Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

What could FIRST stand to improve upon?

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I was disappointed to see that the Championship Chairman's Award was presented yet again after a long delay at a different part of the arena. If it truly is the most prestigious award in FIRST, I believe it deserves better treatment than that.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I totally agree. Our team voted not to stay around for closing ceremonies and left immediately after Einstein finals. Personally, I was looking forward to the announcement of the Chairman's award, and was disappointed that it was presented so late.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Design a game that is easy to officiate where it is difficult to incur accidental fouls. Especially fouls that are subjective or open to significant interpretation.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I agree with this.

I would like to add the large distribution of valid places to find information. If you want to know which Einstein field your team will play on first (Mass or Energy) you need to read the tournament section of the manual, if you want to know which field (Hopper or Newton) becomes Mass you need to read Frank's blog. If you want to know where your team is allowed to sit for these matches you need to read the A-to-Z guide. This is one example of needing to go to three different sources to find the answer to a simple question (Where should I sit?).

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

The music for the highest awards (Champions, Inspire, CCA) was just bizarre and also more than a little creepy. Sweet Dreams is not celebratory music.

Other than that, the Finale was actually pretty good in my opinion.

Some ongoing stuff is that we really need more transparency/a public road map for where we're trying to go as a whole. I understand that FIRST is "everything to everybody" but it's hard to effectively help FIRST when we don't know where we're trying to go.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

The new website is horrible.
Difficult to navigate.
I don't see how it appeals to the first time viewer as I think it was intended.
It is also frustrating to a long time FIRSTer like me.

Who did they survey or how did they beta test it?

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I wish they'd go back to the old website. I just do not like using this one.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Pit maps should have team numbers.

Finals should not be decided by foul points.

Having divisions announced earlier would have been very nice.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

High-level summary: FIRST needs to work on cleaning up the transitions during Einstein and Closing Ceremonies.

There was downtime between matches where it looked like the fields were green and ready to go, but nothing was happening. Sometimes it was filled with dance songs, but often it was filled with nothing at all. And while part of that can be attributed to technical issues with the Audience Screen from the FMS or connection issues, I would be surprised if that was the case.

If there is going to be a lot of downtime between the end of Einstein matches and Closing Ceremonies, then it would be nice if it was communicated earlier on to teams and audience members. I understand that time is needed to tear down the fields and clear things out, but if I remember correctly they didn't give people a good idea of when that was going to be finished until about halfway through the break (and I might be wrong on that, feel free to correct me). I'm sure there are teams that left after Einstein matches finished who wanted to stay for the Champions, Inspire, and Chairman's Award presentations but didn't know when they were going to happen.

FIRST needs to do a better job of communicating/advertising what the closing acts are going to be during closing ceremonies. I know the names of the groups performing were briefly mentioned during Opening Ceremonies, but unless you researched those groups (I know I didn't) you don't know what you were missing by leaving early. And even if you stayed for part of the acts, there was no clear indication during Closing Ceremonies whether or not the act that just finished was the last act or not, causing people to at least start getting ready to leave even when there was much more to see.

I really liked the production value and introduction of all of the teams on Einstein at the beginning, but just overall it seemed to go downhill very quickly from there.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Design games where the referees aren't also scorers.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Putting big signs saying what divisions was in what section of the pits would have been nice. I spent a good chunk of my Wednesday evening trying to figure this out so I would be ready to catch all my teams the next day.

The production quality increased for sure, but with it came a slew of problems. I saw raw FMS screens, with the magenta key, frequently, something that you never see in Indiana (because we use upstream key) and rarely in PNW (because they use downstream key). They also had horrible transitions between field views and FMS screens. I don't know why they didn't take down the downstream key first and then switch, but they insisted on screwing it up almost every time I looked at the scores. I know this sounds like whining, but when there are ways to make these problems go away quickly I am appalled that FIRST didn't tell the production company to get their act together. An even more glaring problem was the Einstein Energy camera that was flickering POSSIBLY because of a taut SDI cable, I can't be too sure. They had 24 Marshall cameras, one of them failing could easily be replaced, especially during Einstein. Districts like IN and PNW should not be the standard for AV, Champs should.

/rant

I have a few more problems, but that is what I feel was the most important.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Remove the current tie-breaker system for elimination rounds or altogether.

Remind volunteers it is about the teams. Nothing beats being yelled at by an inspector because we took our cart out of our pit to safely test something all while we had judges in our pit.

The plagues were a nice touch however they could use some refining as they weren't the design I would have gone with if I wanted it hanging in a corporate office.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

i stopped going to the FIRST website, after trying to use it for months. that makes me sad, but thank you blue alliance.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

There is no saving of seats. Nothing beats being yelled at by 8 people saving 30 seats when you're trying to find 5 together for your team that just got eliminated from Carver playoffs. Nothing beats the new black mom on your team being told "you don't belong here" when she's looking for a seat to watch her son in a match.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Not trying to defend FIRST or anything, just really curious on these 2 comments:
Long delay after the end of Einstein - yes I can agree to that, but it was on the main stage right behind the Einstein fields. Personally, to have all the top awards given out like that for each program along with the Founders Award felt like a proper treatment of the seriousness of the awards.

(BTW: Props to the crews/FTAs who did the tear down, the field this year was a pain in the butt to build and take apart, they made it look effortless to someone who's done it before. Of course it helps that they were all FTAs mostly :D )

There were signs hung up, maybe not the largest, but I could see them from the robot path. I wasn't there on Wednesday, so maybe they got added over night?


To add to the list:
1. The website is very hard to use, If it were not for links from TBA I doubt I would be able to find anything about the rankings or match info.

2. Championship conferences: these REALLY need to be recorded if possible, I missed out on just about everything i wanted to see since I was not there Wednesday, and had to make choices between ones in the same time frame.

3. People need to stop running in the pits! Every time the announcer shouted that i couldn't help but think of the escalator scene in MallRats.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Audio/video production quality, specifically during Einstein. I can't understand how they keep screwing this up. Last year was worse for sure with its constant feedback squeals, but they didn't do too much better this time around. How do you have a soundcheck for 15 minutes then still screw up the levels? For somebody who's in the same spot the entire time?!?! You hit the mute button, you unmute the mute button.

And don't get me started on the issues with keying and cropping. Yeah, let's not test this beforehand? Go ahead and resize everything live. Cool.

I'd give way more slack here if this were a regional/district, but we're talking about the final matches of the event of the season! And you've been at this for the last 3 days already!!! If you can't run this properly, it's time to find another company. Mistakes happen even with the best of 'em, sure. But not this many, this often.

