Re: California District Proposal
 

Thanks Collin!

I got a similar document with some more step-by-step instructions from CHS, these are really helpful resources, and a great way to equip the "boots on the ground"!

-Mike

Re: California District Proposal
 

You're right Jon! Why don't we keep the posts productive? I promise from here on out, I will remain on topic and/or just remove myself from this thread entirely. I have the luxury of getting off work early on Fridays, so sometimes I can go down to the river, take a nap at home, or prepare for a robotics meeting. Today, I decided to use some of my time to re-read every single post in this thread and try to find any similar words to the effect of what you and Eric described.

I made an effort to go look at every post possible, hoping to see it the way you do. I was really hoping someone said something to the effect of "This is the way we want to do it over your area, and with *handwaving here* it'll happen" or "That can be fixed, just use some imagination and creativity". Throughout the entire thread up to post 120, the only real thing happening in the thread was a series of exchanges that were mostly like this: "I have this concern"-->"here's what we do" or "here's what we have thought of for that." I'm really sorry if the idea of sharing these experiences in this way have made people feel personally victimized. I really doubt a neutral observer would see it that way, but your perception is your reality.

After that, there was a single slightly malicious post. It was very emotionally charged and probably could have been less direct.

From there, we keep maintaining discussion. People bring up a concern, someone shares a way they solved it. Pictures and documents to illuminate the discussion are shared. Joe P even was able to sum up the discussion in one of these documents, which I hope was helpful to the people involved. There was a slightly tangential but very important discussion regarding the well-being of international teams. While California hosts fewer international teams than some of the posts could lead one to believe, they certainly host more international teams than Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington DC and State, Oregon, Michigan, New England, and Indiana combined! There was really great discussion about that.

However things really seemed to take a turn for the worse.

Brandon Holley, who is without question probably one of the best active mentors in FIRST, shared the same concern I have with Eric's take on the posts above. It appeared to me, a lowly outsider, that the discussion for all intents and purposes was productive and the sentiment Eric described was not at all present in the thread until he himself stated it. It felt really disappointing that all of the conversation up to that point potentially could have been rendered for naught as those from outside California saw themselves being edged out of the discussion.

Then you decided to tell Brandon and the rest of the thread that essentially helpful and constructive advice was not to be found in this thread if your Location didn't list California. You implied that the sentiment of the thread was that "well, everyone else has solved the problem, you don't have an excuse". I think you might be mistaking that for another thread because, as I have said, I really haven't seen that in here. The real coup de grâce came when you played the Gracious Professionalism trump card on Brandon ******* Holley and expected people were just going to be cool with that.

I guess it could be fair to say "wow, this is just like the Minnesota drama" when I would argue that it really isn't. People that know things were answering questions of people who didn't in both directions. "I don't know how this works in districts"-->"This is how" and "I don't know what it's like in California"-->"This is how" were exchanges happening all over the thread until you made the decision to implicitly draw parallels to Minnesota (and Eric made them explicit). The people who are far stronger willed than I am ignored you, but alas, I am not that kind of person.

I went through the whole thread with an open mind, trying to see it your way, but I come to the end of it more bitter than before. I guess it's my fault for taking the bait; I just can't seem to follow the wise words someone said: "If your [sic] from a district, stop posting about how an area you don't play in and you don't help run should make a big, sweeping change."

Keep it professional.
-Wil

Re: California District Proposal
 

Thanks for doing the work on this Mike. I hope California can figure out how to move to a district style format soon. It seems like there are some hurdles on the way there, but there is also plenty of incentive to jump over them.

Re: California District Proposal
 

I dug through my email and found the Chesapeake venue RFI document that was sent out to their mailing lists last year: here it is

Re: California District Proposal
 

One interesting thing I noticed is that Chesapeake starts load in at 8 am on day 0. I understand how having that much time is really nice, but I also know that it is not absolutely necessary. The first year that my school hosted (2015), they didn't let anyone start load in until school got out at 2:11 and, while stressful, teams were still able to start load in at 5 and IIRC, there were some practice matches that night as well. It definitely is nice to start earlier (and we were able to start at 12 this year), but # of volunteers and load in time are inversely correlated, so the more volunteers the host team can provide, the later load in can start. 8 am, or even 12, is definitely not a hard requirement, especially if the field is simpler than it was this year.

Re: California District Proposal
 

Almost all of the things in the CHS facility list are "requirements". They're things they'd like but are flexible.

Re: California District Proposal
 

No more burned Wild Card slots is a nice benefit!

I know I have been at some events that I would feel somewhat bad for winning at because the way alliances advanced would burn Wild Cards. On top of that is Qualifying Awards being granted to a team that has already qualified having an unreasonable likelihood of burning a card under many circumstances.

I find it really sad every single time a Wild Card gets burned.

In a perfect world every regional should grant 6 NEW slots.

Re: California District Proposal
 

To continue the discussion part II

--Timing: does the northern half want to pull this off for season 2017?

--I cannot speak for all, or even a portion, but we're nowhere near ready for this in the south.

--Probably means a bunch of people on the north end have to sit in one room looking at one another with a big map. The remote control digital thing only goes so far.

--Probably a targeted list of schools, and then a delegation of students and parents willing to take on meeting with admin.

--Those schools who have hosted previously are assumed good to go?

Joe.

