Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Speaking as a spectator, I can say Jenny is 100% on the mark.
We wanted to experience the CMP, but didn't want to take time off work or our kids out of school. So my wife, two boys, a fellow mentor, and I stayed Friday night in Collinsville and went to the event on Saturday.
We arrived about 8:45 local time, were instantly told we weren't allowed in without proper identification. We made our way to the information booth, said hi to Jenny, and waited some time* for personal badges to be printed.
We went to the pits, which were a ghost town. (apparently this was during alliance selections, but ev-ery-bo-dy was gone).
We tried to watch some matches, but event staff didn't let us through to the EJD.

The best part of the day was our lunch at OverUnder.

As I said before, if the flagship world championship bores 6- and 3-year-old boys to tears, it's not doing it right.

I will not be taking my family back to the CMP as Saturday spectators.

*I don't know exactly how long it was, but it was enough time for my pregnant wife and 3yo boy to go to the bathroom, which isn't a fast feat.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I forgot a pretty frustrating snippet from this season, and it started back at Day 0.

The game manual web viewer was worthless. Absolutely not worth the electric energy, bandwidth and time it took to load it. It wouldn't load at work, for whatever reason. It wouldn't load on my phone. At home when it did load it didn't have a search function. Search is critical when trying to vet a creative idea. I magically found the button for keyboard shortcuts though, phew! There was no skimming to a page easily recognized by its graphics for a quick reference because each page had to load individually. There was no section-by-section reference or TOC. It was impossible to directly link to a rule in an online discussion.

The rules are tough enough to follow given the cross-referencing of definitions, graphics, blue boxes and actual rule text in the manual. 2013 & 2014's online manual were great. 2015 was definitely a step backwards. While I wouldn't say it was as bad as the Champs Hotels website, it definitely ranks pretty far down on my list of unusable websites.

The PDF worked fine, but had to be re-downloaded every Tues/Fri after updates.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

When the manual app did work (not often), it would not zoom or display landscape.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Seconded. In Wholehearted agreement.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I've just thought of two, that have been pet peeves for several years now:
(1) Create at minimum one controlled horizontal dimensioned drawing of the entire field with all the basic measurements (wall to platforms, wall to staging boxes, lengths, widths etc.) and put it in the game manual, so we don't have to analyze several different game drawings to figure out how far to move in auto (for example). Additional vertical drawings with the heights of the tote chute, the step, scoring platforms, etc. would also be nice - with the emphasis on putting as much as possible of this vital data into a single drawing in the manual.
And
(2) Some tweaks were made to TIMS registration with respect to youth protection, but I still have had to sit down next to parents and members and work together in some cases to get their registrations completed...and I still have potential members that create registration accounts then decide not to participate, thus I have a bunch of incomplete non-members that I would like to just completely delete from our roster ("rejecting" a request does not remove them from the roster). FIRST needs to give team leads the ability to create and delete accounts, then have the members and their parents log into them to fill in the information.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

And publish official CAD of the arena (or at least the field).

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'd really like to understand what the logic is behind the badges. They don't ask for ID. So any schmoe could walk in and say his name was Engelbert Humperdink and get a badge made. Boy, kids, doesn't that make you feel safer?

My nephew visited and had to carry his kid all over the place after being told three different locations to go for the badge. Then they just asked his name and made a badge. The entire premise was ridiculous.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I didn't have to look into the post header to see you were a team mentor. Referencing "Engelbert Humperdink" dates you around my age. Thanks for the smile!

How many Engelberts did you encounter in Saint Louis?

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I heard one of the purposes of the badges was to try and provide a more accurate head count...requested by representatives of the new Champs local organizers/supporters.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

If you stuck around for the closing ceremonies/finale, Don Bossi was able to give an attendee count to the nearest person. I don't know how accurate it was, but it was certainly precise.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

When I counted heads, I got nowhere near his number, so I think a bunch of teams must have left due to the delay of the finale....:p

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I've read through about 25% of the comments, and finally got to the TL;DR point. I know that Frank and FIRST HQ take what is said here seriously, so to add the aggregation of the previous comments, here are my thoughts.

I kept saying that I was sure this season would eventually win me over, as other seasons have - to some degree, I even came to appreciate Lunacy. This season never did. Granted, it was a unique engineering challenge, and I believe that our students, from that perspective, learned a great deal. But FIRST isn't just about the robots (although, I will come back to that concern in a moment), we did this to change the culture. We want to raise up the next generation of Scientists, Technologists, Engineers and Mathematicians - AKA, STEM. Warehouse demos aren't going to get us there. As I sat in the stands watching what was supposed to be the pentacle of the season, the finals on Einstein - I couldn't get excited about it. I was happy for the teams who were there, but the competition had no excitement. There wasn't that level of tension that previous years had. Visitors, friends, and family members who watched it, only would watch it when my team was playing, because it couldn't hold their attention either. I am worried how many students, mentors - as well as perspective new students and mentors we lost in the last 4 months. I have heard from several who won't be back. That makes me very sad.

I said above that FIRST isn't about the robots, but to change the culture. Just as the finals on Einstein celebrates the achievements on the building of the robot, the Chairman's Award is the celebration on how teams have done changing the culture. I know that the finale was supposed to be where that took place, it's own stage, and as much as there was good intentions to do so - that absolutely did not happen. It felt as if the it was being shoved to the end, when so few were there to celebrate with them. That's just wrong. We, because of our arrangements, had a charter bus to catch and tried to stay as long as we could - hours after the award should have been given, but in the end had to leave before the announcement was made. FIRST should consider itself fortunate that the winning team was still there.

FIRST needs to re-evaluate how things are done, and if they align with their core values and mission. This season didn't feel like it did.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

we got sucked into the H-drive trap... While it was a lot of fun to have a drive train different than tank for the first time ever, it prevented us from bringing the totes inside the robot as far as possible, making our stacks a bit less stable (although a variety of things played into that). it also weighed a lot for something the drivers have said they probably could have done without

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

It still would have been nice for me to have all the awards happen and then go off on the concert & whatever: I had not realized the time and I was really hungry during the DJ time, and I also got a headache from the excess of bass (and other audio problems from ee-ee-arlii-ii-iier)

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

as a student I want better video quality so I can watch more robots