Chamionship Qualification - feedback needed ASAP!
 

FIRST is considering modifications to the criteria and procedures used to qualify for the FIRST Championship for 2004. This is due to a perception that the current method - based on Even/Odd Team Numbers and “points” earned during prior years - may no longer provide appropriate primary discriminators for the registration process, and will still have too many teams competing for too few open registration slots. That this is being considered probably does not come as a surprise to many folks (there is already one thread speculating on this possibility).

As this change is being considered, FIRST and the Board are seeking input and comments on this topic from the teams. Specifically, we would like feedback on the performance of the current system, and – if a new system were to be put in place – what characteristics of a new Championship qualification system would be considered most appropriate by teams.

So, here are the ground rules:
- It is guaranteed that every response will be read and all inputs will be considered - nothing will be ignored
- No feedback – direct or indirect – will be provided until after the final decision is made and the Championship qualification criteria are announced; and even then direct feedback may not be provided
- Although all inputs will be read and considered, these input are not the only ones being sought. Thus, there is no guarantee that the final decision will be based solely on the inputs provide here.
- For any of a number of reasons, submitted suggestions may be impractical, incompatible, or unimplementable, and may not be incorporated into the final decision. There is no promise that your ideas will get used.
- We want to hear your impressions of how well the Even/Odd system has worked, or not worked
- Specific, highly detailed descriptions of alternative selection criteria are not needed – a few alternatives have already been identified and are under consideration
- We particularly DO want to hear your comments and ideas about the attributes that a fair, robust, and appropriate set of qualification criteria would have (i.e., you don’t need to tell us “here is my suggestion of an alternate points scheme for registration…” – but we really want to hear things like “a good registration process will let us know six months in advance if we are registered for the Championship, so we can start raising funds – and an excellent process will let us know a year in advance” etc.)

Note that time is short, and we need to hear from you quickly – like within the next 7-10 days. So if you have a comment, or would like to provide feedback, this is your opportunity! Let us hear from you!

If at any time during this year's competition season you thought "if I had designed the Championship Qualification Criteria, I would have done it differently..." then here is your chance! I know that if there is a single place to go for this sort of input, it will be this forum! Let's hear your thoughts.

-dave lavery
FIRST Executive Advisory Board

p.s. We are hoping to see something with a little more thought and "big picture thinking" than all the even-numbered teams really like the current system, and all the odd-numbered teams think it is horrible! :)

Out with the Odd! (and Even)
 

Though the even-odd system lets alot of teams take part in the event, I believe that a more exclusive and performance based system would make the Championship Event more exciting and better overall. The award based system for robot design, performance, judges awards, &c seems to me to work quite well, so I would be interested in creating more qualifying awards and doing away with the even-odd.

Though I think there should be less teams competing or a more rigorous determination of which teams get to compete, I would love to see more teams and people involved in the event itself. Since I live in Metro Atlanta, I plan on taking my team to the entire Championship Event, regardless of whether our robot will be there with us. I would love to help work at the event as a volunteer and I know many other members of my team would be interested as well, so I think it would be good if there was some sort of volunteering system where teams that were interested in going to the Championship but had not qualified would be asked to volunteer at the Event for a day or two.
The more people at the Championship Event, the better.

As to when teams should learn of there acceptance into the Champioship Event, the Regional Events that they qualify at would be when they learned (if qualification was based solely on Awards from the same year as the Event). Although this wouldn't give teams much time to collect all the money they needed, I think it would be better to do it at the Regionals and teams that wanted to go the the Championship Event would fundraise enough beforehand to cover the costs of qualification.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but:

Bring it back to everyone who wants to go to Nationals, goes!!

Last year at Reliant stadium it was very disappointing sitting at the closing ceremonies and seeing probably more than 60% of the stadium not being filled by people.

I say let everyone compete, add a new field into the mix (maybe Socrates) and everyone will be happy (maybe?)

I think the big deterrent to this is pit area, and people traffic or the fear by FIRST that they won't have enough volunteers to run things.

If this is the case, have a member from each team each day volunteer for FIRST.

I know this more than likely already happens for maybe half of the teams involved, so make it a standard and have it count for points.

As for the pit area, I don't know the layout of The Georgia Dome complex, but if need be, set up a tent outside for additional pits...

It worked for years in Florida didn't it?
:)

Everyone should have a chance to go to the championships. To remind everyone the spirit of FIRST is not to have a good robot or even a robot that works but to teach students that science and technology is fun. By limiting who can and can't go to the championships is hurting how much fun it really is.

Every other year was a good compromise and spreading it out any more than that would make it so many members of teams only get to see the championships once. I would reccomend that it be open to everyone. As Elgin said expanding the pits to tents would not hurt, it worked in Florida.

Thanks for asking. Honestly.

• Make the event accessible to as many teams and people as possible. This seems obvious, but it can't hurt to mention it. Atlanta wants hotel rooms booked? Offer hotel-only packages at a discounted rate and let teams who can't compete come down and learn.
• Ditch the even/odd qualification process, but avoid, at all costs, a robot performance based system. FIRST isn't about the robots -- I think you've all said that yourself -- so now is the time to really send that message home.
• Place more emphasis on various awards by increasing their consideration when allowing a team to attend the Championship event. This might include technical awards, judges awards, animation, Inventor, etc.
  I can't express how disappointed and surprised I was to learn that the Engineering Inspiration Award didn't qualify a team to attend the Championship. If it's supposed to be second to the Chairman's Award in importance, why isn't it treated that way?
• Create a pool of interested teams. Possibly ask them to pay event registration ahead of time. Then, randomly select a number of teams from that pool to attend. Do this early so as to give them ample opportunity to do other things with that money.
• Eliminate automatic inclusion of inaugural year teams.
• Make points accumulation cumulative across several seasons. It rewards hard work and patience. Teams could then bank those points and choose to use them whenever they'd wish.

My overwhelming feeling is that the Competition has begun to err more toward being a competitive event that rewards winning matches and success at regionals over inspiration and recognition of science and engineering; and of science and engineers. I'd like to see steps taken to correct our course, so to speak, so that we're including as many people as possible in the good experiences the Championship has to offer and doing so in as egalitarian and balanced way as possible.

My Opinions:

Everyone should go to nationals.
Yes, it's true. In an ideal world, every team should be allowed to go to nationals, so that they all get to experience the "big show" of FIRST. This will not happen. I mean, cmon guys. No matter how many times we say it, FIRST is going to have to limit nationals in some way. Otherwise, Dave wouldn't be asking for our opinions on how to limit nationals, he'd just be saying "Yay, everyone goes this year!"

I didn't see any such post.
So, barring the above:

Everyone should get the chance to experience nationals.
Note: this is not the same as the above. Barring the "everyone can go", we have "everyone can go, at least once every 2 years." Now... there has been a lot of whining about this, but, at the risk of breaking with the 'popular' opinion... I LIKE THE EVEN/ODD SYSTEM. Face it, people can complain all they want how they got "shut out of nationals" but, I won't cry for them knowing that next year, they will get their "free ride".

Teams that build strong robots should go to nationals.
Yes, it's true. I'm one of those people that thinks the BEST robots should be at the big-show. Everyone else is a bonus. How do we decide which robots are the "best"? Well... how about with the current qualification system? Seems like a good plan to me. :D

The only problem with this is... even after going to multiple regionals, some of the "best" robots might not get recognized. (everyone has bad luck). A possible solution to this, is to overhaul the judging/award process. But, this is a completely different problem.


Summary:
I like the current system. It allows for everyone to experience nationals (even if you only go once every 2 years). It also rewards the *best* robots, and makes the nationals competition competitive. I think overall, it works well.

Again, in my opinion. The only major problems stem from the judging/award process. There has been a lot of talk about how this process needs to be reformed, and I won't go into too much detail here (I'll save it for another thread ;)) Basically, what it boils down to is: If FIRST is going to make the awards "worth" something. They need to make sure they ALWAYS go to the right teams. We've all heard the horror stories. Let's keep this from happening in the future.


Dave,
When can we expect the "final word" on some of this?


Thank you,

John

PS - I think I chimed in way more than my allotted $.02 this time. Sorry for ranting. ;)

I feel the even/odd/point solution was good in the beginning. Now it seems to me to be to inclusive. Heres my logic considering 2v2 system. We have roughly 1000 teams and we need to get at most 300 of them. I think the system should be purely award driven. This is the superbowl of smarts right! lets make it that way. This breakdown covers all aspects. Great robots, great teams, and even a chance for those rookies to get in. I'd like to see it like since when championship qualifying is harder to achieve then we will all strive to make a better bot. It will influence us all as teams to work together and realize we have to work to get to atlanta.

