Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

Lets get this kid a Key Volunteer Position! Sounds like he would make a great Volunteer Coordinator.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

In all seriousness and despite my bias from being someone who put forth the idea that I had never heard of before, Minnesota could lead the charge to run a regional/dcmp hybrid schedule. It's sort of a brute force way to give teams more matches but it opens the door to give some light training to volunteers, get teams used to unbag time, you could keep the venues and team counts you have, and you aren't increasing travel burden.

This is a solution that comes with a different set of problems, but the current solution in MN is obviously causing problems and the mainline potential solution seems to be a nonstarter for leadership. My question is, por que no los dos?

Ok... Everyone sign up for North Star next year, you'll get to play more matches!

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

He is in training for LRI, which I believe is his preferred position :) Based on this past year, there isn't room for more LRI's currently, but we are looking forward with our training to ensure we always have enough, and Ryan is playing a key part in that for my crew! As we add more events in the area (Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North/South Dakota, etc), we will need more LRI's. I'm personally hopeful that we'll get an event more in the North West part of MN in the next couple of years that he can take and run for me, but that is pure speculation on my part.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

Question (for both you and Andrew): Do the MN teams think that the current solution is actually causing problems, or is it the DISTRICT folks that have the problem with it?


Look, I understand you guys mean well, and want to make sure every team gets as many plays as they can possibly cram in. But there are a lot of other factors that come into play, and when you appear to be deliberately ignoring them, you really make people annoyed. Heck, I'm not in districts (though I'd really like to be), but I can understand why certain people don't want 'em, or can't go for 'em. Districts are not the end-all solution for "we aren't getting the value", necessarily. It depends on what your definition of value is--one of the Chilean teams spoke up a in another thread and pointed out that if CA went district, they'd lose their home regional, and that's not the first time that happened. That's not good for them, because they'd be traveling out here for two weeks--imagine doing THAT plus DCMP and maybe CMP! (For that matter, I'd love to hear from the AK team playing in PNW this year, as they've got a similar problem.)

BTW, L.A. could host a 72-team event. They've got the space for another 6 pits. That'd give each team... 7 plays. Guess what, they cap at 66 to try to help with the plays, and by teams/minute were the fastest regional to fill this year (third fastest by time). If they capped at 40 and there wasn't another regional around, you'd hear the complaining clear from the East Coast.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

Thanks Andrew, I think these are excellent questions to move the discussion forward. The intent of my post was to emphasize that the number of plays in qualifications is essentially determined long before anyone steps foot in the venue, so there's little we can do when the event starts to squeeze in an extra play or two.

Running two fields side by side was essentially the solution years ago when Duluth and Minneapolis both became double regionals. At this point we need more events (and more money to do more events).

Cycle times vary year to year, and is influenced by the game. A more complex game that might be more fun might require longer cycle times. Its a tradeoff.

I wouldn't say guest speakers are a problem, especially if you are close to on time. If you are already half an hour behind, they are one of the last things you want.

FMS connection times haven't been terrible for me this year. A little slower than last year, but not enough that tightening that would add a significant number of matches.

I think you hit the nail on the head that fewer teams is the key, the solution is identifying a path forward for getting there and getting more people to help in achieving that goal.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

From talking to MN teams this past weekend, it isn't as much of a problem as room for improvement. Most of these teams never knew about districts, and you don't exactly miss what you never had. I think there are other issues in MN that could be considered a "problem", but right now number of matches isn't one of them.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

I wish you the best of luck in your training! You'll be one of the youngest LRI's I've ever met.

I'm glad you're doing this, and I hope it sends a good message to the rest of the alumni around you, and across the FIRST Community that they too can be the volunteer positions they truly want to be!

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

I can try and answer some of these...
1. 6 minute cycles is as low as I've ever seen them scheduled (and probably 5 and a half is as low as is realistic, and only in the the ideal case). 2014 is the last year I can think of (example) where that was doable because there was basically no field reset. Give it 3 minutes on average between match start and green lights. A robot takes ~60 seconds to boot up and connect. Add another minute to get 6 robots on/positioned and 6 robots off, and there's 5.5 minute cycles (with a 30 second buffer for troubleshooting/intros/whatever).
2. The main lesson I see, simple fields (2012, 2014) means fast cycles. If the field reset portion can be done in 2 or 3 minutes, then it won't be the blocker in cycle times. The more frequently it takes longer than that, the more likely it is to be the part slowing the event down. As an interesting aside, this year, once the reset crews got in their rhythm, it could go super quickly (at NYC, we had at least 10 sub-7 minute cycles, so it's definitely doable).
3. The current control systems are definitely slower to boot up than others from the past. I spend most of my events fieldside, and many of the robot-based connection delays are due to miswiring (forgetting to plug the ethernet cable back into the RIO after tethering is a big one), forgetting to turn the robot on, or something that is solved with a reboot (add 1 minute on to the cycle time). I actually don't think it's that bad, but minor delays can really add up when you tack on 1 minute per robot reboot.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