EDIT: Also, and I hate complaining about this because I know they tried and mean well, I just wasn't feeling the commentators in between matches during Einstein. I liked that they did stats and facts, but the flow of conversation seemed forced and unnatural, and there were a lot of awkward pauses, especially after attempts at humor. I hope they either train them a bit more next year on this style of commentating, or bring in a more seasoned crew to do this job (maybe some of the GameSense/FUN people).

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

The theme and game had one major, glaring hole:

Even the fools in Mideval times knew that a catapult did not have to re-cross yonder mountain before launching the next rock.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I don't even bother to navigate the new FIRST website if I am looking for something in particular to be honest.. I just search it on CD and hope someone found it and linked it in their post.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Finals/Einstein still have far too much dead time. FIRST need to fill this with something awards, speeches, whatever, instead of just saying "we will be back in 5 minutes or so".

Why can't opening ceremonies happen before opening pits? Matches don't need to immediately start after them...

FIRST website still needs a lot of work. Specifically it should be easier to get to VIMS and TIMS.

No tiebreakers in elims please, just do replays.

Bumpers area needs to be smaller then it was this year.

Stream & record the champ conferences and put them up on youtube and the first website.

Final score screens should have team names.

While I really loved the screen split used at champs and TX regionals, the bottom screens needed views from different angles not the sightly different ones they had. A mix of NE/PWN live actions shots at the bottom and a over view at the top would have been great.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

CMP Volunteer food still needs vegetarian options. Saturday where I was the vegetarian option consisted of rice and asparagus with a salad that was almost all spinach. I mean, yeah, I like these things but I don't have the digestive system required to process them.

Maybe 2Champz will have better veggie options.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

FYI,

This was the same range as it was in 2014 except it is 2" higher off the ground.

Also things might be in the works for the website. I can't say much here but from what I know expect things to get better.

If anyone has any suggestions for the website let me know. I can send those on to a person who is working on it.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Lonestar veggie options are usually pretty good. That's typically because Lucia takes direct control of the menu for volunteers and VIPs. We apparently had two gluten-free volunteers this year that ended up with plated meals to make sure they weren't poisoned.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

It wasn't that long ago that CCA, FTC Inspire Award, and FLL Champion's Award used to be given out right before Einstein started, and perks of the award were field side seats with Woodie, Dean, and the rest of FIRST brass. I vote we bring this back. It ensured that the biggest audience possible saw the teams that we all should idolize and strive to be like. I vote we bring this practice back.

Supposedly they were recorded. I have yet to see where said recording has surfaced yet though.
Pardon the language, but JFC about that last bit. Sometimes I'm halfway tempted to actually print out the rule in the Administrative manual and carry it around to competitions. I understand that teams want to sit together, but when I'm just one person looking for an open seat, have a freakin' heart.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I don't like a website that I have to to click through 3 pages of content to find what I'm looking for. They need to fix the website to have sub-menus to navigate to content faster from the homepage. Like, I dunno, the old website had.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Please stop basing rules on intent. This includes "strategies aimed at"... Things either happen or they don't. When you have to ask "did they mean to do that?", controversy often ensues.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Ok I did this last year and it was well received so I am going to do it in this style this year:

Early Game Announcement:

I actually liked this, will go into more about it on the positive thread

EDIT: Putting this here, I also hate the new website especially when I was trying to figure out stuff for Championship

Preseason:
Ok I said it last year but for the teams hosting kick-offs please release the designs earlier, since we basically only had the drawings the night before. I know you are trying to make it fair for everyone but we were lucky to get the field built that we did.

Game Announcement/Kickoff:
I have no real complaints but this is related to the above and the game in general but please make sure next year that the team designed elements and real field elements are actually the same or close enough not completely different.

Build Season:
One again no big complaints but can we please not have $30 game pieces made of foam.

Palmetto Regional:
No complaints this event was amazing even with the Cheval being taken out for a chunk of the time, and the refereeing left a little to be desired but that will be discussed later

Orlando Regional:
I decided to put my money where my mouth was and wanted to referee at Orlando but it was full so I did field reset instead. No complaints here either it was a fun event go to it.

Rocket City Regional:
I am going to cut the regional some slack since it was the inaugural event but a few things. Why were seats on each side of the field different, as in one side had hard plastic chairs and the other had cushions. Certain decisions about how team traffic flowed could have been improved. Lighting on Thursday being different then Friday was an issue that was quickly corrected. Finally why did we not receive chairman's feedback forms? I gave it to my team to turn in and got it back folded up inside our video case. If they were not going to provide the feedback why take the sheet in the first place?

South Florida Regional:
This event should have been my favorite, a regional 7 minutes from my house, get to sleep in my bed, see my dog, it should have been my favorite, it turned out to be my least enjoyable event of the season. The venue had little to little to no food or drink options, heck Thursday at 1:00 I went to get a bottle of water and the concession was already closed. The parking was at the back of the venue then had to walk all the way around to the front, I get the idea was to attract foot traffic but any local would tell you that you get 0 foot traffic in front of the convention center and actually get more near the back. A lot of the volunteers were rude, I have never said that about a FIRST event but here it was true, volunteers appeared more concerned with getting home then letting teams enjoy themselves. Not all volunteers were like this but enough that is warrants mention. After Fridays award ceremony when they announced pits closed in 5 minutes most teams filed out to leave which blocked off the entrance to the pits, when I tried to walk in to put away the things my team uses in the stands I was told the pits were closed and I would not be allowed entry, despite seeing teams still working, I had a collapsible table, giant green wooden 1, 7, 9, and a box filled with stuffed alligators, I clearly am not going back there to work and actually had to have a friendly safety adviser escort me to my pit to put the stuff away. I have never been more embarrassed to be a Florida team then when interacting with the volunteers and realizing that to many of the out of state and international teams attending this is what they think most people involved in Florida FIRST are like and frankly that is unacceptable behavior, volunteers are as much, if not more, representatives of FIRST and especially the event then the teams are and should be held to and act with a higher standard. Finally once again why did we not receive chairman's feedback forms? Seriously we attended 3 regionals this season and 2 did not give feedback forms, and the one that did was the earliest and had the most teams, so I see no excuse for the other two.

Championship:
I did not attend this year due to my home needing emergency repairs but I watched the live stream the entire time since I was still running my teams scouting group. From what I hear it was lovely, and I much appreciated the change over to closing ceremonies happening on the same side as Einstein but echo the sentiment that instead of random dancing I would much prefer some of the speeches and awards that happened at the closing ceremonies to instead of happened in between Einstein matches.