78 Regional Winners
26 Chairman's
26 Animation
26 Spirit (I feel the loud teams should be there to cheer everyone on)
26 Delphi Award
26 Engineering Inspiration Award
26 Motorola Quality Award
26 Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award
26 Leadership in Control Award
26 Highest Rookie Seed
-------------------------------
312 teams

and with the overlapping teams it brings it down to about 280. Makes sense? And youve got 2 weeks before atlanta in the last regional so if you weary on time and money go to an earlier regional.


and M krass its called competition for a reason...

My two cents (Or is it two dollars? I may have misplaced a decimal point.)
 

There are plenty of Regionals now so all teams will get a chance to experience the spirit and excitement of a FIRST competition.

The Championship Event should be just that: a championship. Only the best of the best should be there. The Championships will be FIRST's best shot at mass-marketing themselves. They need great teams for great competition to get great TV broadcast offers.

That being said, I'd like to put on the table a system that would accomplish this in a fair manner. To be fair, we need a system that recognizes every way a team can excel in FIRST. I think these criteria do that:

1). Any team who played on an alliance that went to the Semifinals at any event. (This way you can't qualify just by being picked. You have to earn it with success in the elimination matches.)

2). Any team who finishes in the top XX% during the qualification rounds. (This number can be tweaked according to how many teams have registered in FIRST, how many regionals there are, and how much room there is at the Championship event.)

3.) Any team who wins a Regional Award. (This helps to emphasize the parts of FIRST that aren't about competition.)

4.) Any previous champions or Chairman's Award winners.

A team can prove they can win in the elims (1), they can prove they are good in the qualification rounds (2), they can prove that they are good at some other aspect of FIRST (3), or they already have proven themselves (4).

Even / odd is bad. I was never a fan of it, and I'm glad FIRST is considering discontinuing it. As far as general guidlines go, past Chairman's and Championship winners should get an exemption.

Looking at Ricksta's calculations, maybe only Regional Finalists should qualify. Oh well... We'll see, I guess.

Kudos and thanks to FIRST for asking our opinions!

George

If you look at the Event Page, it seems to have been established that only 210 teams will be able to pre-register for this year's nationals.

Remove the Chairman's award winners and the original teams and you're left with roughly 200-190. Last year 787 teams competed in the FIRST competition. However, by my calculations, there are 1,186 available spots at regional competitions. With the facts at the table, it's safe to say that not everyone will be able to go to the Championship Event every single year.

I do believe every team should have an oportunity to attend the Championship event at least every 2 years, if not every other year. I also believe, however, that the "best and the brightest" should be allowed to attend. As a result of gaps in the team numbers due to inactive teams, the previous system of using a divisor would not suffice, as the load from year to year would not be even. With that said, I propose that a random lottery system to be developed. The rules for attending would be outlined as follows:

Rules for Championship Event Attendance:
1. Every team that is elligible will be added to a lottery. Teams would be chosen at random.
2. The winner(s) of every regional, and every major award winner would be allowed to attend (or perhaps every award winner if there is enough room).
3. Chairman's Award Winners and the previous year's Championship Winner(s) would be allowed to attend.

Determining Championship Lottery Elligibility:
1. If you have attended the Championship within the past 2 years, you are NOT elligible for the lottery.
2. You are REQUIRED to sign up for and attend at least one regional in order to be elligible for the pool (there are enough regional spots for every team).


I do believe every team should be given a fair and equal chance to attend the Championship. However, I also understand that it is physically and logistically impossible to accomodate every team every year with the tremendous growth that FIRST has had. I believe that the above system would reflect a fair and accurate chance for each team to participate in the event.

The problem with the current point driven system is that it is inherantly unfair to poorer teams. A team that can afford to go to 3 or 4 regionals would be three or four times as likely to qualify for nationals as a team that can only afford to go to one (and lets face it, including shipping, registration, travel, room, and board, attending an additional regional can be very expensive).

The current system acts as more of a frequent flyer program than a fair ranking of skills. I know of no other sport which allows to to try to qualify for the championship as many times as you like, given the right amount of money. A good registration system should remove the advantage to attending more than one regional. I'm not saying we should limit teams to one regional, or make the regionals truely for a single 'region,' but perhaps there are compromises, such as:

• "Champoinship points" could be divided by the number of regionals a team attends. In other words, it is the average number of points that count.
  
• Forget points, and just allow teams that either won a technical award or made it to the finals at one pre-specified "home" regional. In other words, teams can only attend one regional that counts, and the rest are just for fun (in the same way that the Chairman's Award can only be applied for at one regional). This runs into the problem of 'lame duck' teams who are at a non-counting regional, but I don't think it would be a major issue.

Of course, both these sugestions run into issues of fairness with teams that can only afford to attend "harder" regionals, but that is true of every sport, and it would still be much more fair than the current system. Plus, remaining spots could be randomly distributed, evening things out a bit.

I guess the only truely fair way to do nationals would be to either let everyone in that wants to go, or to base it purely on the even/odd or lottery system, but I can't see either happening.

P.S.: The issue of whether or not to automatically allow first year teams to go has been brought up here a few times, and while I can't speak for the other first year teams, I do know that one of the main goals for 190 each season is to qualify for the Championship through conventional means (and we have done so every year). I honestly don't think there would be much protest from 190 if the grandfather clause were removed.

everyone should have a chance to go. If it becomes based on performance then there will be a dividing line in FIRST. When I went to nationals twice I learned so much from all the other teams. We were a better team for it even if we didn't perform well. If you only have the good teams they get better and the growing teams just kinda sit there. Older teams have more money and experience. We can learn from them. Make it a raffle. At kickoff when you pick up your kit ask who is interested. If a team is, put in thier number. You could have the drawing the next week and require a deposit. Money shouldn't be an issue if they knew about the system and saved ahead of time. If a team doesn't have enough money they are taken out and another is drawn. Its fair, its unbiased, it will help learning. It'll work

The point system has problems, such as the mentioned frequent flyer problem. I like the idea of accumulating points. I also think that the point system should be rewarding to teams winning awards other than the chairman's and regional champs. Yes, it is good to have the best teams at the champ event; however the regional events aren't providing the true meaning, spirit, and purpose of FIRST the way the championship event does - therefore I think more teams, especially rookie teams, need to go to the national event. And I don't mean there should be 50% rookies or something outrageous. I also understand the bias I seem to be under, however I was on Team 71 before 1020 and I don't feel like 1020 was cheated last year.

The even/odd system has a great advantage. It's like the old days when everyone could go except it's half of everyone. How long will this be enough though? 1000 teams and I read, possibly 210 spots?

The inclusion of the inaugural teams jumped off the page at me when I read it. "Why?" I thought. I can understand the want to keep them in the event and actually after thinking about it, I hope you do. They are the ones that I can go to at the event and chat with about the old days when everything was on tether!:) They deserve that spot for getting things started and the can offer a lot to the community from their experience.

An idea occured to me from professional sports: What if there were two major events followed by a competition between the winners? I shuddered at the thought and I hope you do too. If someone has already thought of this on your end, Dave, no offense to them, but please keep searching for other ideas and don't split up the one event that we all love!

Good luck to all of you guys at FIRST who are trying to figure this one out. Don't lose too much sleep over it!

Great job by everyone so far at being concise....

The bonus that went with the odd/even system was that a team knew that they were eligible to attend and that fund-raising money was needed. It is hard to motivate fund-raising (especially with seniors) if there is only a " chance" that you might attend the Championship. Last minute travel arrangements are a nightmare. Ask those who have done it.

If points are given out for awards, then all awards should be treated like the Chairman's Award at Regionals. Teams select ONE regional at which they are eligible to win awards. This is done by submitting "paper work" in advance of the regional. This then helps judges narrow down the work that they must do.

Presently, the focus of the Championship is the robot competition (does anyone disagree??) . Teams that compete should have competitive robots. Again, this is FIRST's chance to shine. As a 2002 Regional Chairman's Award winner, we chose NOT to compete with our robot. It was NOT a competitive machine. However, the team itself should still attend as volunteers or spectators.

I agree with Rick and the idea that the championship should be purely award based. Only instead of just current year winners, previous year technology award winners should be allowed to qualify as well. John has a good point in saying that the judging needs to get better in the awards section, ie. making sure a team can actually do what they say they can do.

With the current even/odd system, yes it is fair to everyone if thats what your looking for, but it also doesn't make for the best championship. Maybe after all the qualified teams register there could be 50 spots for non-qualified teams to fill, and once a team that doesn't qualify goes to the championship they can't go untill every other team that wants to go has gone at least once. This would take a lot longer to get everyone down there, but at least it would still get them all there.

