are 14 weeks later ready to declare a champion. Good luck! |
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The examples you give are mostly based on old stereotypes. Most definitely, when a government agency is seeking comments on a proposed action, they HAVE to at least consider them. Its the law. Sometimes those comments not relevant to the proposed action, or propose infeasible actions, but they are all considered. And, sometimes, things change. Even large companies will seek comments on projects, though doing so is not always required. Participation is a spectrum, and you're only describing one end of it. Where this town hall sits on the spectrum remains to be seen. |
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Also, I dispute the notion that having a single, undisputed Chairman's Winner is important to all FRC teams. At the very least, it's not important to me and mine. As I said in the other thread, I would be quite surprised if a Chairman winning team was disappointed that a second team won Chairman's that year. Heck, they say right in the award description that it "recognizes sustained excellence and impact, not just a one (1) year team effort". I don't see how it's mandatory that we only recognize one team per year for what is essentially a lifetime achievement award. At this point, we're growing fast enough that we're creating CCA caliber teams at a rather higher rate than 1 per year. You could probably take the top 10 Chairman's teams, pull one of their numbers out of a hat and be quite justified declaring they should win that year because (specific extraordinary traits/achievements that are different than those of the other 9 teams). So. I think the beef with having multiple WFAs, CCAs, etc. is pretty misplaced, and I really don't like the concept of officially segregating the two halves of the FIRST mission. |
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Jane |
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