Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

If it had been universally unenforced, that'd have been more acceptable than the uneven enforcement we encountered.

Thankfully this was not a major problem for our team, but at the regionals I attended whether or not the queuing officials checked to see if you were actually in transport configuration was basically impossible to predict. I saw robots go on and off way outside of the size limits multiple times, but also saw teams get called out for having minor protrusions that were not a safety hazard at all.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Obviously I'm biased, but the two fields didn't have anything to do with each other. The awards never should have been split per "sub-division" anyway.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The only thing I disliked was how long the DS<->Robot communications took to get established (I previously have called this "mDNS issues", but Greg McKaskle later clarified that the issue is more complicated than that).

In every other way, I thought the RoboRIO was an improvement over the cRIO.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Thanks MsKutz! I'm obviously biased, but I completely agree :-)

It would have just been better to make it 8 divisions rather than cobble together fields and make is pseudo 4.

It was great talking to you and we're looking forward seeing you again in future events!

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'll add one more minor quibble in that the signal cables, when plugged into the RoboRio, seemed mechanically less-secure than they ought to have been, though this is fixable by simply dabbing some hot glue on the connector once it's plugged in (thanks to team 1678 for showing us this trick at championships last year).

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

There was a bottle neck getting into the Dome for normal matches. IF you were running late, you had to pass a bunch of people in really narrow lane.

The line to get into the Dome for eliminations was awful. We stood in line to get in basically at the practice fields.


It is also frustrating when you are showing a sponsor around and the event staff tell them they are not allowed on the field area even though there is a sign right behind them that says they are allowed.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

And then they would have needed twice as many judges...

Maybe Highest Rookie Seed could have gone to each division (or sub-division).

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm putting my annoyance at seat saving into a separate post to save people the trouble when replying.

Seat saving was a problem. I know it's theoretically not allowed, but having to explain that to the ignorant is extremely trying when you're already tired from 2 days of competition and just want somewhere to sit while your match comes up. One of my NEMOs had to shame a team that should really know better into letting a physically disabled student take a seat in a row they were "saving". I personally decided I'd rather sit somewhere else than argue with a scout that needed two nice seats at the end of a row for filing boxes. Because he had to FILE in those boxes. Thank goodness I wasn't escorting any VIPs or sponsors or I'd have to explain why filing boxes needed a better view of the field than themselves.

To the suggestions that we smaller teams should just suck it up and get in there and save seats like the big boys:

No.

We bring a skeleton crew to Champs and travel regionals. We do not have people to spare to plop in the stands indefinitely just so we don't have to argue with you when the pit crew finally gets a break to watch a match or two. Nor do I feel like stooping to your level of ignoring the rules and trying to intimidate teams into accepting it.

And please don't tell me that this is an isolated problem stemming from parents/mentors/tagalongs that just don't know better. If they don't know they're being jerks, it's not my job to educate them at the competition; it's your job to educate them beforehand. Believe me, its for the best that you do so, because I and some of my mentors are going to be much less polite about it than you will be.

This is not to say I don't appreciate the problems faced by large teams attending events. You have far more people bringing far more stuff than you could ever hope to stash in your pits between matches. Thus everyone parks with all their stuff in the stands. And then there's a load of stuff spread out in the stands that you really don't want strangers moving about and sitting amongst for completely understandable reasons. These are entirely legitimate concerns. It's just that you always seem to park yourselves and your stuff in the best seating available, and then we have to wonder why the pom-poms and backpacks (and filing boxes) always seem to get the best seats at the event.

It seems like we've been arguing this issue for over a decade now, and clearly the community is no closer to a solution. The team viewing area certainly helps, but it doesn't do much to provide argument-free seating for casual observers or people who want to catch a match or two that doesn't involve their team. I think more action on the FRC side of things is the only way things will get better.

My proposed solution would be adding an additional "No Saved Seats Period" seating zone around the current match team viewing area. Preferably with large-print easy to read signs and an usher or two to cut down on arguments. Teams would be welcome to reserve space outside of this zone as a home base, but seat saving in the zone would be banned or strictly curtailed to only support scouting teams (1-2 seats per person, up to 4 saved seats per team). This would obviously take some tweaking, but I think it'd work a bit better than the jungle rules that currently seem to reign in the stands.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

No, they wouldn't have. The number of judges scales based on number of teams interviewed (at the event) not with the number of awards given out.

In short, we had enough judges there to give out awards per field.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Champs never ever ever ever ever finishes on time.:confused:
We've learned over the years, and proven once again, that we need to plan things 2-3 hours after the proposed schedule of events end on Saturday.

Better communication in general needs to be made DURING the Championship.
Lots of planning and emails go out to teams prior to the event. When major changes occur, such as the annoucement of the Chairman's Award, there should be email blasts after every day of the event of such changes/suggestions/revisions.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Since I've seen a handful of roboRIO replies here, I've spawned a separate thread to collect them so they don't get lost in the mass of grumping about the game/competition.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The number of awards given out is related to the the number of teams interviewed and the deliberation time required. Twice the awards means twice the deliberation time, which either means longer deliberation periods or more judges.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Just trust me on this one. There were enough of us to do awards for each field.

And deliberation time is roughly inversely correlated to the percentage of teams in the pool who will get awards. If we are able to give ~40% of teams an award it's much easier than ~10%.