Dave, just out of curiosity are there any numbers being thrown around about how many teams would be able to go if it was open registration? Also, is the max teams in the new venue 210 or is that the max previous year qualified teams that can register and there will be added slots for the teams who qualify in this year?

Conformist.. :rolleyes:

Unlike John, the conformist, I am selfish. As long as my team gets to go to nationals every year, I could care less. You can change as many qualification criteria you want, as long as it doesn't bar my team from going. <-- Unless you are a chairman's award winning or an original team, then one of these statements is most likely the subconscious drive that motivates you to "want" a change to the current qualification system. People go against the qualification system because it prevents them from going to nationals, or because they have already qualified and want to add their voice in to make it sound like they really "care." If the system was changed midway through the year and those that qualified for nationals no longer did, then I'm sure they would still have a voice against the new system and those who qualify would assume the empathic role.

Watch closely, also, the changes people want made to the qualification system. The changes probably give the team of that person, or the strength of that person, the best chance of carrying them to nationals. Teams with new innovations every year probably want more technical awards to be included in the qualification criteria; spirited teams perhaps want the spirit awards to warrant them a place at nationals; teams with competitive robots that don't quite make it to the finals of a competition perhaps want the scope of regional elimination awards to be broadened, etc.

How about that for cynicism? At the heart of my post is "sarcasm," but now that I look back at it, I think I believe it to some degree.

Accumulating points does sound like a good idea, at first; however, we see this as FIRST setting itself up for quite the fiasco in the long run. Eventually, all non rookie teams will have accumulated enough points to warrant them a spot that the National Competition. FIRST can only allow so many teams to enter, thus reducing registration for nationals to a true, "first come, first served" deal.

Rick's idea also sounds like it would work for the upcoming year. But it would run into a problem once the regionals began to grow. Now that I think more on the rate of regionals being added per year, Rick's idea would perhaps work for the next 4-5 years. I have to say that I don't like the idea and I suppose I can't put across a reason why...

Anyway, this thread distracted me, I have to get to other things.

I've never been to championships, but heres my thoughts:

Base it off of performance at regionals for THAT YEAR ALONE (except for 2 things). Not off he previous year (so get rid of that points system)

Regional winning alliances
Any winner of a regional award (chairmans, motorola quality, engineering inspiration, etc)

If theres room (these are the 2 exceptions)
Any previous year championshp chairmans winners
Any previous year champions



Sure it would be great if everyone could go, but I dont think there is a place big enough to hold the more than 800 teams involved in FIRST.

If you'd rather that we didn't offer counterpoints to users' points here, please, tell me and I won't do that.

See my bullet about driving home the point, once and for all, that FIRST isn't about the robots. Some people don't get that.

Well, yes. The focus of any event, to me, has never been the robot competition. While I realize I'm probably in a small minority these days, I enjoy the Championship as a way of seeing other teams' work -- regardless of how well it performs on the field. There's a lot to be said for learning how not to accomplish something as much as there is for learning how to accomplish something. We don't just learn from the best, we learn from everyone. We're not just inspired by the best. We're inspired by everyone. So, why is there a focus on eliminating everyone but the best from the biggest event of the season? That seems self-destructive and counter-intuitive and not remotely indicative of the program I thought I signed up for.

Is that really the message FIRST wants or needs to send to, potentially, millions of television viewers? I believe that it would offer a skewed perspective of what FIRST really is. There are some great teams, sure, and there are some terrible teams -- but I was under the impression that we valued them all equally. A TV broadcast that shows "the best of the best" says, to me, that we value the competition winners more than the competition losers and it sends that message bouncing off satellites and antennas and into the homes of many, many people. Those people might then enter into the competition with bad ideas about what FIRST was trying to accomplish.

The Championship Event needs to be the showcase for FIRST, I'd agree. But, then it all becomes a matter of what you believe FIRST is and it's clear that we don't all agree on that. So, to paraphrase Joel -- yes, I'm shamelessly promoting my agenda. I like it and want to see more people following it.

Finally. . .
Say the Championship Event cost 10 points to attend. Well, over 3 years, team XXX never gets 10 points in a single season, but they do manage to get 14 points after 3 seasons. Well, during their fourth season, they should be eligible to attend the Championship -- spend their 10 points -- and go on with 4.

In fact, let me take that a step further and we can let this be my new, original
contribution to eligibility criteria.

During the pre-registration of each season, teams are given a pool of points. Regional events and the Championship Event each cost, in addition to the fee, a given number of points to enter. Popular regionals could be balanced against newer or more geographically isolated regionals by costing slightly more points to attend. The Championship would cost more points than any regional event. Winning events or awards throughout the season would earn a team extra points -- to be used that season or "banked" for the next. After that, they expire.

What if teams get 50 points per season? Imagine that each regional starts at 15 points and the Championship is 25. Most awards are 5 points.

A team could choose to attend two regionals (-30 pts.) and hope to win an Award (+5) to have the 25 points they need to register for the Championship. They could attend one regional and the Championship (-40 points) and save 10 points for the next season.

The point system could be periodically adjusted to account for the number of teams competing. Make points expire. This would accomplish a few things, overall:

• It would reduce the advantage of attending multiple regionals. Teams could only attend a certain number of events before running out of points. Attending more events would lead to more chances of earning new points, but it could be balanced such that, after a certain threshold, it's nearly impossible to earn enough points to attend the Championship.
• Team members decide where they'd like to be. Their robots don't decide where they deserve to be.
• Teams will have a good idea, in advance, of their chances for attending the Championship event.
• Points will expire, eliminating "veteran's advantage." Good teams will earn more points, but no team can achieve such an advantage so as to assure their attendance each year. The cycle will renew itself every two years, assuring each team at least one opportunity to attend (unless they gamble their points and lose them by attending many regionals and performing poorly).

I'll admit -- I stole this idea from a timeshare program -- but I think it could work for FIRST with some tweaking. Sorry about the length.

While no system is perfect, the current system does attempt to achieve a balance between "earning a spot" and "getting a chance to attend" no matter what your performance is. The Championship number will always be limited and four divisions with more than 70 teams in each division is one heck of a daunting task to make happen well. My hat is off to the planning committee and logistics people for seeing this through each year. If you've ever organized a tournament you also know that any increase in the number of divisions has to jump by four in order for playoffs/elims to work correctly. An eight division arrangement isn't practical for number of reasons I won't bother listing at this time. I like the idea of being able to qualify a year ahead of time and I also like the fact that a team can qualify one week and attend the Championship a few days later. Money will always be a factor here, but the last minute qualifiers should be given the chance and they are.

With that said, in my opinion, any qualification system should retain these key elements that already exist:
1. A point system that allows a team to attend on a prior year's performance and/or the current year
2. The ability for any team to attend at least every other year regardless of performance
3. Credit (points) given for excellence in all areas of the FIRST competition
4. A system that reflects the mission and values of FIRST

- Good luck to Dave, the board, and the FIRST staff as they continually look to improve the quality and value of our experiences in FIRST.

Numbers seem tp be a factor. As time goes on more and more Chairmans and champions are getting free passes. I believe that we should only go back 4 years from a win for free passes. The whole team will have changed over in that time and they can now prove themselves. I also believe that 2nd year teams should also get a pass. Most rookie teams have a hard enough time in their 1st year. This allows time for learning about FIRST, gaining funding and learning about robot build.
I like the idea of picking a "Home" regional to qualify in. This allows better chances for all teams to qualify. Teams attending more than 1 event still have an advantage as they pick up a lot at each regional they attend. As with Chairmans I don't find a fault with that system.
All teams could be put in a lottery at the beginning of the season and a post will be made of those that can attend. Spots made available by winners qualifying at regionals and already having a spot, would be given to those on a posted waiting list. If a team wins a lottery spot and unable to attend then they would be given a spot the following year( only 1 year after).
Any team winning 2 lottery spots in a 4 year span will not be included in the next 2 lottery years.
I believe that this allows teams that win to compete, gives new teams a chance to attend (2nd year) and everyone else an even chance of attending.

One problem with "Home Regionals".

Team A has money for three regionals and championships. Team B has enough money for one regional, and if they win, they'll be able to barely get enough money for championships.

Team A goes to two other regionals as "practice" and just works on fixing the robot, not caring about the competition at all, since they can't win anything here.

At the third regional, Team A comes with a 100% functioning robot, and completely dominates Team B, who came with a working robot, but not a perfectly working robot. Team A goes on to the championships, while Team B still gets screwed over by their lack of money.