Stronghold as a Game:
I have very few negatives about this game, my only major gripe is the same as it was in 2014, Referees are not score keepers, stop making them so. I know for a fact that if next year they make a scorer position which is different from a referee teams would easily provide volunteers to fill the role.

Good job FIRST last year I said this at the end of my negative post:
You proved that 2015 was not a sign of things to come, and I am glad you are not leaving me behind keep up the good work.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I really miss Dave's pre-match team history before each match. I hope FIRST puts him and Blair back into positions that made Einstein memorable in the past.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

This x100000000000000000000000. What got me most interested in actually learning about other teams was listening to Dave ramble off the histories of the team's on Einstein in 2007-2010 when I was a student.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

This was definitely missing vs. previous years.

In addition,
The website needs a LOT of work, or go back to the old one.
Teams should be able to watch their own team compete in eliminations if they are stuck behind the curtain in the temporary pits.
And the most negative point, the CCA was annouced so late into the agenda!
Many people leave after the last match on Einstein.
In fact, in the past, the winning CCA team was allowed to have front row seats to watch the Einstein matches........speaking from experience, that opportunity was priceless.:)
Imagine this year's winner, Team 987 who was competing on Einstein. Even better!

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

2016 SFL Regional was probably one of the worst experiences I have had in my 5 years of FRC. Some of the volunteer's at the event were quite rude. We would be pulling up to the field to lift the robot and bring it to the field, and we would be yelled at for taking more than 3 seconds. Also, the queuing area was ridiculous, there was no room to move around; I am amazed at how they fit 18 robots in what seemed like a 10x10 box. The Ref'ing at both for Orlando and SFL leave a lot to be desired for, from what I saw there seemed to be a lot of missed fouls.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Wait this was a thing?! This must come back, I would love to hear about team histories!

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I don't have a lot of complaints about this season. The biggest one is that, once again, reffing and scorekeeping NEED to be separated for games like this (and 2014) where there is full real-time scoring and a lot of interaction and potential fouls. It's just too much for refs to keep track of.

My second major complaint is that the field was way too complicated. I get that it was cool and the different movable defenses provided a big challenge and a lot of strategic depth, but it also made it very expensive and space-consuming to build field components for prototyping. I think half of our storage space is field parts right now, and I'm very much looking forward to reclaiming our closet. I will also echo comments that there at least needs to be an intermediate option to build team versions of components that are a better approximation for the real field. The portcullis and drawbridge specifically were WAY different. In general, dynamic game elements to not translate well to wood (ala the 2012 bridges).

I was not a fan of audience selection. The ability for large teams to influence other teams' matches is not desirable, especially since "rounds" are only approximately 1 match for all teams. 971 had the opportunity to cheer for an audience selection that wouldn't go on the field until after their final qualification match. 5803 played two consecutive matches with Rough Terrain in the middle because of a short turnaround. I get that it engages the audience, but it provides a huge strategic advantage, especially in playoffs. Also the fact that in quarterfinals, the 1v8 matchup literally has almost no time to finalize their match strategy after audience selection is absurd.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Last time I can actually recall an Einstein history lesson was 2010, back when it was in Atlanta, and Dave did a headstand to introduce teams. Video of it exists on Youtube. Karthik also gives good history lessons at the events he MCs at.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

You mean like the one we had in 2015?

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Stepping back, why were all the elimination matches on Einstein so close? It seemed like no matter how good the teams were, the score was about the same. It would have been nice to see a couple more points differentiating the top teams.

Also, I'm starting to dislike these games where a single dead on your alliance robot either means you lose out on a bunch of ranking points, or lose the match. 2014 was tough with a dead bot, and the capture was impossible in 2016 with a dead bot. Compound that with teams taking lots of risks in their drivetrain, and you end up with more dead robots than before. When the top team in your division gets 36 RPs, and a perfect win record is only 20 RPs, bad partner luck is pretty frustrating.

I'm also noticing a trend. The games get harder and harder each year. I'd actually kind of like another game like 2014 or 2009 where we spent much less time designing our robot and could instead spend time playing with it. That would actually let us slow down, reduce burnout risk, and have more time to teach the students. No end game in 2014 was really nice. The build season almost actually ended after ship. The game was such this year that even elite teams like 254 and 1678 had off matches with robot failures. I think this points to higher and higher game and robot complexity.

FIRST claimed at CMP that this game had one of the highest ratings. I think that is mostly a reaction to 2015. This game was better than 2015, but I wouldn't put it up there as one of my favorites.

Yes!!! Or having your 2 ball autonomous penalized multiple times, and when you try to figure out why, are told "we don't track penalties". Or the myriad of other variations on that. Two matches were even started with the ball that we needed to pick up having fallen off the line and onto the other side, causing us to drop from #3 to #4 seed. We were told that the ball was "close enough" when we pointed it out. Those balls were the only balls that we actually missed in autonomous during the entire event. What are we trying to encourage? I had an amazing conversation with an FTA on the practice field who really got it, and was underwhelmed by some of the volunteers on the real fields.

I spend a large amount of my non-working time mentoring the team, and a good chunk of my vacation time each year with the team. I feel like there are volunteers and others who forget that. In my view, FIRST as an organization is valuable mostly because of the community that they have built up. They should be doing everything possible to respect that community and keep them excited, engaged, and feeling respected. I had a couple interactions this year at CMP where I questioned why I'm here. I think one of my friends put it best when his answer to "why am I still here?" was that he couldn't imagine what else he would be doing.

(woah, that ended up longer than I thought...)

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Funnily enough, at the highest levels of play, it's not too shocking to see close scores and ties. At the point, all Alliances are fully at the limit of scoring 15-18 boulders, a breach, and a capture including a scale. There's only so much you can do when playing optimally.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

For the love of god, don't make teams build so many things to mock up the field again - it's hard enough to build a robot. It wasn't as bad as the 2013 pyramid, but it was close. Basically the only complaint I have about the game this year.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

When selecting alliances, highlight the chosen team BEFORE it dissappears from the list of available teams. This should be easy to do and would add to the entertainment value!

Dance party started at 10pm, most of the kids were there since 7am and were exhausted after 15 hours! I am not sure how they can fix it, but it didn't seem right.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

FIRST needs to enforce of rules under the robot section,

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

If there's one thing I hate the most in FRC, it's the website.
I mean, they've clearly tried to make it newbie-friendly, but at the same time, they've completely messed up routines for the thousands of people already involved in FIRST.