- S

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Well done working schadenfreude into a CD post.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The only issue I had a real issue dealing with, was with the paper airplanes and litter everywhere. I understand that it is fun to throw them and all but, I feel it was a little bit excessive. I witnessed a lot of people get hit in the face. With everyone focusing on the competition it becomes a little difficult to notice the paper airplane flying at you. Not to mention that it is just more trash wont be cleaned up by the people that threw them. Again, I understand that it is a petty thing and that it is all just meant to be fun. However it did start to get very annoying.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Our team had an amazing year. It is the first time since our rookie year that we qualified for Champs.

I love the district model except our district regional ended at 7 pm on April 18th. That gave us 10 days to plan a trip to ST Louis. We didn't have any mentors on the team that had ever planned a trip to Champs before so it was a painful learning curve.

The hotel reservation and badge registration site was a nightmare. I kept getting emails form First telling me I had to assign rooms or they would drop our block and we hadn't had our qualifying regional yet. Phone calls resulted in confusing and contradictory information.

Find a bus would have been impossible if FIRST hadn't had a bunch reserved.
There were problems with the bus company and I hope FIRST can arrange for better service next time.

I know FIRST is trying to go paperless for many things but that didn't work for us. The app for conference schedule wouldn't download on my phone. Also all the apps requesting access to my contacts and photos was a no go for most of my team.

The lack of maps with location labels was painful. The blue sign labeled innovation faire in the hallway on the second floor of the conference was completely useless and sent many a person on a wild goose chase.

Last minutes email updates are not very useful to a first time attending team. Having a printed copies posted on a wall in the pits would have been very helpful.

The hour + long lines to buy merchandise were a fail. I didn't buy any FIRST souvenirs because I didn't have hours to spend waiting in line. Not labeling the small satellite locations with shirt size limitations was another fail. I had a mentor wait in line for 45 minutes to find out the shirts at that location were all mediums.

I would love to see higher quality food and more options for people with dietary restrictions. Having inconsistent information on being able to bring food into the venue didn't help our team members with severe food allergies.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

(Speaking as one of the scorekeepers on Hopper)

This was due to internet connection speed issues between the scorpion (field computer case) and NASA (where our internet and backups come through), not an API problem. With sync enabled it would take too long for scores to be committed to the database and backed up (what happens between the head ref giving a thumbs up and the score being posted to the audience screen). It was slow without the syncing issue (supposedly due to FMS changes to allow for two Einstein fields)... but with sync enabled it was so bad that it would time out half the time.

Sorry about that... We at least (AFAIK) updated things over lunch break and after the last match of the day...

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

There was definitely something not right with it. I assumed since MiCMP used the same system (and had issues at the beginning) that they were testing it out for use on Einstein.

I just hope they get it fixed for next year. I was like a junkie for the rankings. :)

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

0) Stop burning so much time getting Einstein set up.

1) Stop throwing airplanes when matches are going on. It's one thing to waste time when EVERYONE is bored (waiting for something.... anything to happen before Einstein), but there's no reason to do this while a match is going on or between matches. Especially during qualification days.

2) Requiring badges for EVERYONE attending, in the name of security? What a joke.

3) I like the scorekeeping as averaging instead of W-L-T, though only in qualificiations (even more qual matches would be good, too). Go back to double-elimination for the bracked.

4) Seriously, unless someone literally just got up for a bio-break and will be back in 3 minutes, there is no seat saving. Deal with it. As a side note, the seats along the back of the lower stands (direct access, no stairs required) are for people with physical difficulties. If you could walk 1/2 a mile to get to the stands, DON'T sit in that row of seats!

5) I'm not here for a concert or to see celebrities. I'm here for a robotics competition. Please remember this in the future.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

You may not be, but you have to understand that in the spirit of broadening the audience of FIRST and "ramping up" the cool factor of the Championship event, it's not a bad idea. While it wasn't executed in the best way possible, I can see the vision that FIRST is aiming for, and I think it has merit.

Many people attend championships for reasons other than robots. The high level of energy. The intense and grand atmosphere. The feeling that you are a part of something greater than yourself. Meeting people from all over the world. And yes, seeing and possibly meeting some big name individuals.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with that. Please remember this in the future.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Championship in particular and FIRST as a whole could really benefit from more effective communication.

This event could have been far less confusing, especially for teams like mine that haven't been in 4+ years.

1. Mark acceptable load-in locations on the map shared beforehand. Even the FRC-uniformed volunteers I spoke with didn't know what was allowed. They told me several times that "they would prefer" that we load in through the doors in the back of the building even though 30+ teams (including mine) had already dropped their gear along 7th and Convention Plaza. Security eventually did let those teams in.

2. Simulcast the Opening Ceremonies, or make it viewable from all 8 sections of the stands, or at least tell people they need to move if they want to watch. It's bad enough to make 10,000 people shuffle a quarter of a mile from one side of the stadium to the other to participate. It's worse when they don't bother to announce it to those people.

3. After alliance selections, tell teams they need to set up a new pit in center field. The 15'x15' pits make perfect sense, but I'd never heard of them until one of our alliance partners came and asked to coordinate which tools we took out there. They told me it was buried in some email FIRST had sent out a couple of days ago, but I didn't see it and still can't find it. This is definitely worth announcing to teams before they need to do it.

