Re: IRI Feedback Thread
 

Chris, while your reasons make a lot of sense, I do want to add an option we tried out at Blitz this year as a thought. We actually had students work with Judge Advisors as judges. It allowed students to get a view inside the sausage factory as it were. Most seemed to find it useful from the feedback I heard. Perhaps couple this with scheduled time slots for pit interviews and you could avoid the "having to stand around forever" issue.

Re: IRI Feedback Thread
 

I had the pleasure of watching the webcast. These are my thoughts regarding that sector...

Positives:
-Great webcast quality
-Excellent robots
-Fantastic rule changes

Negatives:
-Really slow field reset. A lot of time in-between matches.
-A lot of interviews. Like a lot. Seems a bit overdone
-Camera effects on stream were a bit strange, like blurred corner edges. Better focus on the center, but it's nice to see what's happening at the HP stations.

Re: IRI Feedback Thread
 

Pros:
Livestream and videos of individual matches were available relatively quickly for those who couldn't watch during the event

the interview with the 1923 person (it was the only one I actually watched since I could skip ahead to the next game)

cons:
Video quality at the edges (as mentioned)

Recycle Rush is still kinda boring, even with robots this good at such a cool event :P

Re: IRI Feedback Thread
 

First off, 1923 had a fantastic time at IRI. To have been invited was an incredible honor, and watching our students work hard on robot changes to be able to 'play with the best' before the event was awesome. I wish we could have had more time to shake out the new claw before arriving, but we dialed it in eventually; and watching my students become "an IRI team" over the course of the weekend was well worth the trip.

I've done my share of work running events, so I understand that there are things you can't entirely change - heat in the gym for example; not much you can do beyond blasting the AC at full and hoping it helps! Overall we had a really good time, but I'll make a few quick notes:

Team Dinner - Before our last match, our students looked in briefly to see if they wanted to stay, and couldn't find vegetarian options (we have more vegetarians on the team than carnivores!), so we went out elsewhere. I wasn't there, so maybe they just weren't looking hard enough, but options for alternative eating habits/restrictions would be nice.

Ref Inconsistency - I'll spare the details for a PM, but in one match we were setting up a double-tether (our ramp > partner's ramp > partner robot) so that our robot could can-burgle... and had our HP ramp taken off the field by a referee over the numbering rules. This was something we'd done before, and had been done -to- us in other matches, with no issue. We asked if we could fix the problem quickly (with a sharpie, <30 seconds), and were denied. A few matches later, we watched the same ramp numbering issue be called on another team, and they were allowed to make the same fix we were proposing before the match started. It affected our match outcome, but more importantly it was pretty disheartening for my students to have been treated that way. In the future, consistent approaches when it comes to calls/situations like that would be better overall for team experience.

However, out of three days in that venue, five minutes of unpleasantness isn't really the biggest deal. My students had a fabulous time meeting new friends from all over the place, and are certainly working hard to create a 2016 team & program that makes it out to Indiana again. Thank you, so much to the IRI PC for putting together another fantastic event.

Edit:
Hey, thanks! :) Thanks a bunch to IRI for inviting me on their show. It was an awesome format, and super fun to be a part of! Everyone I know that was watching back home enjoyed IRI Live a great deal.

Re: IRI Feedback Thread
 

As an ancient IRI veteran, I appreciate the consistency of experience from year to year. We always know what to expect. Thank you to all for providing another fun and consistent, highly-competitive experience.

The heat was more than tolerable for this humidity-adverse guy. It could have been much worse - we could have been competing in the MARC gym. :)

Re: IRI Feedback Thread
 

I was kind of chuckling at the people complaining about the heat. That was nothing compared to what it is at MARC's Portal o' Hell Arena. What you felt outside on Friday is what it felt like in that gym all weekend long.

Re: IRI Feedback Thread
 

Do you mean the IRI Live interviews? I thought they were awesome. I even ran down to the pit to watch a few of them. Would you rather watch people walking around for six minutes?

Re: IRI Feedback Thread
 

That adds to my thought on field reset being slow. If field reset was slower the transition time would be smaller.
I like the concept of interviews, but there was a lot of them.

Re: IRI Feedback Thread
 

The actual field reset crew did an incredible job considering they had much more game pieces to set up. It was the flow that was holding everything up. For the flow to work at it's maximum the on field blue teams had to clear out first and get moving as soon as they could get their robots. The red alliance teams had to be out of the way on the field before the exiting blue alliance teams made it back towards the entrance end of the field. Meanwhile the blue alliance teams on standby have to quickly load on and get their robots set up as soon as possible. After they get on the field the next on deck blue alliance teams can come down to be on standby for the next match. That's if every team is on point and ready to move (queuing works best when the teams make it work. Queuers only sell teams religion and if the teams buy into it's a success. If the teams struggle with the flow the event struggles) The next day they changed to a more efficient flow that helped male things run more smoothly.