That, and they need an official FRC forum browser on the site itself, instead of the current 3rd-party forum system.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Yeah, that's terrible. I wish we could do something like pre-register for Einstein seating or something. There are only so many good seats, and so many people.........but if we were more efficient about it, I feel like we'd get a better solution for everyone

I'm gonna give a quick shoutout to team 329. They booked it up to Einstein after doing a great job in Tesla, but then when we needed seats for Einstein, they were nice enough move over a few rows and give us the seats we needed to make it work. I'm not sure I really said thank you enough, so if anyone on 329 is reading this, all of 1648 is really grateful.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Better PR, clearer and more consistent communication, and just overall less ambiguity. Those are my big three.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

FIRST also needs to make some rules about interpersonal interactions. Specifically, not being a jerk to people.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I agree to some extent but I don't think people can unanimously agree on what is being a jerk and what isn't. It sounds like a more person-to-person issue that should be resolved as such.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Fix the explanation of the bumper rules.

Add an illustration that clearly shows how the dimension of the side of a robot is determined. When explaining to teams, I had to explain how the length of a robot side is determined by FRAME PERIMETER (flip pages to that explanation) then go back to BUMPER RULES to show how a side > 8in must have 8in of bumpers on each corner, BACKED BY PART OF THE FRAME at each end.

One picture of a robot with 6in frame segments with an opening between them (the most common problem I saw) and describing it as NOT LEGAL would have gone a long way to resolve a lot of bumper issues.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I found that the pit announcer got increasingly annoying. He would repeatedly advise individual people to stop running but every time he did, I would cease conversation with my team and await the end of the announcement because it was just too loud. Furthermore, the announcer wasn't kind at all. He was usually mad about people not following the rules or not completely filling out a form and that attitude usually carried out throughout the rest of the day. Also, when he would say, "Who loves zipties? Yell zipties!" I understand how he was trying to "hype up" the people in the pit but he didn't approach it at the right angle, it was unfortunately just annoying.

Note: I'm not saying this announcer is bad, he may of just had a bad couple of days or something, I'm simply suggesting that the announcing needs a new approach.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I'm sure there's a minimum subset of things we could all agree on. Like not harassing people and calling them cheaters, or not cat calling folks. Something along the lines of "try to treat people as if your grandmother were watching"

Wait.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I thought the opposite and thought it was the best pit announcer I've ever heard. Usually they're so bland that after 3 days I don't listen anymore, but I found myself still listening even Friday afternoon. Never had a pit announcer make me laugh before - 'You! No Running! You in the Green Shirt! You're still going! Stop! I can still see you doing it!" Pure gold.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

* The game piece (boulders) was ridiculously expensive and changed quite a bit after moderate use. 2006 poof balls remain the best foam game piece we have been given.

* This was a really onerous field to build at home.

* Refs had a tough job this year, just as in 2014. There were many missed calls and missed crossings, and lots of judgement calls around physical contact. All season, we had opponents keeping >6 balls in their driver station, and there were never enough refs to check behind the glass more than once a match.

* No parity whatsoever in division or match schedule strength at the Championship.

* FIRST's website is worse now than it was a year ago this time.

* The Championship is too long and drawn out. It is asking too much for teams to wake up at 5-6 AM and leave the venue at 7-8 PM for 4 days in a row. There's a reason why half the mentors and students on my team have gotten sick after returning several years running.

* It would have been nice to have wooden goals scattered throughout the divisions, since dialing in shooters seemed to be the most common use-case for the (centralized) practice fields.

* I thought the scoring display was really confusing all season long.

* I did not think that the 8 division Einstein format was great this year. I would have loved to see 4 alliances that were deeper/stronger instead.

* This was the last unified FIRST World Championship :mad:

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

This. Totally agree. Honestly could not believe what I was hearing with most of the music selections. Most were songs I like, but not appropriate for this setting, especially Sweet Dreams for the Inspire Award winners.

***
Saturday is so drawn out, especially for teams who are travelling home after the event.

***
Would love to see integration of the major awards before or during Einstein matches. Seems like such an after thought.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Yes, please, very much. We had to make modifications to be event compliant at multiple events this year, including World Championships after passing inspection because different inspectors had different standards. The rhinos made this especially challenging due to their irregular shape.

This makes me very sad and disappointed. It is the antithesis of FIRST values. Our team had a run in over seats last year at Worlds. Forutunately it did not happen this year anywhere. Just let people sit with you. You might make a new friend, especially if they are new to robotics. In fact, our team has found it's fun to invite waiting bus drivers (ours and other team's) to sit with us. Most of them have never seen FRC before.

This a whole bunch! Stronghold is a beautiful game to watch but it puts a huge amount of additional demands on teams which go well beyond the STEM mission in order to properly prepare for competition. I can only imagine the difficulties thinly resourced teams had this year in preparing.

Similar to this, I would have liked a one-stop time/place schedule at Worlds for each of FLL, FTC, and FRC separately. It took a bit of searching around to put Wednesday's day 0 schedule together for us, such as figuring out the 1-4pm 5 person pit load-in restriction and field measurement times. We frequently had trouble answering simple questions for our team members regarding the schedule such as where and when should our team migrate. It's a good thing we have volunteer friends. If such a schedule exists, it was impossible to find.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Please no more attempts at creating parity in match schedule strength. I can't take another Scheduling Algorithm of Death.....

Sadly, people need more direction than this. On the other hand, comic conventions seem to do fairly well with their anti-harassment policies, and there's typical much higher potential for harassment there. I think FIRST could learn a lot from how other conventions handle these things, if they're willing to. Which is to if people make enough noise about it.

They used to interleave the awards with the Einstein matches, but all the speeching and etc. seemed to make things take even longer. I think the real problem is just how big Champs has gotten.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I have an idea, we could...

*ducks*
*runs and hides*

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

One of the things I found particularly annoying is a couple of times I went to pit admin to ask a question I was told to "download the app".

I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly don't have the room or time to download an app I'll only be using for four days. Having the information available in other places would be very helpful next year.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

It was also terrible.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Especially for the scouters and I that try very hard to get good seats in the morning, I can attest to this. Not sure how to solve it though. I'm very happy that they got rid of opening only one door in the morning and went to opening all of them before letting people in. This allowed us to wake up a bit later in order to get good seats. I have to say it's still probably the closest thing to a Black Friday zombie breakthrough than anything I've ever been a part of. Perhaps assigned team seating is the solution to this?