4. Train venue security so they know who they're supposed to let in. I saw scores of people with badges get turned away from entrances close to the team parking lots that had "Team Entrance" signs out front, forcing them to walk an extra 1/2 mile to get in through the main entrance and then loop back to the dome.

5. Remove unnecessary permissions from the FIRST Championship App. I don't know what the app offers (because I declined to sign over EVERYTHING on my phone, and I haven't found a decent description of it) but all I want are schedule-changes and other announcements. Apps that require everything a stalker could want do not inspire confidence that they use good security practices and will safeguard the data I share with them. Alternatively, they could explain what each of the permissions are needed for and offer reduced-function apps that need fewer permissions.

6. This is a general FIRST comment and not Championship-specific, but Please, please, please let me help you test the UI for your website. Everyone I've ever talked to about your website has had a great deal of trouble navigating it, and it's an embarrassment that I have to warn people about it when they decide to join after hearing all the awesome things I tell them about FIRST. Our Dean's List nominee almost got disqualified because her family got stuck trying to navigate all the way through STIMS.

I love that FIRST's goal is to change the culture to be more inspired by and appreciative of technology. Communication is a huge element in mobilizing that change, and there's a great deal of low-hanging fruit that FIRST can work on to improve it and speed up growth.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Hear, hear.

Two mornings in a row, I got stopped and yelled at by people who apparently thought they were supposed to keep everybody out of the building until the pits opened. The orange VOLUNTEER strip on my badge did not seem to mean anything to them. It took quite a lot of explanation on my part, and some nodding from other nearby gatekeepers, before they would let me through.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I second what you said completely. Establishing a standard for AV quality at worlds is a MUST to encourage growth and recognition of the sport. You don't see grainy promo photos on the banners that drape the entrance to the dome nor do you have to struggle to hear Dean speak through an sporadic microphone. The AV quality online should be the same offered to those at the event in person.

The same can be said for districts and regional events. Mentoring the students in pre-scouting worlds this year the number one complaint was low quality video or no video footage at all of the teams from the smaller regional events.

Encouraging these lower level events to try and achieve quality video as a goal would be great. Talking with the AV crew from PNW several times, I know it is a lot of work and acquiring the quality equipment they have is not necessarily cheap either. But if FIRST could help support teams in finding the funding, resources, and volunteers to pull it off would be a good start.

I know at the school we mentor some of the teachers that support the team will stream our teams events live during class sometimes. Having quality video of matches makes FRC look truly awe inspiring when presented to a novice of FRC. It makes it easy to show your school, sponsors, and parents what we are all about. Not to mention recruiting mentors or volunteers.

In short...yes it is not easy or cheap, but putting the resources out there for teams to improve it would be a major step in the right direction for ease of scouting and most importantly, promotion of FRC teams.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

During alliance selections on Carson, there was an individual keeping the team seating area empty of teams not in matches who didn't understand that there were no matches until 9:30, and we needed to be closer to the field to help 5254 whiteboard a pick to their field representative.

To his credit, I'm sure people had been giving him a hard time all weekend and he held his ground, but he didn't understand the way the event was to be run. The front set of team seating rows (which was fantastic to have when there were matches, by the way) stayed empty throughout alliance selections, and we did manage to find a few seats for a set of picklisting scouts and a whiteboard, but it was incredibly frustrating for not just 20 and 5254, but also at least a dozen other people trying to sit there for alliance selections.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

From what I gather, sending scores to FIRST's servers required a full database upload from FMS, which was slow due to the limited bandwidth. A match score should only be a few KB. The problem seems to be that FIRST hacked the API to use the data from the full database dump instead of implementing a lower overhead solution.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I skimmed 9 pages of responses and did not see my favorite negative mentioned: the sideline reporter at Einstein. Since she knew nothing about the game, every question was the same and her reaction to every response was "awesome!". C'mon First, if you really need an Erin Andrews sideline chick, at least require her to do her homework.

For all the complaints in the previous 9 pages, lighten up - it was a great time.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

YES!

I especially liked how in the very first interview she started off with "I'm here with... uh... I don't even know your team number" and she grabbed the interviewee's name badge to check.

And asking 1114 how they were doing immediately after they had been eliminated, seemed insensitive... except everyone already had a sense that she had not been versed at all in the game. The freshman student sitting beside me picked up on this right away and couldn't take her seriously after that.

I liked that they brought in Team 1448 to present the FRC Rhapsody, too bad it was so obvious they were lip syncing to the video. Would have been fun (though difficult, I know) if they could have performed it live.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The subtle misogyny here is my favorite part.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

For a counter-example to the on-field interviewer at Einstein, I call attention to this video of the 2014 FIRST In Michigan video that someone linked to in one of the other threads as an example of excellent presentation and camera work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYh_F0eDaxU

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

There's a much bigger problem.

So, the technical solution failed, and someone decided that there was no need to find a backup solution. Those of us who wanted to keep track of our favorite teams were stuck.

Find a whiteboard and a webcam if you have to, but get the scores out. This event is big enough to attract a TV audience (21st century variety). I was just amazed that First didn't think enough of the fans to make sure that the scores were updated.

