Chief Delphi - FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...day-Priorities

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As I said in my last blog, we’re going to be having a meeting with teams at Championship about the move to two Championships starting in 2017. FIRST will be providing some additional information at the start of the session, then we’ll be moving on to questions from the audience. The session will be 12:30PM to 1:30PM on Thursday, April 23rd, in the Ferrara Theater within the America’s Center. We’re in the process of updating the conference schedule now to accommodate this. If you will be at Championship, and are interested, please attend, and bring your questions. We will be making information from the session available to the broader community afterward.

The Magic Number is 608

Your probably already know, but Subdivision team assignments for Championship are out. You can find them here.

Some may be wondering – if we said we wanted 600 FRC Teams at the 2015 FIRST Championship, why do we actually have 608? Can’t we count? Well, usually we do pretty good with that – using spreadsheets instead of fingers helps* – but offering slots to teams off the waitlist is tricky, because not everyone accepts. We need to work acceptance estimates into our decisions about how many teams get waitlist offers. At the same time, we want to offer slots to teams as early as we can, so we’re not calling up teams the Tuesday before Championship with the question “Would you like to go to Championship tomorrow”? Also, we did aim for the high side on registrations to make absolutely sure we hit that 600 number to which we committed. I’m personally very happy we’re able to accommodate these eight additional teams with little trouble (and I would bet they’re pretty happy about it also). It does mean playing two more matches per Subdivision, though, and so adding 14 minutes to the 14.5 hours of qualification match time we currently have scheduled. We are updating the schedule to show matches Friday PM going to 6:30, though if things go as planned we’ll end a little sooner than that.

Wednesday at Championship

Wednesday at Championship, teams should be focused on getting through inspection safely. Practice fields in the pits will not be open Wednesday, though officially scheduled practice matches will be taking place on your subdivision fields in the dome from 6-8PM. If you have finished inspection, please find another team to help. For team members not helping in the pit, we do have several conferences going on Wednesday, and it's the first day of a new Championship element, the Innovation Faire!

Frank

*But not for everyone. Have you seen these guys? Be sure to watch until the end when they start using abacuses that only exist in their minds. It’s honestly a bit unsettling.

2017-2020 Championships plan listening/Q&A session will be Thursday at 12:30 in the Ferrara Theater. Bring your pitchforks.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

Can somebody film the information session for those that might not be able to make it to the session?

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb) (Post 1472179)

Can somebody film the information session for those that might not be able to make it to the session?

Or stream it via Periscope or Meerkat?

...that might be a bit excessive.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

12:30-1:30 right in the middle of competition.....

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by dodar (Post 1472184)

12:30-1:30 right in the middle of competition.....

All divisions are on break for at least a portion of that window. (Which is suspect is intentional. They're bumping a scheduled conference from the theater rather than having the session when it's free.)

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by cgmv123 (Post 1472172)

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...day-Priorities

2017-2020 Championships plan listening/Q&A session will be Thursday at 12:30 in the Ferrara Theater. Bring your pitchforks.

Leave the pitchforks at home. You probably can't take them on the plane, and they'd make a mess of the seats in the bus. Super ditto for torches (in the non-British sense); pretty sure open flames are banned in the pits.

OTOH, a whole new question for the meeting: why no practice fields on Weds? When/how am I supposed to test any changes to the robot if those fields aren't open?

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik (Post 1472196)

Maybe someone will be handing out pitchforks in the pit :P

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

I've been holding all of these torches and pitchforks since SVR last year but I won't be able to bring them to St Louis. Sorry y'all.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by PayneTrain (Post 1472207)

I've been holding all of these torches and pitchforks since SVR last year but I won't be able to bring them to St Louis. Sorry y'all.

Maybe using canburgler arm would be a good alternative. Even if they are cheesecake ones. :P

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik (Post 1472196)

OTOH, a whole new question for the meeting: why no practice fields on Weds? When/how am I supposed to test any changes to the robot if those fields aren't open?

