Re: Registration 2017
 

#sorrywearepostpoingregistrationuntilnextweek

Re: Registration 2017
 

Not seeing it on Facebook and no email as of 11:54 Central...

Re: Registration 2017
 

I finally got all the way in to the event registration, but it still says event registration not open yet, so it won't let me register.

Re: Registration 2017
 

It's for visibility. Some people are probably watching that hashtag for spicy memes or updates on the situation.

Re: Registration 2017
 

For the sake of being fair I hope they do a reset. I as have all of you have scheduled my day around this. I can't hit refresh over and over and over again all day. Although my students wouldn't mind :)

Re: Registration 2017
 

I know this is unfortunate, but as a continuous improvement professional I know none of us have gotten to where we are without backward steps, and I trust FIRST will fix and make good on this process as well.

My bigger concern now is tempering the attitude of my students who may be reading this thread. Some may come away with the idea we should never try new things and take risks to move forward and just keep doing what we are to avoid ridicule should things go wrong.

Remember, everyone can predict something that just happened, and everyone can solve an isolated issue without the entire context.

Perhaps we can use this thread as a case study for Gracious Professionalism vs. Ungracious Pro-victimism...heaven known we have the evening news for the latter.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I just read it on Chief Delphi guys... Postponed until next week!

Re: Registration 2017
 

They transfer registration duties to me this year and what happens....https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=...74649774519171

Re: Registration 2017
 

Agreed. Some of my fellow mentors and I were talking about this yesterday. The high-pressure free for all isn't ideal, even without crashes, because it forces people to rearrange their schedule for the day around it. For some people that ranges from difficult to impossible.

Adding in crashes like this makes it so much worse, because instead of planning my day around something that will take a few minutes, I have to plan around something that will take a completely unknown amount of time.

Re: Registration 2017
 

aaaand that worked almost as well as registration did...

Re: Registration 2017
 

Ok, here's one directed just for your students.


Absolutely, try new things. But when you launch what is effectively a product or service be sure to test it under expected load.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Or... perhaps they will learn that when you have a "mission critical" system (which I would argue is true in this case, with the large number of professional man-hours being wasted due to its non-functionality), and that system had been working just fine for the past two years, if you decide to change it for whatever reason, it might be a good idea to test the heck out of it before bringing it live.

Re: Registration 2017
 

#WeFiredTheGuysWhoUpdatedTheWebsite

Re: Registration 2017
 

I agree name calling is pointless. But. First has data on resource loading registration takes. It happens every year. First choice crashed First Choice the first time up. I expect it has similar loading. You try new things, but you mitigate the risks and test for known issues.

Re: Registration 2017
 

And this isn't a new problem, HQ has been dealing with this for years. Registration used to have problems years ago and they worked through them. FIRST Choice used to have problems and they worked throw those as well. Even now they have testing sessions and things to make sure their servers were ready for that. They have done much better in the past and this is clearly a step backwards, we aren't expecting them to be perfect but they could also provide far better service to their customers and not wait 45 mins before making any public update.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I hope not. Screw ups are a part of life.

Re: Registration 2017
 

This is true however FIRST has had a long history of having teams use systems that just crash. FIRST Choice & Registration threads of old have had many issues with crashing & struggling to handle the load. The TIMs system was working just fine over the past few years and the decision was made to change it so yes teams are going to be upset that FIRST took a step backwards after finding something that was working fine.

Its a little disappointing but when it requires people to set aside time out of their work day to sit around and get nothing accomplished.

Re: Registration 2017
 

My source with contacts at FRC HQ has told me "Officially postponed until next week. Date and Times TBA"

Re: Registration 2017
 

11 years doing this....registration has NEVER worked as it should. Even with this new and improved website... *sigh*. #highhopescrushed

Re: Registration 2017
 

Well I can't say I'm actually surprised. I was actually kind of expecting it.
It was disappointing because after all the years of dealing with the madness of crashing webpages, the past 2 years we finally had seamless registration with a perfectly functioning TIMS but then the new site came and I knew we were in for an adventure.

A community stress test on a new site or software has been successfully run by much smaller communities than FIRST. They could easily run a mock opening with plenty willing to offer their help in logging in for a few minutes a day or two before the real show. Maybe something to consider in the coming week.

Good to hear they finally called it off and called a mulligan.

Welp, guess we will be reconvening next week!

Re: Registration 2017
 

This is why I have a cushy part time job... to be able to waste an hour griping about a failed registration system on social media.

But seriously, I assume you can pay a testing company to slam your site with 5000 pretend registration attempts in two seconds. If I ran a website like this, that's the first thing I'd arrange for.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Their new server consists of all the returned Samsung Galaxy Note 7's!! --- Just Kidding!!!