TBA got it,(thanks again) but didn't have the resources available to do 100% of the areas. Being from the Detroit area, I was especially interested in Hopper, and that was one of the fields they weren't getting updates on most of the time.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Others have said it, but I wish the endgame would return. I thought that it made matches more exciting by allowing teams to turn the tide towards the end of a match. I thought that 2013's was balanced well. It allowed for alliances to make a comeback if they were behind but it wasn't an insta-win at higher levels.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Not sure why you think this counters the misogyny in the original post. That would be something more on the lines of:
Derogatory words like "chick" aren't necessary to criticize poor reporting and suggest you have a poor view of women in technical roles like this. Perhaps you meant something less sexist like "sideline reporter" instead of "Erin Andrews sideline chick".

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Ah, I was thinking more along the lines of assuming that women sports interviewers don't/can't know what they are talking about, not specifically the wording in the post you quoted.

(Though, very possibly, shame on me for not picking up on the derogatory "chick" phrasing.)

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Many people had 254 making it to the finals and I was shocked to hear that the team did not make it out of their division. I checked in with your team later in the day and they said that could go wrong did. This has to be especially galling after so many matches played at a high level.

Perhaps something to add to planning and practice for a similar game is to predict what happens when disaster strikes and how to recover from it.

Eric

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

but guys...it's not about the robots. it is about the students....

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I disagree a bit here. A team at champs played at least 10-12 matches before getting to St Louis plus another 10 matches in their division. It is reasonable to think that most of the bugs would have been worked out. Knocking over stacks in elimination rounds is something that teams should have figured out how to prevent during practice sessions. The fact that some good teams who had been posting 200+ points in qualifications only to score 180 or less in elims points to plain old bad luck and issues with having drivers handle the stress of the competition.

At the same time, a bad match in Recycle Rush is pretty devastating. The X-Cats had a match at Finger Lakes where to get the average up our alliance would have needed a 300+ game while the other alliance needed to score, say, 50 points. Both scenarios were possible but not very likely.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I worked as a safety glasses attendant and had to deal with problems on Wednesday and Thursday.

On Wednesday before 5pm, pit access was supposed to be limited to 5 team members. There was no way to enforce this so most teams came through with everybody. This was a safety problem due to the large amounts of equipment being moved into the pits. Some monitors tried to enforce the 5 person rule which only annoyed people and slowed down the lines.

So for next year, if this rule/procedure is really important, FIRST needs to get buttons, ribbons, etc, to the load-in crew so convention center staff and FIRST volunteers can help enforce it. I do not care one way or another as I believe the fear of a person being impaled by trusswork or of actually doing the impaling will make people move thoughtfully.

On Thursday, one of the divisions was running late and we were told to shut down pits at 5pm on the nose. Ushers were there to do this and several teams who had legitimate business in the pits were denied. Some adults got nasty with the ushers who then called security. The issue was resolved when a paid FIRST staff member gave the necessary instructions to let people in.

On other notes:
- Men's bathrooms were gross after about 12noon. Leaky toilets, broken soap dispensers, and empty towel rolls ruled the day.
- Convention Center concessions were expensive. If I respect the operator's no outside food rule, then I expect not to have to pay $10 for a hamburger.

Meeting people was great and some the scenes of teams walking around will stay with me for a long time. After all, where else but an FRC even will you see a pig identify someone they know, give a hug, and then pose for a selfie?

Eric

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Have you ever been in front of 30 thousand people? It's kinda scary. I had to announce my Judges at the NEU District (about 1/30th the size) and I was nervous. Heck, I forgot to announce who I was... I'm 26, have been speaking in front of crowds since I was 12. She was much younger.

Sorry, I am always going to defend someone who has the guts to go in front of people live, it's something most of us couldn't do.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think being handed the mic after winning the Bayou WFFA was my worst adult* public speaking moment. I think I managed to stammer out a thank you to my students. We should probably attach that script to the Mobius Bearing to help out all the new winners.

*Worst ever was speaking as high school valedictorian at our ring ceremony. Towards the end I his a paragraph break and paused and I swear everyone held their breath hoping I was done. And then I kept going. I hope to never lose an audience that thoroughly again.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

My only unique negative this season stemmed from the ability to make a robot taller than our trailer and taller than our crates. It causes us many hours of headache to have to separate the vertical towers in such a way that they would work smoothly with the lift when reassembled. Then there's the whole issue about short people being unable to work on the upper part of the robot. Cap the starting height at 60" so we won't have the temptation to put ourselves through that again ;)

Neither alliance had a good QF-8. As I pulled our robot off the field it was utterly nauseating to hear it - it was so loud and seemed to be coming from most of the teams in the stands. It was so emphatic, as if the crowd felt they had actually done something to topple the Poofs. My team will attest to the fact that I'm not an externally-emotional guy - but that moment was gut-wrenching.

Agree, 100% and more about the webcasts. Apparently each event has an A/V company who's in charge, and while my non-profit was willing to fork over a few $hundred for a high-res live h264 encoder, the DC Regional venue's A/V team refused to give us anything but the typical RCA output (even though HDMI was available...).