I was thinking the same thing. I thought that they would get the most use of any day on Wednesday.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by dellagd (Post 1472220)

I was thinking the same thing. I thought that they would get the most use of any day on Wednesday.

Maybe he means the match practice fields will not be open (the ones where you run actual matches wirelessly, just in the pits), and the tethered practice field will still be open. Not sure if that's the setup this year though.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Abhishek R (Post 1472222)

Have you seen where those practice "areas" will actually be, if at all? I couldn't find them on any map.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by dellagd (Post 1472228)

Have you seen where those practice "areas" will actually be, if at all? I couldn't find them on any map.

Dimly labelled to the upper left of Registration in this pic from the blog:

I'm kinda curious what those squares in the corners of each division's pits are, however.

Also that pretty clearly states practice fields in the pits won't be open. I am now moderately worried by the vision of teams testing their new canburglar cheesecake in their pits. That now seems inevitable and also a pretty bad idea since you can't easily keep a 2-can burglar inside a pit.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

Practicing for the meeting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq1KeyEARBU

I think I see Frank at the end of this....

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik (Post 1472231)

Dimly labelled to the upper left of Registration in this pic from the blog

I was referring to the wooden practice areas ala districts and regionals. They were a few set up last year in each divisions pit area and on the way to the dome.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik (Post 1472196)

Super ditto for torches (in the non-British sense); pretty sure open flames are banned in the pits.

One of the sources of endless amusement for my team, along with the name of the element with an atomic number of 13...

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik (Post 1472231)

Dimly labelled to the upper left of Registration in this pic from the blog:

The comments under the blog entry also linked to the full sized version of the venue layout, posted on the CMP page. Please use that for further commentary.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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I'm kinda curious what those squares in the corners of each division's pits are, however.

In the full sized plan they are marked as "INSP" so presumably Inspection areas.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

I'm assuming the practice field closure is to reduce distractions from getting inspected, but you would think they'd just restrict the practice fields to only fully inspected teams instead. and if they're worried about fairness in inspection order, then keep them closed (and unreservable) for the first 3 hours. I mean seriously. 75% of teams will be twiddling their thumbs after 5PM.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik (Post 1472246)

75% of teams will be twiddling their thumbs after 5PM.

Maybe they should attend some of the conferences?

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by sanddrag (Post 1472279)

Maybe they should attend some of the conferences?

I'm guessing pre-scouting, actually. Most of the conference rooms aren't nearly big enough to handle all the people that won't have much to do after inspection and between their 2(?) practice matches.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik (Post 1472291)

...the people that won't have much to do after inspection and between their 2(?) practice matches.

Most teams will probably have only 1 practice match. Source:

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The goal on Wednesday night is for your team to make sure it completes robot inspection, sends their drive team to the Drivers’ Meeting, and also participates in its assigned practice match on the your sub-division Dome field.

Emphasis mine. Also (2 hours)*(6 team appearances per match)/(76 team appearances) = approximately 9.5 minutes per match which seems like an appropriate cycle time for practice rounds.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

You guys ready to be at the event at 6:45 in the morning?
Also, make sure you clear out a space for your crate Friday afternoon in the pits.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

No practice fields and one practice match? Not a very good idea in my opinion.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by Sunshine (Post 1472405)

No practice fields and one practice match? Not a very good idea in my opinion.

Gonna be a lot of bad first and second quals.

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by wilsonmw04 (Post 1472389)

You guys ready to be at the event at 6:45 in the morning?

You mean at 6AM or earlier. You'll want great seats after teams who have had the same seats for the last 4 years come to claim their rightful location ;)

Re: FRC Blog - Championship: Info Session, 608, & Wednesday Priorities

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Originally Posted by PayneTrain (Post 1472412)

You mean at 6AM or earlier. You'll want great seats after teams who have had the same seats for the last 4 years come to claim their rightful location ;)

That reminds me of a conversation I was witness to at VA. But that's for another time.