Another idea I had is even though the split is happening, have 8 fields on the field still and just have two per division in order to speed up the flow of matches and maybe make qualifications last a shorter amount of time.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

It was odd to be playing a naval aviation themed song for the Air Force during her introduction for opening ceremonies.
I'm sure only the Air Force personnel noticed the service rivalry.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Eh. It's not the best, but did you try the app last year? I think it was a huge improvement, unlike the navigation on the website.

This still pisses me off, and will continue to do so until such a time that FIRST goes back to a single event. I want to rant about this, but I'll leave it alone for now.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

This. I have had something similar to this happen at a regional event. I have had parents who have driven 2.5 hours to attend a regional to support their child only to have adults from another team get ugly about seats. Most of the time these are not FIRST team mentors they are parents there to watch their kids play too. Maybe that's our problem, we aren't educating our parents on the application of gracious professionalism in the stands at competition...it seems like I hear 'Blue alliance', 'Red alliance', less and less. :(

Now to :deadhorse:

The FIRST web-site...I do not like it in any way shape or form. The search function is so bad I refuse to use it anymore. Heck, even getting to TIMS to log in is a chore.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

THIS. Absolutely. A central repository of all videos of previous matches, so that I have something that I can show to parents of new/prospective recruits.

Also, there should be a curated DVD of the winners of the regionals/divisions, and championships. A DVD because...I don't have solid network at my site, nor am I allowed to offer access to visitors, so there are times when physical pieces of media are best.

This.

EDIT: I originally posted my own contribution, but I'm now splitting that as its own response to this thread.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

FIRST needs to work with teachers to write and freely distribute curriculum, that aligns with the Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This will be a big effort, as there are also individual standards for each state. If it seems daunting... imagine how big this is for teachers. I've scrambled to cobble together a curriculum that can be used to teach this as a class, as that's one of the only ways to get my school interested in this, because...

...funding is very difficult to secure for my team.

I'd also like to see a decrease in program fees.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I get really fired up over a lot of minutiae, but this one is really important in how so many people of age choose to display their abysmal human-to-human behavior qualities. Over the last eight years I have kept an unfortunately ballooning list of adults who think that the vitriolic, ungracious, aggressive behavior towards adults and CHILDREN from other teams when they are in fact in the wrong is acceptable.

422 is not a powerhouse team but the whole team (occasionally except drive team and me, but not usually) lines up at every venue around an hour before the doors open. It's important to me and the rest of the leadership on the team that we follow all rules and guidelines in FIRST to instill a culture in younger students and their parents that there are intrinsic and extrinsic merits in following all rules. I believe among the teams on our Division at champs, we were the 4th team in line behind 148, 1678, 1538. With the exception of Sunday in Asheville because it took a while to get our check at IHOP, we were the first full team to show up at the other events.

When adults from other teams SHOVE, YELL, or CURSE AT CHILDREN all while WEARING THEIR TEAM SHIRT WITH NAME AND NUMBER EMBLAZONED ON IT, it's just flat out absurd. Throwing clothes on seats, printing out signs and taping them to seats, laying team branded shop towels on seats, and having OFFICIAL SEAT-SAVER VOLUNTEERS ON YOUR TEAM IS RIDICULOUS.

My list occasionally comes with pictures for when I catch it, but since I am usually trying to put out a fire in the not stands parts of the venue, I don't get to always record parents harassing my students.

Everyone in FIRST can download the Administrative Manual, where you can find Section 4.12 that clearly states this policy. To my knowledge, every main and alternate contact gets FIRST email blasts, a majority of which during the competition season reminding you why not to save seats.

"But Wil, sometimes the parents just don't know the rule!!!"

Every team should have a main or alternate contact that both checks a team into an event and receives communications from FIRST, which includes email blasts telling teams to not save seats. Either coaches are not reading these emails, are not sitting down parent chaperones to cover chaperone expectations on trips (like they should also be doing with students), or they just don't frakking care about it.

FIRST has the option to scare some programs who think this is tolerable by threatening to withhold judged awards for witnessing these acts. The programs I witness being the biggest offenders of this rule are also the kind that shudder at the thought of being excluded from a chance at some hardware.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Our perspectives don't often align, but I agree with this statement. In 2015 we got scorekeepers for a game object that had to be in place at the end of the game, there was really only one scoring medium, and robots didn't really interact. In 2016 we got two distinct ways to score and robot to robot interaction (some of which could be extremely aggressive) and we didn't get score keepers.

~I feel like this should be a simple rule for GDC: If it doesn't have automated scoring and happens with a degree of frequency throughout the match, it needs a score keeper.~

I do agree some of the assessment of penalties, or the decision to not call them was inconsistent, but that comes with the very subjective nature of many of the rules this year. I hope FIRST understands that being able to see contact between robot and carpet is really, really hard most of the time.

The bumper zone situation absolutely must be addressed. There was no reason for the bumper zone to be as high as it was this year and this very rule created the situation that lead to the bulk of the red cards handed out this season.

~The total height of the bumper zone should be no more than the minimum allowable height of a standard bumper plus 2" (maybe less, that's an off the cuff estimate) and positioned in such a way as to not significantly influence the difficulty of achieving a given task in the game~

I think we could have used just a little more of a technical challenge this year.

All of this aside, I believe FIRST Stronghold may be my favorite game of all time. It was entertaining to coach and to watch. Strategy was awesome in so many ways. Robots were a manageable size. If your robot could drive, you could play a significant, strategic role.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I should probably start a new thread for this, but I am increasingly convinced that the "safety inspectors" at competition are not actually interested in team safety, and moreover a few of them seem to actively enjoy making students feel uncomfortable by asking questions that have little to do with safety, or nitpicking answers in ways that has little to do with safety. I observed several interactions like this this year, and it was disheartening.

To be frank, a lot of the safety standards FIRST puts emphasis on are completely orthogonal to effective safety, and a lot of FIRST's own practices at regionals are rather unsafe.

The safety inspectors repeatedly make a stink about maintaining an MSDS folder - can anyone think of a single time that a MSDS has actually been needed in FRC? For sure, in some work environments they are important. This is not really one of them.

I have not once heard a safety inspector ask a question that was particularly relevant to pragmatic pit safety. They ask about your fire extinguisher and your procedure for dealing with battery spills (and, as I mentioned, some of them seem to delight in finding students who can't list off precisely the steps they're looking for for dealing with a spilled battery, in precisely the right order :rolleyes:), which are marginal concerns, at best. What is actually relevant to pit safety at competition is keeping your pit clear, organized, and not over-crowded; having a good system of communication so people working in the pit know what everyone else around them is doing (especially when power tools are being turned on); ensuring that the robot is never enabled while people's hands are in it (by far, this is the one that I think is easiest to overlook and most dangerous). These are all things that can and do cause injuries at FRC events.