This is the biggest reason why the "Even/Odd" system is good. You will have a chance to go at least once, if not twice, during you time on the team as a high school student. Other systems still will favor the veterens and the teams with money, and there's no way around it, or none that I can easily see.

^Yes, but the situation you discribed is endemic of any system where teams can attend multiple regionals, and this is not really the forum to discuss it. Even if team A may rank better than team B, don't forget that there are many other awards that team B could win that would get them to the Championship.

Nationals, er, The Championship,(which I see not as a international inclusion attempt, but to make it sound a performance based event) is a very different feeling event then a regional event. There are a myriad of things contributing to this, but most are because of the greater size of the event. More teams overall mean more teams travel there, so you may see teams that you don't see often.

I see the Championship becoming more of a actual "Championship". If you call it that, make it that. That said, other 'super regionals' should grow to take the large event setting that the National->Championship evolution left behind. Like the Canadian Regional, one in Annapolis(or other East Coast location) and somewhere on the West Coast. This is a process to get there, but taking small steps to get there will adjust people slowly to the change and make it more agreeable. Keep that in mind as you tweak this years qualification settings.


I like to see all teams have the option to go, as often as possible.
I think that the Even/Odd for automatic qualification is a good idea, at least for now. (size dependent)
I don't think the 10 teams from '92 should get a automatic bid. (elitism)


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can fight the future, but can not avoid it.
What will the changes cause for the future?

The problem with the Even/Odd system is that FIRST has grown so large that it cannot support such a system anymore (which is probabaly why they are asking for our advice). Furthermore, you cannot move into divisors such as 3 or 4 because of the gaps in the system due to inactive teams. One year you could end up with 300 teams and the next have 500.

I don't believe in a pure performance system, because a team should have a chance to go to nationals at least once in a 3 year period. It's an experience that just must be had.

A lot of solutions I see are ignoring the facts I laid on the table.

This is why I'm in favor of the combination lottery/performance system proposed here

In my experience with FIRST, I have seen two sometimes-competing messages that have to do with the Championships. Some people would like to see every team be able to go to every Championship event if they so desire, because in FIRST's and our own eyes we're all winners and we deserve to be there. Then there are others who believe that the Championships should live up to their namesake, and those that are the best should attend.

For the past couple of years, the Championships with their even/odd system, combined with their registration system, seem to be playing to both views, and personally I don't believe that's right. I think that FIRST should either emphasize that the Championships are truly the "superbowl of smarts", where the best of the best come to play, or they're completely open to everyone. Unfortunately, having championships completely open to everyone won't work.

Here's my idea. At the beginning of the season, FIRST should offer "interest registration" in Championships. This would require a downpayment ($1000?) on the part of teams to make sure they would be able to attend the event, but would not guarantee entry (unless the teams are Chairman's Award winners or original FIRST teams). Once this registration is complete, FIRST would know what teams would attend Championships if they had the chance.

Here's the tough part. From this, taking a census of the number of team members each team would bring from the "interest registration" (or limiting teams to a certain number of people), FIRST should pre-reserve hotels to accomodate their maximum number of team members attending the event. This would make last-minute travel plans that much easier, which will be discussed later in this section.

Now, the awards should be made so that any award FIRST deems worthy to be given out is worthy enough to qualify a team for the Championships. I agree with the idea that a team should only be eligible to receive awards from one regional; why should a team be honored by multiple regionals for the same action? The theme here should be "if you can't do it for the Chairman's award, you can't do it for other awards". Obviously this doesn't work for first seed and all that, but those are different types of awards.

Once a team qualifies for an award, and they have registered their interest with FIRST, all that is left to do is claim their number of hotel rooms. Yes, travel plans have to be accounted for, but I do not believe that can be avoided.

Once all the regionals have been completed, there may be spots open in the Championships after all the awards have been given out. FIRST can then use it's "interest registration" pool, choose teams at random lottery-style, and inform those teams at a certain date that they can go. If a team chooses not to go after they have filed their "interest registration", FIRST could choose not to return their downpayment. Otherwise, all teams that have filed their "interest registrations" and did not get a chance to attend Championships should get their downpayments of $1000 back.

Sorry for the length!

The worst thing that FIRST could do would be to make a drastic change in qualfiying criteria just a few days before registration opens.

FIRST should release its eligibility criteria at least six months in advance so that teams have a chance to prepare.

FIRST should figure out what it intends to accomplish with its Championship. It seems that we are vascillating between an open championship (which encourages lots of teams to get together and inspire each other) and a competitive championship.

If FIRST intends to continue to swing the dial from "OPEN" to "COMPETITIVE" then here are my suggestions for this year.

1. Keep the past chairman's award winners and the original ten teams as pre-qualified.

2. Eliminate the Odd/Even open slots.

3. Increase the number of competitively pre-qualified slots. This can be done by lowering the pre-qualifying threshold.

Teams which made it to the semi-finals, design award winners, chairman's award winners, etc. in 2003 would pre-qualify for 2004.

4. Increase the number of slots based on performance in 2004 regionals
a. Both Finalist Alliances at a Regional qualify.
b. Chairman's Award and Runner Up at a Regional Qualify

5. Require teams which attend Nationals to submit a Regional Chairman's Award. This criterion would use the slots at Nationals as an inducement for teams to do what FIRST is trying to get them to do. Since the registration deadline is so close, it would be impossible to implement this before this year's deadline. However, the submission might be required by the time that the second payment deadline occurs (in mid-February). Failure to pay and submit a Chairman's Award means that FIRST starts going down the wait-list. If FIRST really wanted to make this serious, it could also use the quality of the submission to decide who got in and who didn't.

These criteria would greatly reduce rookie teams from nationals, since most of the pre-qualifying slots would be taken by teams which had competed for a year. However, only about 10-20 rookie teams signed up for nationals in the pre-season last year based on the odd/even open system. Perhaps a more rigorous Rookie All-Star award could serve as a qualifying award.

6. After a certain date, any remaining spots could be signed up for on a first come/first served basis, including wait list.

A number of people have commented about having a "home" regional to possibly get points from. Ian W. wrote how this would be unfair to a team that is at its first regional competing against another team at its third for the year. In order to balance this, I propose that the "home" regional is automatically the first regional that a team attends in the competition season. As a quick example, if team 666 attends the Arizona Regional and the Los Angeles Regional, it's "home" regional would be the Arizona Regional since it is the first regional of attendance.

indieFan

P.S.- M. Krass, thank you for saying everything (and then some) that I was thinking when I first read this post.

Well, I'm not going to get into this much, but I do have one suggestion. If Odd/Even is going away, then perhaps the points required to qualify for the Championship (based on previous performance) should be lowered. Perhaps it could be adjusted so that any team who won a major award or was a finalist/winner of a given event (regional or Champ. Division) would get enough points to qualify, and any team with a few smaller awards would as well. For example, a partial point scale:

Regional/Championship Division Winner/Finalist: 5 points
Regional Chairman's: 5 points
"Major" awards (i.e. the ones that currently get an automatic bid): 5 points
"Minor" awards: 3 points
Championship/Division Semifinalist: 2 points

With 5 points required, this would give most teams that performed well a shot. I'm not saying this is a perfect scale. In fact, I know it's flawed in a couple of ways. However, it would give a fairly large and diverse number of teams a chance at the Championship, while removing Odd/Even.

Folks, please, please read the original post in it's entirety!!!

To repeat, we are NOT looking for detailed descriptions of specific alternate qualification criteria. We ARE looking for your "meta-criteria" - the characteristics of a qualification process that are desirable. What things do you look for when deciding if the qualification process is a good or bad method for qualifying for the Championships (beyond "does my team get to go?" :) )? Do you care if the process is entirely performance-based? Should the process allow every team to get an (occasional?) opportunity to attend, regardless of their performance? Should the process limit the number of rookie teams attending, and encourage them to focus on the regional events? Do you like methods that are based on just the activities of the current year, or should teams be able to "bank" criteria elements from one year to the next? Is it a good thing or a bad thing if the criteria allow only teams from west of the Mississippi with team names that start with a vowel to attend? In other words, what is important to you about the methods used to qualify teams for the Championship?

Does this help clarify what we are looking for? A good example of the type of input being sought is Rich Kressly's message, repeated below. This is the type of response we need to receive.