Re: Registration 2017
 

You can do it yourself with a bit of work. There's a handful of tools out there for it. Tsung is the one I've seen folks use in the past, but I've never had much of a need for it myself.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Pay someone for it? That's what testing suites and tools are for. Simulating load these days isn't difficult.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Not sure what all these "shoulda, coulda, woulda" posts are really accomplishing.

Re: Registration 2017
 

FIRST Facebook page reporting registration is postponed to next week.

Re: Registration 2017
 

👀

This.

Re: Registration 2017
 

They are users being frustrated. It's what people do when things don't work out the way they expect. It's ok and it's a good thing. If someone hits on an idea that helps make it better in the future then it is worth it. The important thing is that everyone have some empathy with the IT gals and guys working this problem at FIRST HQ. Sometimes things break and we need to be patient and understanding about it... that doesn't mean we can't lament/complain/grieve/hypothesize publicly.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Not sure what all these "Not sure what all these shoulda, coulda, woulda posts are really accomplishing" post are really accomplishing.

Re: Registration 2017
 

They accomplish the venting of STEAM.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Site seems to work now.

(No, registration is not open) :]

Re: Registration 2017
 

Nice editing... smooth. ;)

Re: Registration 2017
 

Agreed, but FIRST not anticipating this possibility (given prior history AND the new website) by having "Plan-B" ready to go isn't acceptable.
The email blast announcing a postponement should have been sent an hour earlier. I'm pretty sure the writing was on the wall 10 minutes after opening.

Re: Registration 2017
 

My hope was to transition the thread towards a more positive tone (and as Marshall said, more empathy towards the IT folks who are surely very stressed at the moment). I see now that my attempt was only mildly successful, at best.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I am not ridiculing FIRST. And I know that we all make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes have lasting, serious consequences. This is thankfully not one of those instances.

This is a professionally created tool that is an essential part of the FRC process. As such, the robotics community has reasonable expectations that FIRST upholds their portion of the implicit agreement. We postpone work, schedule lunch early, have someone cover for us, etc. We will now have to do it again for next week. And for those of us in district competitions, not too long again after that.

It's reasonable that if you try something and fail, people call you on it. I did say that there are plenty of resources out there to help troubleshoot and remediate the problem.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Steam venting... lol. Water games confirmed, eh?? Has anybody else checked out the event site(s) specifically? Apparently all events this year take place in the middle of the week. All those I looked at begin on Tuesday and end on Friday.

My boss isn't gonna like this :eek:

Re: Registration 2017
 

Everything looks to be back up. No teams registered. Still waiting on the date and time for next week to be announced (I'd assume 9/29 at noon EDT).

Re: Registration 2017
 

...case study continued....

Here's an interesting observation. Nearly everybody here was undoubtedly logged in and looking at your dashboard at T - 500ms. From the conversation here, we also all figured we would have our registration choice clicked and secured at T + 10,000 ms. Generously allowing for those with slow reflexes and internet speeds below 1 Mbps, let's say that the expected lifecycle of the registration product to be...Oh let's say 60,000 ms. We know it and FIRST knows it.

IT FAILED...AND we all knew that at T+ 0ms as did FIRST

Given the life cycle and failure mode which is :confused: somehow well researched, documented and proven on this thread :confused: within 5 product life cycles, one could conclude that waiting more than 10 life cycles (that would be 10 minute for anyone lost in the math) for the product to suddenly start working again, or needing FIRST to state the already obvious is, well, curious.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Too bad we can't give green dots to the IT team.

Anybody have ideas for a crowdsourced solution? I'm sure districts will want to move their own process in the future.

Re: Registration 2017
 

You'll have to be more specific. I can recall many, many 503 errors.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I had to get somewhere earlier when this whole debacle was happening, so I watched as long as I could. Then I got to my car, put my laptop in the passenger seat, turned on my mobile hotspot, and f5'd the page nearly the whole commute.

Anyways, a shame it's postponed for a week. I hope it's early next week. Our team has enough going on.

Re: Registration 2017
 

The problem is this isn't unheard of FIRST. It's often been a problem with demand and the system has come back up at some unannounced later time during the day. Without official announcement of a postponement there is no way to know if we should continue with our lives or stay glued to the screen waiting for something to change. Assuming the former for some teams means losing out on their preferred event or more money spent on travel or not being able to do two+ events at all.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Let districts host their own registration system(s) and manage the required IT? Like events?

Re: Registration 2017
 

CD being CD.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I don't want to take shots at the IT team at FIRST, I'm sure they work hard and are understaffed for the job at hand.

The IT team's consistent struggle with rolling out website upgrades, server capacity, etc. is a byproduct of the way FIRST is operated. I've seen these struggles many times in the 14 years I've been in FIRST. The decision to not invest in the kind of workforce needed to develop and adequately test their IT environment before rolling it out comes from the very top of the organization.