These are not things you can gauge by asking a few questions off a list - these are only things that can be gauged by observing a team working in the pits and seeing what their actual practices are. What's more, often the atmosphere at FRC events is actively detrimental to safety - by far the most important thing to pit safety, in my mind, is communication. People must know what the other people around them are doing. This is difficult to do when the ambient volume is loud enough to cause hearing loss (it has been, at some regionals I've been to, though thankfully it was somewhat better this year).

I would very much like to see FIRST take some steps towards rectifying this, because right now a lot of their "safety" culture seems to be mostly safety theater with little regard to actually preventing injuries.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Can we create a new thread to document instances of teams doing this? They deserve to be made public, otherwise they'll never change their behavior. If not on Chief Delphi then let's start a blog, Wil can moderate it :] We could call it Caught by the Payne Train.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Imagine a bumper's eye view of some of the defenses and I think you might be able to come up with a reason.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I want to lead off by saying that there are a lot of things FIRST did right this year, including the design of the game. This was an excellent game, the rules were mostly fine, post-Kickoff changes were minimal, and design constraints were interesting and challenging. 2016 was a great year. Lots of great COTS products.

The overarching theme of this post is an idea that sadly isn't new at all - FIRST has other objectives that compete with the team experience for their focus, and all too often FIRST lets the team experience suffer in the name of other objectives. This idea perpetuates itself from the rules of the game to the attitudes of volunteers to the format and schedule of the Championship.

---

The tournament and game rules have some particularly troubling clauses in them. Let's all stop for a moment and reflect on how the World Championship was decided by a tiebreaker, foul points. The same rules do not require referees to explain who got those foul points, or for what. Both of these things are completely ridiculous and need to stop - they are hurting the team experience in order to have the event run faster and with an easier way to shut down teams who want to challenge things. Tiebreakers have been absurd and unnecessary since 2010 - a giant overreaction to a problem unique to the 2010 game. Just get rid of them! They are awful. No one wants to win like that. Certainly nobody wants to lose like that. Not explaining fouls means teams never learn what behavior to stop doing. Not explaining fouls means referees can prevent teams from challenging calls. Both of these things need to change for 2017.

--

I made a post very similar to this in the 2014 Lessons Learned thread, and it's kind of shocking how similar some of these issues are. Some things FIRST has just failed to improve on in two years, and I'm not sure why.

Just replace "ball" with "defenses" and "possessions and zones" with crossings... Maybe two per set of defenses? Or some way to input crossings without looking away from the field? Point being, way too many missed crossings this year. I saw missed crossings on Einstein, even. If a portion of the game is scored by a human visually watching an event happen, there need to be humans dedicated to solely completing those tasks and nothing else.

Here's another portion of my post in 2014 that still applies today:
This hasn't gotten better; this has gotten worse. Below are a few of several situations I have had first hand experience with this year.

At one of our district events, FRC judges came in and asked our team, a few dozen times, in a few different ways, who built the robot. Before entering our pit, I happened to overhear that they were trying to figure out "who the mentor built robots are". The questions they asked my team were "gotcha" questions, all phrasing essentially the same question in different ways until the kids referred to a sponsor or mentor as having helped with some portion of the robot, at which point the judges would harp on that point. I believe these were the culture judges, not the technical judges, and they simply would not ask about anything other than different ways to phrase the question "did your mentors build and program the robot". We were not asked about our STEM outreach, our business plan, our team spirit, and ultimately I can't help but fear we were disqualified from those awards at that district because our kids' answers to the "mentor built" questions didn't pass the judges' standards.

At the Championship, we did not immediately return to the inspection station after our final match on Friday. This was our mistake - most of our veteran pit mentors were not there and this was my first event without Saturday qual matches that I had ever attended, so I simply wasn't thinking about it. About ten minutes after we returned to our pit, an inspector came up to us and yelled "228 you need to return to the inspection booth!". What followed was a series of FIVE different inspectors yelling and screaming at our team for not having done so. "We repeatedly told your team throughout the day to come back after the last qualification match!" I asked my team and not one of them recalls ever being told this at the event. "You're an 18 year team, you should know better!" This is the second event in FIRST history where your reinspection is the day before eliminations. "The inspector at the field even told you to return to the inspection station!" I am the drive coach; there was no inspector at the field who told us any such thing. Did I mention all of these things were repeatedly shouted at us, while we were in the process of complying with their instructions? It was absolutely demeaning and quite frankly, rude.

Later in the same re-inspection, we were 3 pounds under due to a motor we were asked to remove during the initial inspection (the motor was blocking some gauges, and we weren't powering it anyway). We were yelled at for not coming to the inspectors after making this change, as they would have told us to be re-weighed. When I informed them that we were told to make this change by an inspector, during an inspection, it didn't matter. We continued to be chastized for this action for another minute or two. Were we supposed to immediately begin a second inspection following our first inspection? Why is this simple mistake and confusion cause for yelling and chastizing the team repeatedly? Any team could have made this mistake. We weren't trying to cheat or anything. Why the hostility? This wasn't a case of a single bad volunteer - five different inspectors were involved in these reinspection incidents. I can't believe this is the attitude FIRST wants inspectors to have with their teams. As someone who occasionally inspects myself, I found myself in disbelief.

---

There were some other issues with rules enforced by volunteers who were trying their best and acting in very good faith, but led to some difficultuies. Just a lack of knowledge of the rules, I guess? In Carver eliminations, we were given until two minutes after our previous match ended to declare what teams would be playing. This was not enough time for us to even walk back to our pit and figure out if our robot had burned a motor out. The rules say we have until two minutes following the match prior to ours, if I remember correctly, and being forced to make this decision before you can evaluate if your robot is broken or not put us at a potential disadvantage. We are fortunate that for the match we were considering playing in (match 3), the alliance's other robot did a fantastic job, but we wanted time to debate the merits of putting us in versus them, and we didn't get that time at all. We also had an issue with defenses, where for part of the day, defense coordinators were enforcing defenses needing to be turned in 3 matches in advance instead of 2 matches. When the defense coordinator found out about the rule, he was extremely gracious and apologetic, but he could not change the defenses from the random selection, and neither alliance was allowed to pick defenses. (On another note, randomized defenses are awful).

My point with all of these posts isnt to call out specific people at all.