Identifying the right meta-criteria will require some real big-picture thinking. If you came up with a specific set of criteria, now tell us what makes the criteria usefull and worth considering. With up to 1000 teams expected to register for the 2004 season, and the potential for that number to go up to 1500 in a few years, there simply is not enough room at any venue for all teams to be able to attend the Championships. As you develop your meta-criteria, you have to consider how they will impact all 1000 teams, and not just your team. Developing the method for selecting what teams will attend will not be an easy problem, and there are a lot of pit-falls. To solve the problem (share the blame? :) ), we do want your input and ideas, but they need to be at the right level. Thanks for the responses received so far, and keep writing!!!

-dave lavery
FIRST Executive Advisory Board

I feel that all members on a team should have the experiance to go to nationals once, if not twice during their high school years. Nationals isn't all about competing. FIRST isn't that.

It is hard to try to explain to first year or now even second year members the feelings associated with Nationals. The environment is awesome. Only one other team member other than myself has been lucky enough to attend 2 nationals, only six more got to attend the one in 2002 - this on a team of currently 39 students. Through nationals - if not the other regionals people get to connect. I met some of my closest FIRST friends thanks to nationals, and I hope my younger team members will get to experiance that too.

Not every team is going to be as good as the others. Not every team is going to have a good design, creativity, spirit and such. Some teams are lucky if they can get 5 students to be active. Should those 5 students be not allowed to experience Nationals even though that lack in the award areas?

Even if a team doesn't get to compete, maybe, allow for all teams that want to go to be able to at least come and watch the event, with special packages available from FIRST.

Sorry, Dave. I may have been too specific. I'll try better this time.
Well, as long as the process recognizes all ways that a team can succeed, I'm satisfied. (i.e. success in the qual rounds, the elims, winning other awards, and previously winning a national Chairman's award)
I'd rather that is was. Young teams can get a complete FIRST experience from the Regionals and Super Regionals. We don't have to worry about that.
No. Like I said, the Regionals and Super Regionals provide teams with a complete FIRST experience. I can comfortably say this because last year was the my first time working with a team who didn't attend a Championship. The kids on that team were (and still are) just as inspired as any other group I've worked with in the past.
No, it should have no biased against or in favor of rookie teams.
Current year only.
Funny, but I'd prefer simpler criteria! =-]
Yup! Thanks. ;-]

And I hope my thoughts and ideas have been clarified as well.

One last thing: is there any chance of getting a sneak peak at the alternatives that have been identified?

George

Whoops, sorry Dave.

To avoid repeating many other posts and wasting bandwidth/ page space and people's time (that it takes to read long posts) I say this.

I agree 100% with George1083's above post

To genericize my earlier post:

A good selection process would select teams based on the following criteria (in order of priority):
1. Teams which exemplify the highest ideals of FIRST

2. Teams which are currently competitive

3. Teams which have been competitive over the previous few years

A fair selection system would give the majority of teams qualifying for championships approximately the same amount of time to prepare arrangements for fund-raising, travel, excused absences from school, etc.

All teams should have an opportunity to attend over a period of (for instance) four years.

Teams which have not attended championships recently should get priority on OPEN slots over teams which have recently attended.

Okay, it's too late and I haven't put a lot of thought in that one yet. I'll try to come back with something better tomorrow, but for know that's it...
Say a team is elligible for the Championship in a determined year (not considering "luck", ie odd numbered team in a odd number year :)), but, for some reason - okay, we all know, it's money ;) - they can't go to Nationals (yeah, we call it that way). This team should have a spot guaranteed next year - c'mon, they earned it -, maybe with the points system being cumulative in some kind of way, or something else.
I don't think there would be enough teams in that situation as to cause big trouble in the following year, so this is the kind of thing that wouldn't be to hard to apply and would make some teams really happy.

PS: Even though we would be benefited next year if that rule did apply, we probably wouldn't be going to Nationals anyway. With the huge gap between last week of Regionals and the National, it is much wiser to go to two back to back Regionals and pay only one ticket (our biggest cost).

Okay, my post as one piece of "meta-criteria":

Team selection should be based largely on performance. A point system would be fine, but I think that points should be given out for more things, and/or less points should be required. Above all, I think the performance part, both in competition, and things like Chairman's Award, should be the main deciding factor. If the threshold for performance is lowered just a little from where it is, you will still get lots of good, competitive teams (and more of the newer teams) but not have too many as Odd/Even may give you.

ok..

I'd have to say I sort of like the current system. All teams should have the chance to attend the championship at least every other year, regardless of how good they are.

However, as said, you do want the best teams to be there. Therefore, keeping a points system in place is also a good idea. However, I would also like to see more of the regional awards have a greater influence in qualifying a team.

Next (while i understand this would be hard to do for 2004), I would support having "super regionals". Or 2 sub-championships and then one final. (One west & one east coast. I know it must be hard for underfunded teams out west to afford going x-country for nats)

However the one thing I would really like to see is being able to know if you can go as early as possible. It makes it so much easier to know how you can allocate your $$, etc. I understand that this then makes it hard for teams who all of a sudden qualify during a regional.

My $.01 :)

I am mixed on this issue.

For the next three years, the FIRST Championships should include these teams:

1. Top performing teams from the current year
...regional winners
...regional Chairman's Award winners
...teams who can accumulate a certain # of awards divided by the number of regionals attended

2. Teams who have not attended a Championship in the past. FIRST could give "retroactive" points to teams who have not attended a Championship. These teams can accumulate points over many years. These points add up to a Championship qualifying level. Then they attend a championship and their point level gets back to zero.
- team XYZ has never attended the Championship
- they got 1 award in 99
- they got 2 awards in 2000
- they got 1 award in 2003
- these four awards put them over a watermark so that they qualify for Championships in 2004.

3. All Hall-of-Fame teams (Championship Chairman's Award teams)

However, after the 3 upcoming years in Atlanta, this system needs to be entirely we-worked. At that time, I feel that there should be 4 or 8 Super-Regionals which will be elimination tournaments for the top-performing teams. These super-regionals can be 160-200 teams each, and those are the competitions where teams can accumulate points to attend. These super-regionals would have a similar qualification process that Championships have seen up until now. At that point, the Championship qualification criteria could be a mix of awards and performance-based, where the top 20-40 teams at each super-regional would attend the Championships... and those teams could be determined with a mix of performance and GPish (Chairman's Award, etc.) criteria.

As others have said... good luck to Dave and the rest of the committee.

Andy B.

btw... I am not in favor of granting the teams who have been in all 13 years an automatic bid, for what it is worth. And... I am proud to be on one of those teams.

With 8 days left to registration...

I would like to see:

-Not limited to performance only - the best thing I have seen is some of the smaller, less organized teams seeing the great teams, and being inspired.

-A system that would allow every team to go once in a while.

-A system that made what FIRST stands for very clear. (Is it for inspiring students or winning... I don't know anymore... but alas, that is for another post.)

Our team has made a concious decission to NOT focus on winning, and worry more about teaching the students. I would hate to go back on that, and go build the robot for the kids. Our high school has tried it both ways with 2 different sponsors, and we seem to do a better job when we don't worry about winning.

Automatic bid every xx years (2, no more than 3).
Why: It is more than robots and a teams performance on the field is not an absolute indication of their personal growth or committment to the ideals of FIRST. Resources out of the control of the team may determine their level of success. Every student should have the opportunity to experience nationals.

And:
Top teams - Based on points for the current year, but only the top certain number of teams qualify this way. What I mean is instead of saying with 25 points you qualify, say the top 25 teams qualify - that may be 100 points, it might be 15. This always gives the opportunity to the best performing teams (performing meaning special awards, robot awards, etc.).

And:
No automatics based on the past.

And:
The biggest challenge most teams face is the money to go, and the ability to get kids out of school. If the Chairman's decisions are late - there may not be money to go, or the administration might say no to more days out. More levels of qualifying (super events, 1/2 nationals then a finals, etc.) make it worse. Make the decisions known as early as possible.

And:
Keep it simple to understand and implement. FIRST has the same resource limitations the rest of corporate America has - the Championship process cannot take a big group to organize.


Final thought -
No automatic bids, Championship based only on current year performanance (on all FIRST aspects), and NO CHAMPIONSHIP ENTRY FEE. Eliminate that part of the financial burden to the top teams to make sure they can get there.

Last Minute Changes???
 

Although the current system is far from perfect, I honestly feel that these last minute changes can't possibly be carefully considered. This rush to decision making has gotten FIRST into trouble in the past.

If a new system is decided upon in a few days, something WILL be overlooked and deserving teams WILL be hurt!

I feel that any changes proposed now should opened for comment and then implemented for the 2005 Season.

The only alternative to a slow, careful consideration process is to open up the Championship to all teams. (which seems unrealistic)

Otherwise, I feel that FIRST is setting itself up for some unforseen and embarassing oversight.

Just my opinion.