Re: California District Proposal
 

I don't think anyone is pushing for districts in 2017, afaik regionals are already approved by FIRST.

2018 would be the earliest possible year to push for.

Re: California District Proposal
 

Joe,

Beautiful lathe! If you are looking for a DRO, we bought ours from DRO PROS, they are based in NorCal and gave us an educational discount for our DRO's.

1. Definitely not 2017. The RD's are working hard right now to finalize 2017 Regional Venues. This is all looking at 2018 at the earliest.

2. I understand the sentiment. I believe the next logical question is "when will we know that we are ready?" You've brought up some great action items in your White Paper that are great next steps to get closer to the elusive goal of being ready.

3. There are plans for NorCal people to get together again to talk more details (obviously, very fluid right now). I had an in-person meeting with the organizers of MTTD and CC in 2014, back when I started researching districts.

4. Love the plan of action. Other regions have posted venue check lists which I will adopt to FIRST CA's application. Hope to post that this weekend.

5. I would not assume that 100%. CCC, yes. Madera, yes. Looks like SF as well. But I have also heard that some existing venues are not very warm towards FRC. So I think at this point it is a mixed back, but maybe your action items in point 4 would help put more boots on the ground and return more yield on venue proposals?

Great thoughts, please keep them coming!

-Mike

Re: California District Proposal
 

True. As I read the document, 2017 would be a year to do a number of things to prepare, including lots of volunteer recruiting/training and lots of team educating on the "finer points"--example, more matches means more robot maintenance, so build strong. Essentially, build a foundation so that districts can hit the ground running.

Re: California District Proposal
 

Thanks Mike!
Except the obvious benefit for FIRST California, your work have made great resources for the entire FIRST community.

Re: California District Proposal
 

I'm curious why people are under the impression we are not ready for this in the Southern Half of the state? Is it simply the lack of push on this forum exactly? The volunteers?
We have more teams in our half, with that we have potential for more volunteers.
Everyone I seem to talk to at events, from a team standpoint, seems to be in favor of the district model. They just are not vocal on forums.

Re: California District Proposal
 

Volunteers--but to be more specific, KEY volunteers. To be even more specific, key volunteers that have enough available time to work give-or-take double their current event load (because we'll need give-or-take double the number of events). There's ways to work with and around that, partly by some outside recruitment (MI did this early on, as I recall--not sure about any of the other district areas) and partly by interested parties jumping onboard now.

These numbers are specific to SoCal, BTW--I'm excluding NorCal from this due to lack of knowledge, though crossover between the two is probably desirable.
FTA: I think we could probably muster 2-3 FTAs currently, and good ones (and one of those has district experience already if he's available). Might be enough, for a couple years, which buys time to train more. There's always the "import" option as well, which is generally employed on Week 1 events as it is. 2017 will need a lot of FTAAs and some more FTAs stepping up.
LRI: That one is a bit easier. 3-4 currently, and several long-time inspectors that would have a pretty good chance to move up to LRI. I would suspect that this one would be the easiest of the key volunteers to fill. (In addition to the LRIs' habit of showing up at other events as inspectors anyway.)
Field Supervisor: I think we've got 4... get a few more trained, and that should be OK.
Head Ref: 1-2, maybe 3. Actually, reffing in general is a weak point. But with that few head refs, that's going to be very interesting. (I should also note that one of those typically only does one event.) This is a role that would be good to run some crossover SoCal to NorCal, and that does happen currently to at least some extent. That'd really help--unless NorCal is in the same situation.
Lead Queuer: I want to say there's 4, shouldn't be too hard to train more cat herders.

VCs and other "behind the scenes" key volunteers I'm not as familiar with. I will say that those folks tend to crop up--er, "be volunteered"?--pretty handily to my point of view, which is a bit limited on that.

Most of the other (read: non-key) roles are relatively easy to say "Hey, you with the volunteer paperwork! You're doing this" and have someone trained in the role day-of-event. Even inspectors and possibly refs have a decent chance at doing that, if it weren't for the required online training, if they've got rules knowledge. But the key volunteers have to be developed. Development takes time. For some things, I'm not sure 1 year is enough. (Head Refs are either a 2-event or a 2-year minimum as a ref except in exceptional circumstances--I forget just which. That's from FIRST's description, which I'm currently too lazy to go digging through the site for.)


Can that be solved? Sure. Potential volunteers for those roles--or for filling in any "promotion holes"--should be volunteering for 2017 regionals (and 2016 offseasons) in that role if it exists at that offseason. TBH, there's a reason that I volunteer, and that's part of it.

I would also go with the lack of push as being one other reason--part of that is that I would say that a lot of teams aren't on CD. The ones that are here tend to be more vocal for districts. Maybe there's a "silent majority" going on? Not sure which way it'd be going, at present--hard to know, with silent majorities. I know most of the mid-to-upper level teams that I've talked to on that are interested, at least in principle. Even some of the not-so-upper level teams, if conversation's gotten around that way.

tl;dr: The trained key volunteer positions need some more filling, which in some cases will be quick and in others will take a couple seasons. "Untrained" positions won't be an issue. And for whatever reason, I don't think the SoCal teams are being quite as vocal right now.

Re: California District Proposal
 

The reason that SoCal teams aren't being as vocal on the forum is because there is a general consensus in SoCal that these forums are toxic - don't think that all of SoCal doesn't want districts because there aren't as many people involved on Chief down here.