---

Ultimately, my last complaint is with the death of the single Championship event. A 195 mentor said at the town hall in 2015 that separating Champs is like a divorce, cutting the FIRST family in half, and ultimately that is my biggest issue with the decision. A smaller Championship for everyone, great. Two World Champions, whatever. But splitting the FIRST family in half, forever? Realizing Saturday that I'll never see half of my network of FIRST friends again? This is absolutely heartbreaking. FIRST is about the people; FIRST has so many great people, FIRST has fostered so many incredible connections across geographic boundaries... and FIRST has now constructed a giant wall between the two halves of this country, and the world. Think of all the alliances on Einstein that will never be reunited. 987 and 195. 330 and 2481. 3476 and 217. I can't believe this is happening. The single Championship is a special, magical event, it's a family reunion, and we'll never see one again.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Our bumpers, at the lowest they could physically be, were rarely in contact with the defenses, if ever, event the rock wall. If they'd been 1/2" higher they would have never contacted the defenses period.

Yes, if simple physical height from the arena floor is considered they interfere, but once you add the ramp at the edge of the defenses in conjunction with most competition proven drive trains and you don't need nearly the whole bumper zone.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Personally it think that there needs to be less speakers at Championships. These speakers all say the same things, nothing new has been said that is worth hearing. The are preaching how great first is to the choir.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Never is a rather long time. We can hope that FIRST will see that their experiment leads to undesirable outcomes, and realizes that it needs to fix the situation. There are several viable solutions that have been proposed. (Adding another post-event championship is not one due to huge logistical problems.)

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Alliance selection is a process that is difficult to watch remotely (and keep track of the alliances). I would appreciate it if Scorekeepers would show the alliance match-ups more often than a blimp here or there. Similarly, it would be nice if the alliance brackets/match-ups were posted on screen for a while at the beginning and end of lunch (I understand that events like to run the sponsor reel during lunch).

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Ryan, I was going to start this thread later tonight, with an anonymous google form or something for submissions as well. Like I said, I'm collecting kindling to light a fire under at least the Houston Champs committee. General harassment in addition to seating problems. Basically anything that should be addressed by a good anti-harassment policy and currently isn't. To avoid controversy, I don't think naming teams is really necessary, however.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

The tension over seat saving will continue until FIRST recognizes that scouting is an integral part of the competition and the scouts need the same level of treatment as pit and drive crews. No one would agree that if a team leaves a pit to go to a match that another team can move in and take it over. Being able to seat scouts together is critical to competitive success.

FIRST also encourages seat saving through its "spirit award" which is often given to the team with the largest coherent cheer squad. FIRST needs to decide which conflicting objective is more important.

I believe FIRST needs to come up with a sensible policy on seat allocation / saving. 148 should not have to arrive at the Champs venue at 4 am...

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Sounds good to me. Avoiding a witch hunt is probably a good idea...

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I tried downloading the app at the venue and it failed multiple times. I gave up.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Unfortunately the lack of decorum in this year's Presidential campaign seems to indicate we're headed the wrong way.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I agree with much of what has been mentioned so far. One thing that they did right sometimes and not at other times at the championship is to give credit to the backup teams.

This has always bothered me (not just because 5254 was a backup this year), but when they announce the teams competing before every match in championship eliminations, they should also announce the backups for each alliance. Or at the very least before each new series.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

It's just the pointlessness, I'm trying to go over game strategy with alliance partners or review scouting data while someone is yelling over the intercom. I'm not saying that the pit announcer is bad, some of his comments should have been left off of the pit microphone and rather directed individually to the person who was running or whatever. My main point however, was that he got mad at everyone during the day and I don't believe that it was acceptable behaviour. Some kids genuinely don't know certain procedures but there is no reason to voice anger over the microphone, at least be calm before making general announcements.
I respect your opinion though, some of his comments were humorous but I believe that he got out of hand at one point.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I wouldn't mind reserved seating for, say 6 scouts per team, at each competition. Our scouts spent the entirety of Day 1 at Hartford on their knees behind the judges (Hartford has a ton of room between judges seating and stands) because we got there only 1/2 hr early instead of an hour early and ended up seated in a location where we couldn't see the screen and could see very little of the field.

Regarding teams grabbing seats from drive team or pit crew... unfortunately we had an incident last year where our mentors and a few students got up to retrieve boxed lunches for the pit crew and strategy team who stayed in the stands. A few members of another team swooped in on their seats and spread out their stuff since there were more seats than of them. When our team returned with lunch and asked if they could move their stuff, they complained and yelled, "No saving seats!" Very weird. Thankfully this has been the exception.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

The speed at which robot carts were moving down the aisles was very dangerous. I have never seen so many teams, moving so fast with nobody walking in front of the cart.

I saw 3 people get clipped HARD in just the short time I was down in the pits.
One girl went to the ground. I went up to the pit admin and a safety advisor on two different occasions and was told the classic, "We'll look into it".

On Galileo, we were in K22, leaving the pit and stepping out onto the cart superhighway at our intersection, was risky business.

There needs to be education, supervision, and ENFORCEMENT of cart safety. Its out of control. FIRST is simply getting too big I guess. :(

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

This is another thing that should be covered by a good harassment policy with actual enforcement. Enforcement seems to be mostly what's lacking. There needs to be staff dedicated to investigating these things and addressing them, instead of just pawning it off on the free time of safety advisors or something. I'm not saying immediately boot people for the first offense, but you need to convey the seriousness of the issue. Detain them and explain things and if they miss a match, it's better than if they break someone's ankle later.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I'll echo this. I happened to be having a conversation with Frank in one of the aisles when a cart sped giving very little time to move out of the way. Even Frank was concerned.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

QFT
For now.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Yes, that's the point of having the zone begin as high as it does. Any lower and the bumpers would be bumping some of the defenses. You were free to design your robot with its bumpers another half inch higher if you wanted to make it impossible to contact the defenses.

It sounds like you're not aware that bumpers cannot occupy the entire bumper zone. They are only 5 inches tall, while the zone is 8 inches from bottom to top.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I can't comment on the events you specifically attended, but I can speak for what I do as a scorekeeper at my events and what I've been trained to do.

First, a little background: the way FMS interfaces with AV is via a program called "Audience Display" that is the full screen and sound source for AV. Generally anything that's not a camera feed or a power point (to include the division awards at champs this year) is from our side, with the score bar chromakeyed out. We also have a "blank screen" option on our video switch, which we used to use at the end of matches (for suspense) but due to the "ref review" icon added this year, we were told specifically not to kill the score bar. The point here is that this year, in practice (if you go by what the official training says), any time you see nothing from FMS, it's AV that's doing that, not the scorekeeper.