Best of luck to everyone this Season!!!

Al Ostrow
Head Coach
Team 341

Well, no matter what format is decided...the bottom line is teams need to know in advance if they qualify to attend nationals. Currently, teams attending the latest regionals are at a major disadvantage. If they qualify, how are they expected to prepare on such short notice? We unforunately faced this situation last season and we're unable to attend simply because we had no time to prepare. $4000 doesn't appear out of no where. If the qualification process remains similar, this same burden will exist for other teams in the future. Why should a team be penalized because they won an award or regional later than someone else?

Sorry if this has been said already in this post, I have not read everyone's ideas yet. As I said in another post however,

I would like to see FIRST drop the even/odd rule, while at the same time relax the point system to qualify. Instead of just tech awards, let it be ANY award. So any team that:

a) Gets an award

or

b) is a regional finalist

...will get to go. If there are 27 regionals this year, with 14 awards at each, I estimate between 270 and 540 teams will qualify for Nationals. Seems good to me =)

To extract the meta-data from my above post:

Quality of performance, not just of the robot, but of the whole team (and notice that I said quality of performance, not quantity of performance). No team should have an inherent advantage because they are rookies, first year teams, or teams that can afford multiple regionals.

As long as performance is not based solely on robot performance. Teams that embody the spirit of FIRST, who show excellence in any number of categories, from team management, to community outreach, to education, and even to robot performance, should get to go. As it is, the current award system does not satisfactorily achieve this goal.

Yes. I believe that every team meets the above performance criteria to some degree, and should be allowed to go to the championship at some point.

Frankly, most teams would not be prepared for nationals in their rookie year. However, for those that meet the selection criteria, there should be no bias against them.

That is a tricky issue. On the one hand, teams change drastically from one year to the next, with many students leaving, and many new ones coming in. Team performance can also drastically change. An ideal system would be based only on the current year. However, any such system would give teams very little lead time to organize a trip to nationals, so from a practical point of view, it may not be feasible.

I realize that there is quite possibly no system which meets my criteria, and I know that there are contradictions. However, there is one thing that I want to stress: that any team that really tries, and puts in extra effort and dedication above and beyond what is needed to simply show up and compete, should get to go to the Championship. The real world may not work that way, but wouldn't it be nice if it did?

Radical Idea
 

Ok I have a radical idea so that the best of the best get to perform at Nationals. Using the current point qualification system tally up the amount of points for each team. Than take the top six teams for each state and invite them to Nationals. However, through the Canadian teams into Provinces. And foreign teams into automatic invite as it is good to show that FIRST has exposure overseas. Now obviously FIRST will have to rework this system so that states without six teams those invites get passed on to other such quality teams in other states. Maybe they will have to use an electoral such invite system similar to a presidental race where so many teams will get invited out of one state will another state may not have so many. How they can base this on is the amount of years a state has amongst its teams and how many rookie teams are within that state. That is something FIRST can work out. Ok I'm done

Championship
 

Everyone will not be happy and if a change comes about this year. Some teams will leave FIRST if changes are made as many teams have already planned their team and season. After all registration is a few days away.

I say leave as is, advertise that it will be changed next year (2005) warning all teams in advance. Have the new system for 2005 in place prior to the starting of season 2004.

This gives all teams a chance to plan and get their effort organized. No one should be able to complain about this ( but you know they will ) if done in advance.

With up to 1000 teams expected to register for the 2004 season, and the potential for that number to go up to 1500 in a few years, there simply is not enough room at any venue for all teams to be able to attend the Championships.

I disagree. I know it would be a great deal of work but not impossible. If we maintain this mindset then it will never happen.

Dave- if we are to meet the purpose of FIRST of inspiring young people we need to see that those that need inspiration the most get to go. That means the rookies and very new teams who have never been able to go. With the points qualification process as it is now that is nearly impossible for most.

The system of points being used now is definitely rarifying the field. Is that what is desired? Funding and experience are making the competition tougher and tougher. Do the novice teams have a chance? Raising funds to travel to the Nats. should be challenge enough.
If points are going to be used the system should allow banking over a number of years, teams to donate points to each other and encourage interteam brotherhood and a lower, more reasonable points threshold to qualify. To qualify based on the existing system means a team needs to win a number of events or awards accumulate points to be eligible. One should be enough- two at most.

Some research should be done into the numbers of teams never attending the Nats and why. Perhaps a provision to reach these teams should be made? What is their retention? How many are one year wonders?

One last comment- I would expect this type of input to be solicited by an FRC teams e-mail blast, not a CD posting. While it does reach the diehard FIRST kids, CD is somewhat midwest oriented and not all teams even know this posting exists. Likewise- NO mention of changing qualification was on the agenda or discussed at the forums this summer, despite an interest at ours by a number of teams. The topic was untouchable. How serious is FIRST about this? Is this considered a real problem or is the Bd. just fishing for information and opinions?

WC

I'm going to elaborate too much on what I think would be a good alternative to the Even/Odd system, but here's what I would like to see as a good alternative.

As I read through these I realized my idea was close to Andy Baker's. FIRST is much more than the robots, but we are here because of them! Now I'm not denying that teams that win the extra awards such as animation, inventor, etc. shouldn't get benefits and be allowed to go to Nats because they should, but we can't exclude the robots here people. I like the idea of large Qualifying Regionals (for example, the Midwest would have a big Qualifying Regional) , which would then put you into the National Competition. Although it's not the most fair alternative, there are so many teams that it's hard to be truly fair to all teams. In addition to these large Qualifying Regionals, teams could also qualify for Nationals through a point system like the current one which includes all the awards like Chairmans, Animation, Robot Design Awards, etc.

That's my .02 cents.

I don't know if this has been stated before, so here goes my idea for how teams should qualify

1) Those that exemplify the ideals of FIRST go. No exceptions.
2) All awards are offered a spot at nationals.
3) Rookie teams get a small percentage of the spots open at Nationals.
4) Finally, competitiveness gets the last spot as who can go. Those teams that win get the final spots not taken by #1 and #2.

I know that the competitiveness is a big part of the nationals, but then again, as has been said before, FIRST is not about the robots. It's about the atmosphere. The main purpose is inspiration. Not competition. I don't know how flawed, or even if it is, the system above is. It's just how I feel they should do things. If they want a real competitive event, have another national event, but just for the best teams from all over. It would be nice if everyone could go, but that's impossible. If they want competitive events, make a special one just for that, for the best teams to go to, but then make the current nationals for the ideals of FIRST. Make it a learning experience, and have a seperate "Super Bowl" event.

My thoughts
 

In 2000, as a junior in high school I attended the Nationals for the first time. At regionals that year I knew I would be back for my senior year, at nationals I was hooked for life.

FIRST is about the inspiration and the Championship does just that. I feel that every student should have a chance to go to the championship with their team at some point in their high school career. Therefore, teams should be able to go every x years (less than 4) regardless of the team’s performance.

Other criteria that is important:
1) Teams that perform well at regionals during the current year should be able to attend.
2) Teams that win current year regional awards that would assist in inspiring students at the championship. (example: teams that win spirit usually encourage more enthusiasm from everyone at the event, making it more enjoyable)
3) Teams that performed well previous years. Teams should have a chance to come back to the championship to defend their titles.

Overall the Championship should include the teams that will have the greatest impact on the students that will attend. And the teams that have the students that need to be inspired.

Eric

Re: Championship
 

But is it really possible to go ahead with the old system?
Someone (wiser than me), pointed out that we have already expanded beyond the odd/even system.

After qualifications, there will be about 200-250 spots open for even teams. But, think how many teams there are to fill these spots (I don't have the exact numbers.)

In the future, it will get worse.

I believe that FIRST should keep with the "some teams qualify, some teams get a free ride" system. The big question is, how should the "free ride" system work? I agree with what Eric O posted above, every team should get a chance to go, even if it takes 4 (or more) years for their "free ride".

Perhaps, FIRST should keep track of how long it has been since a team attended nationals. Those teams that haven't gone in the greatest amount of time, get a "free ride". It might start taking quite a few years to cycle through the teams, but by then, hopefully we will have "super-regionals" or even East/West divisions, or something along those lines. This solution will work for at least, the next 3 years. (until post-Atlanta).


FIRST should do whatever it can to ensure that nationals remains competitive (the BEST robots go each year), and that even the "not best" teams get the chance to attend every few years...


I trust that FIRST will come up with the best solution for doing this, but I feel it is important that this happens. (Dave asked for opinions, this is mine.)

This means that the system for determining what teams are the "best" needs to be reexamined. What awards cause a team to qualify. Do we really want "historical" performance to allow for qualification? *shrug* Again, I don't have the answers, but I trust those "powers that be" at FIRST will be able to figure things out.