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

There is nothing in the District/Regional Planning Guide about webcasts, maybe if there was we could get a little more standardization to allow for teams to host on behalf of the events. http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ning-committee

The organizational expenses on FRC is ~$36 million for 2014, and it is difficult to make it loud when we can't tell Grandma to tune in easily (but at least she can go to one of two championships if she makes it!). I'm really hoping we can get more transparency into the financials so we can get a good estimate on what the organization spent on the concerts/FIRST Finale at CMP. I think most of the organization would rather have a substantially better webcast and production over those add on experiences.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'd like to see it go back to winning instead of average score, and I'd like to see defense return. We had so much fun playing a defensive robot the year before, but we were kind of disappointed that defensive play was gone in Recycle Rush. When defense is an option it serves to even the playing field a bit, because the big high scoring juggernaut teams can still be taken down by a really good defensive performance. I also think that the way autonomous was scored this year wasn't very fun either. We got our can in the auto zone 90% of the time, but we only got auto points for it twice because other teams just sat there and everyone had to get inside the auto zone for any points to count.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

This year FiM completely took over the role of providing broadcasts for Michigan competitions. Every competition I watched was provided in HD through a Twitch stream.

I think all of the FIRST planning committees need to recognize HD webcasts are the bare minimum for every event. Having teams provide the webcasts is only an ad-hoc fix since they may not be able to cover every event or become unable to provide coverage in future years.

The rest of the world needs to follows Michigan's footsteps.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm going to be pretty blunt here:

My personal opinion is that Show Ready is out of touch with what creates an efficient production for FIRST. All Show Ready, A/V, or any production staff should always be physically paired with a knowledgeable FIRST person.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'd be cautious to make this claim without knowing how much of the decision making process is HQ/Planning Committee and how much is SRE.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I understand that in real-life engineering, mistakes can be fatal - catastrophic even. I understand that FRC is made to mimic real-life engineering - too tough a task, not enough time to do it, not enough money to fund it - the things Dr. Flowers says every year.
I also understand that FRC is at least partially a high school event. I liked using the Qualification Average as a way to rank the teams - it seemed much more effective than the traditional WLT method. And good teams with bad matches could still perform in eliminations through alliance selections.
But the challenge of overcoming a bad match in eliminations was, in many ways, impossibly hard. If a team got a DQ - even if it was due to miscommunication with event staff - it was a death sentence for the entire alliance.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I was cautious. I included the phrase, "In my opinion" for a reason. I understand that this is strictly a personal opinion, and one that many others may disagree with. That's okay.

Regardless, I stand by my statement that all Show Ready, A/V, or production crew need to be paired with a knowledgeable robotics person.

Many district events and state championship events are managed more efficiently and have better production value than some Show Ready managed robotics events. (FiM State Championship, for example...)

Why is this?

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Yeah, we hit this snag last year and this year we didn't even bother in Virginia. 2363 ended up archiving the matches and I think they did it by attaching a camera to a pole at the top of the stands. It's pretty silly.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I actually think Show Ready adds a nice polish to the events. They just bit off more than they could chew this time around. When things start to go south some things needed to be cut loose for the sake of the show going on.
Now that they know what they are up against I suspect they will do a much better job next year.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

One of the people in charge of Show Ready Events happens to be from our town, sponsors us, and knows a great deal about the program. Try putting on an event for 40,000 people, it's not easy.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

It's definitely not. I'm not proposing getting rid of Show Ready. Perhaps I need to reword my statement in order for people to understand it better:

Managing an event for over 40,000 people is extremely difficult on every level. In order to make it more efficient, every important role should be doubled up to include a production person and a knowledgeable robotics person. This would help Show Ready create a more polished event that ensures a more positive team experience.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Jay, I think you happened on exactly the reason I disagreed so strongly to the wording of the statement. Sandy is a wonderful lady and a great supporter of FIRST. I have no doubt she would do anything possible to make an event go off as smoothly as possible.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Every single Show Ready person I have met is a wonderful individual and great supporter of the program. They clearly love their jobs and the opportunity they have. I greatly enjoy talking to them, and even hanging out with them post-event.

None of that means that the end result, especially at the World Championship, is exempt from scrutiny.

As I said before: why is it that many events can be managed without Show Ready and have a better production overall? What are they doing to have success?

This thread is about lessons learned from the negative side. I do not believe the Show Ready experience at Champs was as great as it should have been this year. I believe something needs to be adapted in order to improve the current system that they use. I offered a possible solution.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'd be curious which portions you felt were issues caused by SRE. The two big issues I witnessed were the various delays of things starting (Opening Ceremonies and Einstein, I skipped out for Closing because I needed to eat something that provided nutritional value to me) and the mess that was divisional finalist/winner medals.

In the second case, the SRE guy on Hopper was simply understaffed. He knew exactly what needed to happen but had nobody to help facilitate that. (It's how I ended up doing crowd control wearing a 125 shirt, so if you were on Hopper and got yelled at by some random person from 125, sorry. Was just trying to follow the instructions he'd given me, it was chaos) This wasn't a function of not understanding what it took to run an FRC event, it was just a lack of people. I'd chalk it up to growing pains.

The delays, idk what caused them.