Unfortunately, we teams (i.e. their customers) pay the price of wasting valuable time and having unnecessary stress injected into what should be a relatively straight-forward process.

I hope Frank and Don recognize the importance of having a reliable IT interface between teams and the program. I hope they are able to convince the top guy to make the decision to fix this problem permanently. I'm just hoping things do change...soon.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I was wondering why my phone blew up with notifications about a half-hour after registration opened. Oh well, here's to hoping that next week goes a lot smoother!

Re: Registration 2017
 

Took the words out of my mouth. Now i have to get coverage and reschedule work around this again.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Has this been suggested already?

Why the heck can't we submit a ranked list, and have the machine choose who gets where based on their chosen priority and a random draw? You could even do it in multiple draws if you want to give teams the chance to adjust their second decision based on the results of their first result. We already do this for FIRST choice, and it works perfectly well.

What use is forcing people to all click refresh at the same time when we already have an alternative system that is easier on mentors' time and server load?

Re: Registration 2017
 

Did anyone see that regionals are listed as Tuesday through Friday instead of Wednesday through Saturday in tims? Part of the glitch?

Edit - I just looked at the calendar and the Tuesday - Friday dates are for the 2016 calendar, some one didn't put in the 2017 dates for regionals.

Re: Registration 2017
 

This would alienate a lot of teams that only attend 1 event and its the closest/least expensive/local event. I know several teams that a system like this would effect.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I don't think it's a 2016 to 2017 problem. My hypothesis is it's a time issue. Namely they only put in dates and didn't put in a time. The system probably defaulted to 12AM Eastern Time, so it shows up as 11PM Tue-Fri for me since I'm in Central Time instead of 12AM Wed-Sat. Someone in another timezone want to confirm that the times aren't set to 11PM?

Re: Registration 2017
 

fixed 1 event teams get first choice.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Why? How is it more fair to give an event to teams that click on it quickest instead of randomly splitting the spots amongst the teams that prioritize it most?

Re: Registration 2017
 

I have been vocal in the past about not having to click the fastest to get the event we want.
However, I am not sure submitting a ranked list is what I would want either.
Getting an event you want involves so much preparation and planning weeks in advance and afterwards. It can also be quite costly not getting the event you want, especially for a team like us having to fly to events. If we sign up for an East Coast event Week 1, our next event choice priority would be to find something else as close as possible.
Someone from our team asked why not do San Francisco Week 3 next? Biggest hurdle is an extra 3-4k shipping cost to get it there.
FIRST donates 2 airbills per year to us. We use it to get our robot to the US mainland, and then back to Hawaii for our event later during competition season.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Yes, the Payne Protocol:

Let District systems A, B, and C register on Monday Districts systems D, E, and F register on Tuesday. Districts systems G, H, and I register on Wednesday. Let all regional teams register on Thursday. There's no reason district and regional teams need to sign up for their initial events on the same days.

After initial registration, the next registration opening (October 6th) is just for 2nd In-District Events and Championship for Pre-Qualified Teams. The servers should be able to handle that. I would split up the following registration opening (October 20th) into two dates, one for 2nd Regional events and another for the Championship Waitlist. The November 3rd registration is for Unrestricted Regional events and 3rd In-District events, and November 10th is for Inter-District events, both of which the server should again be able to take care of.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Faith in FIRST restored (not)

Re: Registration 2017
 

Forgive me, but I don't understand the objection. Wouldn't ranking "East Coast Event" first, "close events" second through whatever capture your intent? You could adjust your priority list for the second draw after learning the results of the first.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Perhaps a "silent auction" type of system. Each team is given a budget of X points to allocate among events they want to attend. Single event teams can dump all of their points into their local event that way.


Granted, any system is still going to need some leeway for the regional directors and reserve capacity slots. Hopefully reserve slots accommodate those single event teams, regardless of what system is used for registration.

Re: Registration 2017
 

It would work, if you didnt factor in not wanting the 1st event anymore because you couldnt get your 1st choice.
Based on the current system in the past, it has allowed me to pick and choose what I want, cancel when I want, and then repick somewhere else. The suggested system puts everyone on the same time block for preferences vs. on the fly in trying to secure a spot at an event.
Having the ability to choose, based on the number of remaining slots available is a strategy to try and ensure you get all of the package of events you want to participate in.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I would like to see a system where each team submitted a first and a second choice or just a first choice. Try to give as many teams as possible their first choices, using a lottery or auction model, whatever seems appropriate. This would allow regional directors to use some of the slots that are held back to place teams earlier. (Ex: If there are 10 slots held for late registering rookies and nearby teams, and four nearby teams were unlucky and didn't get one of the open slots, they could get one of the reserved slots.) Give teams their second choice if possible and they selected a second choice. This would allow teams to submit a ballot by the given date, and the system could spit out the results. A little work by the people at HQ and the regional directors and they publish a list of who got their slots where.