Dave, Good Luck.



John

Odd/Even
 

Since we all agree that part of the excitement about the Championship event is the competion, and part is the networking and collaboration between teams, why not offer a solution like this?

Do not base the even/odd stipulation on team numbers, but rather, hold a lottery during the spring for the following year. (That way teams have lots of time to plan AND you will not always be competing at Championships with the same odd- or -even-numbered teams).

During the Odd years, teams who received an odd number during the lottery can qualify to attend the Championship event where they will compete against other teams who received Odd numbers. During that same year, Even teams can qualify to attend a "conference" with other Even teams where they can attend workshops, demonstrations and network (party) with other teams.

This way, each year a team will have an opportunity to either qualify for the Conference or the Championships.

Fairness.
 

I don't like odd/even - you may not have the
'best' robot when your number comes up. You also need a lot of lead time to schedule and fund a national run - I have been in a situation where my team qualified at the last minute to attend the nationals - but even with the $$$ just did not have enough time to organize the trip. So the trick is how to have a 'fair' system that doesn't favor wealthy teams over poor teams. I think
A random lottery together with a merrit system would work.

I never had an issue with the qualification system. It is a set of rules. You play by them. Sometimes you go, sometimes you don't.

Any changes to the qualification system must ensure that all teams, no matter the quality of there performance at regionals, have some chance to attend the Championship. The Championship is where most rookie teams (that did not spin off of an existing team) get their inspiration to go on and try to compete the next year.

If you go to a performance based system, then Super regionals will be required, as mentioned in an earlier post.

There has to be a buffer of some kind between the "everyone is welcome" atmosphere at regionals and the "only winners are welcome" atmosphere of a performanced based Championship.

Yes, you will get better competition. But is that what you are pursuing?

If the Championship is only about winning, you might as well get rid of the Chairman's Award. It will become meaningless in no time.

Finally, good luck Dave and your committee. I hope you get some useful ideas from this and all of the other posts.

whoa
 

Wow, this is a LONG thread, so I haven't had time to read all of the posts. I hope I'm not posting anything that has been mentioned already.

I agree that it might be difficult to change things this late for this year, so perhaps waiting for next year would be good, but then again, we had even teams 2 years ago, odd last year, so it wouldn't be fair to have even teams go this year and then change it before the odd teams get to go next year.


%%% CRAZY PROPOSAL %%%%%%%%

I think that the majority of the spots should be based upon the current year, with just a little bit guaranteed from history. However that might make it difficult for travel arrangements.

Here is what I would propose (I know it's quite a bit away from the status quo, but I think drastic measures will be needed before too long, so why not start now?):

1) Hold the kick-off the 2nd Saturday in September. This gives teams 2 weeks to organize a team (most schools start the last week of August now).
2) Robots must ship near the last Tuesday of October (six weeks plus 3 days - same schedule as now).
3) Hold regionals all through November and first two or three weeks of December (skip Thanksgiving weekend). If necessary, hold regionals the first couple weeks of January.
4) Schedule the Championship during its current week. That way, there is at least 3 months (maybe 4) for teams to book travel once the regionals are over.
5) Teams that get to go to the Championship are chosen as follows:
a) X number (say 300 teams) - history teams = Y teams
b) rank the teams based upon a point system for the CURRENT year.
c) the top Y teams in the points get to go to the championship.

%%%% END CRAZY PROPOSAL %%%%%%%%%%

Dave, I know that is a little more detail than you want, so here are the meta- criteria:

- Base the criteria for the Championship mostly (say 80 - 90%) on the current year.
- Line up the schedule to be more throughout the school year - a year-long thing with a break in the middle.
- Give teams a LOT of time to book travel arrangements instead of making them scramble if they qualify at the last minute.

4 years
 

The only useful suggestion that I can think to make is to have a random component and a performance component.

I would suggest that both be based on a rolling 4 year cycle (high school is 4 years long, right?)

A team's chance at getting a random invite should increase each year that they do not attend the championships. Hopefully the numbers would work out that teams would not be held out of the championships for an entire high school cycle.

For the performance aspect, I would suggest that teams keep their last four years worth of qual points. Teams that are consistently good, but not champions or whatever would eventually get rewarded with a shot at the championships.

WHOA! That is a heated thread...
 

Hi all,

I hated the even/odd thing from the beginning because it was DOOMED FROM THE START due to 30% annual growth.

I agree with PJ that a balance of random and performance based criteria is needed.

I also agree that a lottery that essentially gives you more and more chances of making it the more years you miss the lottery is a good way of making it work.

I would also add that a team that signs up for the Nationals, then backs out should go to the back of the line in terms of lottery odds.

Until TV is paying for teams to go to the Nationals (ala the NCAA tourney), I cannot see FIRST going to a system where all teams qualify based on this year's competition. It is a good goal to think of, but not realistic until some revenue source outside of the team's pockets is paying the bills.

That is all I have for now...

Joe J.

Re: Chamionship Qualification - feedback needed ASAP!
 

First I would like to thank Dave L for asking the community. This reflects the respect and trust they have for FIRSTers. I have read some excellent ideas so let me add to these recommendations (some of the ideas have been said already):

1. Most important group- invite all to the National event all regional chairman’s Award and Inspiration Award winners.
They represent the heart of FIRST.
2. Invite all Rookie teams to the Championship. They should be given an opportunity to attend the National.
If they decide not to attend for any reason, their invitation to the National can be held & used for future Nationals.
3. Invite all teams that have NEVER attended a National Championship.
To attend the National is one of the best award and satisfaction any FIRST team can have.
4. Invite all non-field-of-play award winners are to the National. Best design, idea, function, spirit etc.
5. Any additional slots in the National can be given out using a lottery system. This can be done early in the season.

The list is by most importance to less importance.
:)

I am in favor of increasing the "aura" of the regionals. I would like to see the prestige factor of the regionals raised. Let going to the regionals become as important as going to the finals, not merely a stepping stone to the finals.

As for a championship, let the top four teams of each regional east of the Mississippi go to the East Finals. Let the top four teams of each regional west of the Mississippi go to the West finals. Empty slots at each final could be filled using some selection process.

Let the top two teams from each final compete to determine the national champion on National TV with the proceeds used to fund the finals.

The "old guy" from Mesa Arizona,
Ken Loyd
Teacher/Advisor
Team #64
The Gila Monsters

Most of any commentary I'd have has already been covered. The main issue I've always had about qualifying for nationals has been the fact that it is nearly impossible for a team to qualify for nationals the next year unless you attend two regionals. This is because the point system requires you to have five points which means you have to win the regional and a technical award if you only attend one event. This can be a very challenging thing to do. Given that it's not really an option for many teams to attend two regionals (particularly if they are attending nationals this year), I think that the qualification process should be made to allow more teams to attend based on previous years preformance while limiting the number of teams that attend on the even/odd side of things.

Matt

One suggestion from this thread, which I really liked, is to first limit Championship attendance to teams that have submitted a Chairman's Award entry.

So much of the spirit of FIRST is based upon the ideals embodied by the Chairman's Award that the basic effort of filling out a questionaire and writing a 4 page paper should be a prerequisite for attending the Championship.

Other selection methods of course would follow, but the first criteria should be a CA submission.

Other meta-criteria:

A selection process which is scalable to the number of teams.

If you have 100 teams or 1500 teams, the selection process would not need to change.

A selection process which allows us to focus our efforts on inspiring and mentoring students, building good robots and teams, rather than on winning regional competitions.

If a team is spending all of its energies at a regional to qualify for nationals, then it cannot, of necessity, spare resources to help other teams and make their experience more inspiring.

Re: Odd/Even
 

This idea, while there's bound to still be some logistics issues involved, provides for an interesting solution to the problem of transportation needing to be addressed ahead of time. Why not have the "conference" and Championship in the same city? This would allow teams to plan in advance for the travel and accomodations, with the only question being which site they travel to each day...or, as an offshoot of this, why not give any team who does not qualify for the Championship the option to attend this "conference?"

I think that the odd/even system was pretty workable. Our first year, we were rookie all-stars in S. Calif., so we made use of fact that we had an even number and went to Florida. This year, we had to win our way to Houston with a technical award. So we experienced both sides of the coin: free entry one year and pressure the next. Variety is the spice of life, someone once said.

However it is obvious that some change is needed which is the reason for this thread.