Admittedly, I wasn't in the dome all that much due to my job having me over in the pits most of the time. So, I'm actually curious.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

My understanding is that SRE is in charge of scripting all of those ceremonies and handling the majority of the production. That's what they're paid to do and manage.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Carolyn was on the field before, during, and after the transition from Telsa to Einstein as was I. I can't tell you who was in charge (FIRST, Show Ready, or both) but that transition was a train wreck! The transition was poorly planned an executed with a number of different people in charge and little to no communication. There is very clearly room for improvement.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I can tell you that, at the District level, that is mostly correct. Except for the scripts proceeding the judge's scripts (The "blah blah blah award celebrates blah blah blah"), those are provided by HQ to the Judge Advisor. The JA then fills in the scripts the judges write about the winners. These are then supposed to be proofed by the JA and the production company. The slides are also put together either by the JA or the production company. To my knowledge, these templates are all provided by HQ.

The awards are put together by awards assistants who are also the folks who handle making sure they go to the judges. (Nit pick, the Awards Assistant during opening ceremonies was wearing khakis and it was incredibly distracting, that's a black shirt black pants job at that event)

Otherwise, you're right, the production company is generally responsible for making sure the AV is functional, the cameras are pointed right, and the event goes off on time. I'd be interested in finding out what caused the delays, mostly on Einstein.


(Edit: Carolyn, I'm pretty confident you know all of this, I mostly typed it up for folks who haven't been on the other side of the event. There's a ton that has to come together to make a ceremony go off. And there ARE quite a few different groups that each have distinct leadership.)

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

There was actually More deliberation time required this year, due to the merging of the sub-division fields. I judged on Tesla. We followed the normal process, and eventually got down to a team pick for each award, just like any other Regional. Then, we did a merge, which consisted of deliberating for each award the team from each field should get. This took approx. 1.5 hours for our 2 fields, Archimedes and Tesla, and probably similar timing for other divisions.

I think the main reason why they decided to do the merge was to make the award ceremony less chaotic, though I could be wrong.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I was lucky enough to have field side access the entire event and since no PNW teams made it to the carpet of Einstein (492), I just wrote some notes covering problems in the production during Einstein.

1. Camera ops don't understand where the action is.
2. FMS pops in and out
3. Interviewer and interviewee didn't feel comfortable. Should be dropped.
4. Overhead shot was terrible, should have done an angle shot.
5. Spectators want to see the robots not the kids, however reaction shots are acceptable.
6. Some shots were just grainy to the point that it felt like 2005. My phone can stream better footage.


These are just a few problems I had with the production. There were definitely more problems, but I ended up dozing off too much to remember.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I feel like this merging was really under-publicized. Most of the teams I talked to didn't know that was happening. I'm sure we all just missed some blog post or something but I feel like it could have been better communicated.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Yes, I do. Thank you for acknowledging that.

What you're saying does not go against my point:
There is a ton that has to come together. There are quite a few different groups with distinct leadership. They need to work better together. They need to communicate better. It needs to be fixed. That's my point.

Side note:
I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to help manage one of the Einstein fields. It was a fantastic experience. I already sent my feedback to some people in charge, and received a great email in return from one. I do believe they're open for improvements on an already mostly successful system, and that's all I want.

I said it in a tweet yesterday: Even success needs iteration in order to be more successful in the future.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think we are in violent agreement. (seems to be a recurring theme for us) I just wanted to make sure it wasn't just a jab at SRE alone. I agree that better communication would make for a better event for everyone.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Carolyn..you are totally correct. I will give an example.
We had to come out on the field to make sure we could connect on Thursday morning. We were on Newton. We had some time... I spoke with the camera people...They had no clue what the game was about or what was going to happen.

I happily went over the game with them and suggested some areas of special interest that they might want to look for (ie coopertition area during quals, the recycling cans at the beginning, the human loading areas... the landfill... the scoring positions... I tried to help them see how the action would evolve on the field so they could understand what people might want to see.

I don't know if this ended up with a better product for Newton but they were hungry to find out what they needed to do. It seemed that no one had even gone over the game with them.

I checked back with them during quals and tried to see if they had any questions.

Life behind a camera for all of those hours can be pretty boring... especially when they have no one giving them any critique of how they are doing things. They can't even see what they are producing because someone else must be doing the production (camera switching,... etc)

At the end I went back, thanked them for their work and asked them if they had a good time and they smiled and said yes. I may have been one of very few that ever even talked to them during the entire time. I hope that wasn't true....

Putting a knowledgeable FIRST person with them who could assess the shots and the way thing were handled could have really made the production better. The little help I could provide might have been something but putting someone with a good idea of what people want to see is vital.

One of the reasons our PNW video crews put out a good product is that they are all team affiliated... many are students.... they know what THEY want to see... and they go after it.

I think all of the good video production that is going on is due in great part to the people doing it and their knowledge of the game and what those watching want and need to see.

Yes the equipment is important...but the people operating the equipment are more important. My hat goes off to all of the PNW video staff for the entire year and what they accomplished. I am sure the other video crews from around the rest of FIRST can say the same thing....

thanks for bringing this up Carolyn

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I'm curious as to what specifically are your metrics for success?

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

The way it was explained to me by one of the FIRST guys, what's uploaded is a difference between what's already in the "cloud" and what's on the scoring computer, based on tracking information stored on the scoring computer. In most cases the first upload can be "involved", but every subsequent upload is quite small.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

It sure would be spiffy if FIRST provided us an actual pit area with pipe/drape, signage, and power BEFORE we arrived to load in (see below). It sure would be spiffy if we didn't have to waste our time finding someone who could correct this issue and then wait around for them to find the myriad other people who actually were permitted to perform the labor to correct the various omissions.