Hearing all of this has been very humbling. I'd like to make it very clear that I'm not the only student who has the abilities to do what I'm doing. I know some very talented people both at NDSU and the University of Minnesota. I'd also argue that I'm not the most technically skilled, nor the quickest learner. I very well could be the most addicted student to FIRST, but Cadandcookies might have me beat;)

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

I'll field this one Wil.

To me this isn't a District/NonDistrict question. Districts don't work everywhere, for those of you who know me, you'll know the Novaks are... well practically family to me. Arkansas will never have the infrastructure to support districts and if everywhere goes to districts they are screwed. I don't think Districts are the final solution to FRC's scaling issue. I do think that for some regions they are an effective stop gap.

Now, for the reasons folks have stated (mostly volunteers and lack of nonprofit group) Districts aren't currently in the cards for MN[1]

My big objection is that two fold - 8 matches given our ranking systems = screwed up rankings. More matches give more time to equalize for a crappy schedule. I want teams that put in effort to be rewarded with high ranking. It's incredibly frustrating to build a great robot and be at the mercy of the draft because of a bad schedule. More matches helps.

My other claim is that, I don't think ANYONE would argue that less matches are better for teams. I'm already on the warpath about one aspect of customer service in FRC, I'd love to see someone else take up this aspect.

I admit, I mostly come at this from a team experience perspective - I want to see every team in FRC have an experience that makes them think "wow these folks are awesome and I want to come back" The vibe I've gotten is that the lack of plays is a serious pain point for schools, it makes the costs seem really hard to swallow when VEX and FTC offer most of the same experience for a fraction of the cost.




[1] I'd like to see a plan of attack on this, publicly.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

Hi Mr Stratis,

I know this is a long thread, but I believe you missed this question directed at you. Just wanted to bring it to your attention.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

As a coach, I felt like we went to certain events that gave us mediocre match schedules and supplemented it with a mediocre experience because that is how the chronological and geographical cookie crumbled. This year, we went to events because we knew we had these options to find out what we liked, and we enjoyed most all of them very much regardless of our final performance. We got to watch our team develop into a machine as they played 70 regulation matches.

I will admit that despite us working with a stingy resource pool, we have tried to develop processes and a work ethic that propels our team forward and upward while holding ourselves to very high standards in the growth and development we want to chart. Sometimes the perception I have is that some people focus too much on the wrong things when faced with certain challenges and in doing so, almost willingly set themselves up to fail. This is an experience a team can have within a season and it is an experience I believe is applicable to larger scenarios in FRC.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

It all depends on the team and their situation.

If you're talking about extending the day to add more plays, that could cause serious issues for teams - I've had teams that had to leave by a certain time due to school rules before, and extending the day would be bad for them.

If you're talking about ensuring fewer teams at events so each team gets more plays, then teams that have serious issues and need time to fix them would have a bad experience having to miss matches or sit on the field not moving because they couldn't get everything changed in time.

If you're talking about limiting the team numbers to ensure more plays, then you're actively reducing the number of teams that can play in a region. MN right now has spots for 246 teams to get plays. If we reduce each of our events to 40 teams, then we'll only have room for 160 teams to get plays. That means more teams would have to spend money traveling. Adding events is rather difficult, as it would mean more money - the current events would still cost about the same, and we'd need to add 2 more to keep the same number of plays in the state. That's an increase of 50% in donations to support our events for the same number of plays, something that simply can't happen.

So, is it bad for teams? You tell me. It might be good, it might be bad. It might be dependent on the year and the team in question. The only team I can answer that question for is my own, and I wouldn't want to answer it without getting direct feedback from my students.

Re: Are 8 play regional reasonable?
 

Ok, I'll rephrase - Would you prefer to give teams more plays because you believe it would benefit them in achieving FIRST's stated mission of Inspiration?

I'm trying to find some common ground here, this isn't a trick. I'm simply asking you, mentor to mentor, would you prefer for your team to get 9 plays or 8? Which is better for inspiring your students?

Edit - and I seriously don't have an agenda here. If you say you'd rather have 8 plays, fine. We can agree to disagree and I'm fine with your opinion.