Now, about your specific comments. The way I do it (which is how it's been done in Indiana as far as I can remember) is that I send the "alliance" screen to AV, until there is a captain who is having "difficulties" and needs a list (cue Jeopardy music), in which case I switch to the "available teams" screen. As soon as they make a selection, I swap back to the alliance screen. AV will often switch to a camera feed of the captain making the announcement; any breaks from the two aforementioned screens is usually AV's doing.

As for the Bracket screen, that was something that was actually mentioned during scorekeeper training this year; scorekeepers (and AV) were originally "suggested" and later supposed to do that. However, since it takes two to tango, AV has to put the bracket up. I can't speak for AV but I got the idea that at some point Blair (or somebody else in Manchester) sent an email to AV crews to among other things show the bracket at lunch.

That's the thing about scorekeeping and audience screens; it's a coordinated effort with AV. AV can only show what we send them. You can only see what AV shows you.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I wasn't there when our students were being judged at one of our regionals, but that was the impression that they got as well. The judges were looking for a gotcha as well. The judges figured out that our vision code wasn't student programmed, and then were done talking to the students. Completely ignoring the fact that the students contributed in other areas, and that the number of students inspired by us having cool vision was way higher than would have been the case if the entire project had dropped through the cracks. We target similar amounts of work on a subsystem being done by students as by the mentors, and that's perfectly legal by the rules, and our decision. We have students doing code reviews, writing unit tests, and helping simulate how the robot works, and assume that is how all code is written. That's a huge success, and is only really possible with significant mentor involvement and drive. Next year, I think we'll have the students tell the judges that "they found a library to do that" to deflect those questions.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Which is a shame. :(

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Those judges really missed out on the stunning, inspiring, and borderline intimidating amount of passion and knowledge your students have for the machines your team builds. It really blew me away, for what it's worth.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Back in PNW, we sent an aux feed to the projectors that could be independently controlled from the program(livestream) feed, but would usually display the same view as the program feed. This allowed us to let the audience display be up on the projector all throughout alliance selection and awards making it easier on the people in the venue to see the changes to the alliances and awards, while also letting the people at home see everything that is happening. This is something I should have remembered for Indiana's events this past season, but rest assured it will be fixed next season.

Champs could have done the same thing if they knew it was going to be a problem. It can be as simple as plugging a cable into a different output or extending a previously run cable to reach a different output of the switcher.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I have heard of other students and mentors saying that about other teams but I didn't realize that judges were doing that also. It is a shame that people think that any robot that works really well and also looks well engineered is done entirely by mentors. This is really something that has made me angry over the last few years because you will find many people who try to take credit away from students who worked really hard to make a good robot by claiming it was mentor built.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I find that interesting as supposedly our 2015 AV was based of PNW's 2014 setup. I think that would be nice if we had the equipment (which AFAIK we don't).

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I thought the pits and fields could have been organized a bit better. We were in Archimedes, and our pit was the furthest away it could be from the drive team entrance to the dome. Meanwhile, our field was also the furthest one from the main entrance to the dome. Would have been nice to have a bit more balance there so our drive team didn't have to leave 35 minutes before the match began.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

While we were competing during the Hopper Division playoffs we were running our 2 ball auto. Every time we came back with the second ball they called a foul on us. The ref would not tell us what the heck we were getting a foul for, no course to correct what we were doing or to point out that they might be calling it wrong.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Here's one that I don't think I've seen posted yet: Championship Volunteer Name tags. Please, Please, Please make the "Volunteer" text on the tag highly visible! White on yellow isn't that. Unless I, the other volunteers, and security is blind and this sentence is highly visible.

Getting to the dome floor during lunch break was a nightmare due to the tags... Due to security (and the tag issue) I ended up spending 20 minutes on what should have been a 5 minute trip to the volunteer parking lot (forgot my phone charger).

Also, speaking of phone chargers, I miss the charging kiosks they had last year at championship. Not the most secure, but very handy.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I wonder if you could have asked for a volunteer adhesive band to put on your name tag. It is black on yellow. I had an issue where I was not given a FIRST Alum band at registration (the bottom left is marked with an A), I got one by asking at the desk but my brother didn't have any luck doing the same.

There was at least one charging station, it was at the end of America's center near the Marriott, I think it had an attendant as well.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Sorry, Alan, I wasn't clear. I'm well aware they legally can't span the whole zone. Our bumpers began at 4" from the ground and terminated at 9" (Actually it was more like 4.5-9 if you're measuring the backing, which was on the low side of the specified tolerance in the bumper rules). With this height and positioning they rarely contacted the defenses. If they'd spanned the zone 4.5" to 9.5" I doubt they would ever have contacted defenses.

My assertion is that FIRST made the bumper zone too large in vertical span. If it had been reduced in height about the current center of the zone, say from 5"-11" many of the red card situations for frame perimeter violations could have been avoided. I could actually get behind a set bumper height with a +/- 1/2" vertical tolerance.

The only reasonable excuse I heard for bumpers being at the maximum height position was to make the travel required to complete the scale smaller, since judgement was based on position of bumpers relative to the low goal. I'd, personally, have found a way to get the extra travel in the scaling mechanism, because the risk of high bumpers isn't worth it.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I believe that the volunteers category was the only one that had a yellow band. It was the color of the band that identified the role for all the badging for security. So the lettering didn't matter. Maybe I am not understanding your concern and the reason for a delay.

There were chargers stations around. Just not as many. They were also on the second floor of the America's Center and one in the registration area.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

I don't understand how further restricting the options for bumper height would help reduce problems teams are having with bumper height.

Yeah, I'd call that an excuse. But here's an actual reason: higher bumpers give more options for ball intake mechanisms.

Re: Lesson Learned 2016 - The Negative
 

Oh man. This is real.

When I was a student, as Chris knows, I spent a lot of time in the pits. However, I was a programmer who did only programming (and driving in 2015). I knew nothing about the details of how it worked mechanically - only a basic overview, e.g. this did this and that did that. If something broke, I was not the one who knew how to fix it or why it broke, unless it was quite obvious. I was constantly nervous that I would get asked a question about the mechanical details of the robot and that I wouldn't be able to answer it well enough, and thus hurting my team's chances at any awards. Thankfully, I was often busy during judge visits with code, but this worry was a very real thing for my first couple of years on the team, and I am absolutely sure that I was/am not alone in that.