Maybe we had to pay extra for that privilege, not sure....

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

My understanding was that FIRST took over handling some things that were formerly managed by SRE. This made trying to find answers and especially accountability a tougher road to navigate this year.

There was also a new AV company.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

It would only make sense to upload only the difference. What doesn't make sense, then, is why it would take so long to upload between matches. Are robot/field logs also being uploaded, not just the scores?

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

You can't double the size of the playoffs, and then add only an hour to the schedule to compensate. Yes, I'm talking about you, FiM and MSC. And it didn't help anything that the hour was taken up by a speech and award given by Dean to the governor, and by a field delay.

Regarding the MSC productions, RoboZone had the whole season to evolve and had excellent mentor direction in the first place. Jim Zondag for sure, but I'm sure there were others.

The crew from the PBS station that makes the MSC special also does their homework. They come to districts to see how the game goes, what kind of camera angles they will need, etc. And they often practice during the qualifications at MSC so they have it down before we get to playoffs. Not that there's no issues, like the time a couple years ago we had to convince the boom camera operator that he couldn't put the camera in the goal mouth because it would block game pieces. But in general, they do a good job of preparation to get the production values high.

I think this is the kind of preparation and partnership Carolyn wants to see between SRE and FIRST.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

My perspective was from the Information Booth, aka, the crossroads of the worlds. Over the past 5 years - I believe I have heard every question there is out there dealing with team questions, volunteer questions, spectator questions, family questions, venue questions, first aid questions, and FIRST program questions (on and on).

We invite spectators in. We advertise the event at every Metro link stop and throughout St. Louis. Bring the kids! See robots!

Well...maybe. On Sat. at noon badging was packed up and moved out. But the throngs of people and lots and lots of kids came pouring in. We invited them! But think about this. What is there for them to do on Sat. afternoon.? FLL was closed. The pits were closed to the public. The Innovation Faire closed at 2. And FRC, if you found your way to the Dome - was it a 2 hour break???The Student Ambassadors were also packed up. And Union Station was shutting down.

What are we showing exactly?

And it was interesting that badging, which was SUCH A PRIORITY, on all the other days, causing some mentors and teams to stand in horrible lines on Wed. for 2+ hours (until it was decided to call off the required badging, BUT required to resume on Thurs - so teams would not miss the 5pm drivers meeting) and then it took at least 5 minutes to fill in the information for each badge, print it out, put in in the sleeve, put on the lanyard if the person is not pre-registered. But suddenly it become a non-priority on Sat. at noon. Boom. BUT how does that information get out to all house people so they know the change in status and that badges were no longer needed? It was a bit bumpy.

And suddenly, how do the VIPs get badges, and find their way to the VIP area and get access?

So the volunteers in the Info Booth are doing our best to give out the right info, and come up with suggested activities and actions and explaining what FIRST is.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

He did not talk for two hours. It was closer to 25 minutes.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

While we're talking about AV...

I'm not sure how other fields were, but it seemed like every day when we came in the volume of the sound effects and MCs on Galileo were unreasonably loud. I had to go down stadium-side and get a volunteer's attention and ask them if they could ask the audio guy to turn it down several times, and frequently it seemed as if they did nothing. I heard numerous complaints from students, parents, and friends on our team and others around us.

Aside from the volume issues, there were several times when an MC's mic was clearly left on while they were trying to carry on a conversation at the side of the field mid-match, which didn't combine well with the GA calling the match and music playing. I mostly only heard snippets of Mark Leon talking about outer space (which is welcome any other time), but it was very distracting. The timing of music being turned on fairly consistently for the last 1/3rd or so of several subdivision awards speeches Saturday was also irritating. If we're trying to celebrate what teams are doing, it'd be great if we could hear what the awards were for.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

We got many reports at the "crossroads of the worlds" re: sound levels esp. on Galileo. They were all reported. It appears this was a struggle over many days.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I think that it was demotivating for teams that worked hard all year to find that the divisions were combined and fewer awards were given. There should have be an EI, an Control, etc.. for each division.

I was also disappointed that the game was essentially a FLL game on steroids with no interaction between field halves, no strategy or opportunity for defense, etc... I personally feel that watching this game was on par to watching paint dry.

FIRST is an extremely expensive activity and I feel that teams deserve a better game than one that seems like an afterthought or teams should have a 48 hour period after kickoff to request a refund. Maybe then the GDC will come up with a game that teams would be able compete on a various levels.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I was going to say something similar. For the other aspects the SRE people know what needs to be done and have done it before. However for the video you really need someone behind the camera and switcher who knows/plays the game and shows what they would want to see which most of the time will be what the audience wants to see. Sure there will always be cases where that big play is missed because they can't have a camera focused on every robot all of the time.

Of course in the PNW district the district volunteers and staff run every aspect of the production at the district events. At the DCMP a production company is hired and they provide the lighting and audio though the video and streaming was done by some of the same people who handled it at the district events.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Seems like there is a recurring theme here that no one has flat out said yet:
FIRST dropped the ball with communication this year.