Then a few days later let all of the teams that have not yet registered for a competition resubmit a request for one of the still available slots.

Re: FIRST Server Issues
 

And 1712 is registered for the Seneca event. Quick and painless.

Re: FIRST Server Issues
 

yay! it works

Re: FIRST Server Issues
 

Like butter.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Completed registration for Los Angeles by 9:00:11 PDT. By 9:00:23, 15 teams were registered. By 9:01:00, the site is non-responsive. Now showing server runtime error at 9:02:25.

Re: Registration 2017
 

We just got our registration in, confirmation page, refreshed to see what other teams had signed up and it's down again.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Wave got in immediately. Showing 25 slots left for Central Illinois.

Re: Registration 2017
 

And it's down...

Re: Registration 2017
 

Crashed!

Re: Registration 2017
 

Getting runtime errors :(

Re: Registration 2017
 

Nicely done sir... same runtime error... "just keep swimming..."

Re: Registration 2017
 

I clicked the button, and nothing happened...then I could not connect doing a search...then I got a runtime error page...then I got an email saying we're registered.

Interesting.

Re: Registration 2017
 

<runtime errors> Me too...

Re: Registration 2017
 

I got into Miami Valley (MVR) and when checking capacity it crashed.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I was able to get a page confirming we are registered. But as soon as I tried to go back to the dashboard crashed.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I was able to register in the first 30 seconds... got an email confirmation. Went back to take a look at how many spots were left and the site died. Anyone else able tor register?

Re: Registration 2017
 

I was able to register for our initial regional event as well just before the crash

Re: Registration 2017
 

We got our event, then system went down also as I tried to check. I noticed 5 other teams had got in also for Pittsburgh.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I was frozen out before it said that I had registered. I will be so infuriated if this keeps up for another hour. And if we don't get our first choice, which was open and we should have gotten, it will cost us a couple thousand extra dollars.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Exact same thing happened with me.
I was worried when the page would not update once I clicked "Register", but after 30 sec or so, I got an email confirmation we were registered for SAC.

Crash time, again!

Re: Registration 2017
 

Error after I hit the 'Register' button...did this twice with the same error, but now all I get are runtime errors.

No email confirmation...BOOOOOO!!!

Re: Registration 2017
 

Registered 1108 for GKC regional and took a photo for confirmation, but dashboard was down when I tried to go back. It showed 7 teams registered (43 remaining) for the regional.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I keep getting a runtime error just trying to get to my dashboard.
Is that where everybody else is getting the error? Those that have been successful, how did you get past the error?

Re: Registration 2017
 

Oooh... a new error... 502 Proxy Error. To be a fly on the wall at FIRST HQ!

Re: Registration 2017
 

No go here. Well looks like we will have to reset so everyone has the same fair chance to register.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Just got a 503 error. Couldn't even get registered.

Re: Registration 2017
 

We got the registration email, so we are all set, right? Can I go to lunch? :p

Re: Registration 2017
 

Logged in at 9:00:30 and got as far as clicking on Event Registration when a "Something went wrong!" message appeared.

Unable to login since..."There was an unexpected error."

Primal scream therapy not helping.

Re: FIRST Server Issues
 

No Go. How's everyone else faring?

Re: Registration 2017
 

Nothing but runtime errors.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I was not able to register for SAC. Got a "runtime" error. Now I can't even log in to the FIRST website.

This is really frustrating.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Anyone else getting the a white screen that says...

"This is a custom view"

??????

Re: Registration 2017
 

I see either "This is a custom view" or "This is a custom view" followed by "Error" when logging in.

I think they need to learn how to do load testing.

Re: Registration 2017
 

We got registered for Brazos Valley. I got the email saying we are registered. Went back to check capacity of the event and the site has crashed.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Wasn't able to get in before the crash...Was very slow loading. Clicked Midwest and nothing.

Re: Registration 2017
 

I was able to register for our first event and then when i tried to click on the dashboard to confirm it had crashed by then.... I did get a confirmation email that we are registered for the event. Good luck for those who are still trying, I hope it comes back up and you can get into your event.

Re: Registration 2017
 

runtime errors for me as well

Re: Registration 2017
 

i got one of our teams registered but we have 2 teams that need to be in the same event!!!:confused:

Re: Registration 2017
 

Our lead mentors weren't able to even attempt to register before the feces hit the ventilation.

Re: Registration 2017
 

Anyone else find it fishy that right when registration crashes CD also becomes flaky? With the district teams registered there shouldn't be nearly as much of a rush to CD when the regional registration crashes.

Re: Registration 2017
 

ohhh now getting page not found when going to dashboard