From not knowing what the badges were, or when i needed them, or where to get them.
The last minute 2 championship announcement.
Poor communication about what was going on in the arena and when.
So many aspects of this year could have been improved with better communicate on FIRSTs part.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

From what I could tell, a team would need to check all of the following in order to know all of the available information about the Championship:

• FRC Administrative Manual
• FRC Game Manual
• Championship A-to-Z Guide
• FRC Championship Event page
• FIRST Championship web site
• FRC Blog
• Team e-mail blasts
• FIRST social media accounts
• Documents in the team registration packet
• Pit Admin announcements
• Explanations from volunteers

It seemed that most (but certainly not all) of the information was out there somewhere, but it was in so many places (and in some cases made available so last-minute) that most teams couldn't keep up with them all, and some teams don't even know everywhere to look.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

Don't forget the app. It had the conference times, but lacked team divisions and pit area locations, and often crashed or didn't load properly.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

that's why we do our obnoxiously loud cheering from the back :P

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

^THIS^

Even as a veteran of FRC, the shear amount of communications/announcements, to-do list items, and media to follow were astronomical. To keep up with all that, on top of running a team and building a robot was daunting for a first year coach...

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

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I am happy there is so much interest in this subject. I believe that a great stream adds immense value to our events, which is why we (PNW) put together a strong video system and team. It allows others to be avid fans. It allows for schools across the region to show large numbers of students the dream of FIRST: To give recognition to science and technology.

The issue for FIRST is that video production is not in their core competencies. Shouldn't be either, they have enough to do. When they outsource the video production to others, the costs are surprising. It was cheaper for me to purchase all of the equipment for the PNW streaming setup than it was to hire a professional crew for a single event. Since we do 11 FRC events a year, the value proposition is quite reasonable. It cost us less than $1500 per event the first year. Subsequent years have about a 10% replacement / repair rate. So we spend about $3,000 a year (we have two full systems) in replacement cables and other enhancements.

To make this successful, a new cache of volunteer knowledge is required. The PNW took this on a couple of years ago knowing that a few dedicated individuals and a handful of students could put together a high class broadcast.

Our equipment is very reasonable quality, simple to use, and is good for 4 to 5 years. We have finished our second year. Each setup cost about $16,000 to put together. I shopped explicitly for equipment that would be suitable to be run by students, yet meets the standards for broadcast quality. As such, we end up with about 8 volunteers a week. Three of them need some level of training, and one technical director to help with the details needs a substantial (yet very doable) amount of training.

I am open to sharing everything we know with the greater FIRST community. FIRST is actively looking into how to improve the stream quality at all FRC events. Sometimes doing it with knowledgeable volunteers is a better approach. Keep in mind, most of the staff at an FRC event are volunteers. Integrating the volunteers in with the A/V company (Three Rivers, Sargent, or other local guys) isn't really a problem. It requires a set of volunteers to step forward and own it. Each show requires at least one adult to take ownership and to lead a group of other volunteers (adults and students)

Are you that person?

Kevin Ross
PNW District Chairman

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

PTC has made a full 3d model of the field available every season for many years. You can measure anything from it. You don't even need to use Creo for your CAD system, as you can install free lightweight visualization software or the full blown Creo and just use it as a viewer. Measurement works either way.

It is usually available right at kick off, just like the KOP CAD models. Sometimes it is a little later, GDC doesn't release it to PTC any earlier than the rest of us, so the unique features have to be modeled before being posted.

Our team has simulated robot position/clearance digitally before we cut the first piece of metal, bUT weve only scratched the surface of simulation. I think there is a lot of opportunity for growth and learning in the area of a "digital twin" robot among FRC teams.

Disclosure: I work for PTC. Nothing above depends on whether you use our software to model your competition robot, its free for everyone in FIRST. Including student home use.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

That's probably the best solution I've heard so far. The scouting excuse is the most common, and it makes sense that scouts need good seats. This solution would also end the incessant battle between teams standing up and cheering and scouts in the back yelling for them to sit.

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

"We're fighting for our right to boo the Dodgers"
(see a few WWII movies)

Re: 2015 Lessons Learned: The Negative
 

I agree with this sentiment. I've posted about this in the past. FIRST is being naive if they believe that "no saving seats" can be enforced. In fact it will lead to chaos if truly adhered to as individuals would have to take everything with them when they went to the restroom and find a new seat when they come back. The real answer is to better organize the seat allocations.

My proposal is as follows. Now that FIRST is giving badges to everyone they can use those badges to allocate seating.

- Each team is allocated a set of seats for scouts in the lower area between the arena end lines. Teams can claim up to 10 or 12 seats (that's a pretty typical true scouting crew size). The teams will inform FIRST beforehand of how many seats they need, and FIRST will segment off those areas. They can rotate scouts through those seats from their other seating sections (see below). Most importantly--no "spirit" displays are allowed in this section. Those sitting in these seats are part of the competitive team and this section should be considered part of the competitive area.
- A section along the front 2 rows is allocated for VIPs and other with special badges. It is important not to OVER allocate the numbers of these seats.
- Non-scout members of the teams can save up to 20 seats in the larger area surrounding the scout area. Spirit displays are allowed in this area. The number of seats saved may be set as a proportion of the badges issued to the team. FIRST should know the seat count for
- Open seating is available outside of this area. No seat saving is allowed in that area.