My recommendation is to make the smallest changes possible to solve the current problem, rather than sweeping the current system totally aside. Why? This system is working, so let's just modify it. Perhaps in addition to being odd or even, some other qualification could be added to reduce the numbers somewhat, such as "made it into the elimination rounds at a regional" or "was in the top half of teams in the qualifying rounds" at a regional.

Also in keeping with the idea of a society getting what it celebrates, let's continue and expand upon the idea of rewarding teams who go the extra mile to make big contributions to the goals of FIRST and to our society, by giving such teams a championship slot.

Since regional winners get to go to the championships, the one enhancement that I feel is vital is to handle the scoring system so that we are actually celebrating hard work and creativity and not something like "last minute negotiations". Although there will always be some luck involved in who you get as partners, etc., let's make sure that we are doing everything possible to set up the scoring system to put the best teams on top and in the championships. After all, that is part of what we all want to see each year: which designs turned out to be the best for this year's game. Then we all learn from those teams. Let's work hard to make sure that we are celebrating the qualities that we want to encourage in our students, by rewarding those qualities with high qualifying points at our competitions.

let all teams play!
 

as the game is some what based on luck when it comes to your quailifing matches the best robot/team may not have lost due to a bad draw not there ability as a team. any and all teams who are able to rase the funds to get to nashionals should be welcome! as we can only truly diffine being the champion's as the team that competed agasint the best and came out on top, not the best of the odds or the evens

To be honest, the odd/even system wasn't a terrible idea. However, it was kind of disapointing to know that each individual team member would only be able to experience a National event 2 out of their four years in high school, assuming that their team didn't qualify for both years opposite their team #. In a sense that isn't quite fair. There have been countless instances where, during a regional event, lady luck wasn't quite our side. Luck is a huge part of the game whether we like it or not! Unfortunate things can happen, and the downside to that is that our team may have an outstanding robot that just had a bad game. We may feel our team deserves a chance at nationals. And every team should have an oppertunity to compete with other teams from all over if they want to. It's a truly rewarding experience. Nationals gives them that oppertunity. If at all possible, allow all teams to attend national events every year IF they want to. I know that size, money, time, etc. play important roles in perhaps preventing every team who wants to to go, but then maybe a location that is big enough during a time period that is convenient should be considered. Florida seemed to really work. I'm sure it could be pulled off again. Just let all the teams go!!!

Who Should Go To Nationals
 

The most important value of FIRST to a student, a young adult, is participation and exposure to all aspects of a team project... planning, innovating, learning new skills, using existing skills, building, trying, getting it right the first time, getting it wrong and figuring out how to recover and get it right, presenting, competing, building teams and friendships, and above all, learning that in the real world all of this is important to achieve your goals.

My vote is that everyone should go!!!

Philosophically, if you could not send everyone, send the weaker teams because they clearly have more to learn then the ones that have their act together.

Main Objectives
 

Dave, thanks for asking but you are making me nervous. Either way here are my opinions.

I am assuming the limitation for robots competing is around 300.

I am a fan of performance based objectives.

The odd/even thing was doomed from the start and, in my opinion, was a temporary fix. Even if 0 teams got in from performance, assuming 1200 teams; that is one team goes every 5 years and any random process will simply exclude most teams.

Let's look at this from a different perspective:

There are two types of performance: on field and off field, but the only one limited to 300 is the on field performance. Why can't the off-field (aka award winners for spirit, sportsmanship, etc.) performers go to the Championship to compete for those awards and not bring the robot .. the experience is gained. To take it one step further (just like with other awards) only the regional winners of awards are qualified to compete for the Championship award. I don't want to go any more specific than that, but you can see where I am going.

I think the remainder of the slots (after current year qualifying) should be based on past years performance (banked up over several years) with preference going to those that have not been to the Championship recently.

I do not know how to handle the multiple regionals for rich teams.

My suggestions are complete, so continue reading at your own risk....

One argument against the average per regional is that if a team gets a qualifying award at their first regional, then they do not register for any more and their average is high. I guess it does make it harder to just attend regionals (shotgun approach) to qualify.

I have a question, but I think I am going to start a new thread to ask it. Please look for it regarding team's impressions about this year's qualifying.

-Paul

Re: Main Objectives
 

Well, how can you show team spirit for a robot that isn't competing? Likewise, how can you exhibit good sportsmanship among a group that isn't participating in a sport? How can judges decide on technical awards if there's no robot to see?

I'm not sure I understand the practicality of dividing the competition into on- and off-field components. One may be more important than the other (and which is more important depends on who you ask) but I don't think either could exist on its own.

Also, would it then be impossible for teams with a competing robot to win an off-field award? Or will there be twice as many of those?

Championship guidelines
 

What about addressing the idealism of FIRST and having teams apply for spots at the Championship thru an application process?

This would leave out the "performance" part.

My team has to scratch up every penny to go to an event. It is a 9 hour bus ride (that costs $3500) to go to the nearest event. The hotel is $2500. With the entry fee, 1 regional costs us $8000 or more.

We can't compete with teams that go to multiple events. I also am bothered by the fact that a team can go to 3 or 4 events, and take the same award(s) at each event. (Multiple Awards)

This limits the availability of teams that can only attend one regional.

One thing that would help is if a team wins a judges award at one regional --then they cannot win that same award at another regional. Similar to only being able to apply for the regional Chairmans Award at only one regional.

I don't think that revising the Championship Criteria is wise at this point. My team is planning on attending this year because we are an even numbered team--we already have our airline tickets. If things change--we could lose our $2000 deposit on our tickets. Not to mention finding any other type of transportation.

When we were rookies in 2000--being able to attend the Championship was our driving motivation---we won Nat'l Rookie All Star that year. With current guidelines--we would not have made it.

I also don't understand why the Regional Rookie All-Star award doesn't qualify a rookie team for the Championship. We mentored a Kansa team last year 1104---they won a Rookie Award at St. Louis---but didn't qualify--they were also one of the top 10 finalists. This didn't seem fair either.

I DISAGREE with the idea of having Sub-finals---WHO could afford to attend besides the "SUPER" robotics teams? Money is a major issue for many teams. The SUPER funded teams don't worry about additional travel costs.

I like the even/odd selection. Then teams know that they could at least go every other year. I also think that ALL Regional Award winner should qualify.

my 2 cents

2000 Lone Star Regional Leadership In Control
2000 Nat'l Rookie All Star
2001 Lone Star Regional Driving Tomorrow Technology
2001 Lone Star Regional Champion
2001 Nat'l Imagery Award
2002 St. Louis Regional Entrepreneurship
2003 St. Louis Imagery Award

OK really hesitated posting.
The solution to me is to somehow deemphasize Nationals.
What if there was no qualification process?
You knew that every 2 or 3 years you would be able to go to the Big Dance. No one is excluded from the opportunity to go. Wether odd/even or lottery or some other random selection process that guarantees the opportunity to attend the big show occasionally and also that there would be years you know you could not go.

Championship criteria
 

After sleeping on this---I thought of an idea. With no particular idea being the solution at this point--I thought I would at least post this.


CRITERIA:

1. teams wanting to attend the Championship event complete an application (similar to chairman's entry) and they can only submit it to one regional (this would eliminate the unfair practice of teams taking more than 1 spot at each regional) This form would ask teams if they would have the funds to attend. A few alternates are chosen to attend in the event qualified teams back out. The judging criteria will be on the many qualities that teams possess, not just their robot. This would celebrate the spirit of FIRST. If teams know they can't afford to go---then they would not apply. The judges would pick the teams at each regional that exemplfy FIRST's values. They would judge them on how the kids are performing as a team, observing the kids in the pits, on the field. I think a good way to do this is maybe have a feeback sheet that the teams complete about each other at the event (positive remarks like "team xxx helped us today by finding our programming error). The kids can give positive credit to the teams practicing Gracious Professionalism. They are taped on a designated wall, and judges can read them.


2. The judges at each regional would award x amount of slots to the teams---for the following year--this would allow teams to prepare a year ahead of time to know if they were going.

3. Rookie teams would be selected in a different manner.--maybe they have to provide documentation (log book, website/calendar) in which they show their progress as a Rookie team) Much of this judging could be done remotely, from the judges homes.

4. The application process could also occur earlier in the year (off season) so that the teams could prepare a FIRST "resume" in which they published their other activities (public appearance--practicing Gracious Professionalism and also Celebrating Science & Technology) Most teams do parades, civic clubs etc etc. This also celebrates and demonstrates the spirit of FIRST.

These applications don't have to be difficult and detailed either. The "yearbook page" that we send in could be modified as such.

Just my ideas to keep the focus off of the "only winners attend" . I watched the Science Channel documentary--it broke my heart when the Bronx team Pius Princesses didn't win. They should have had the opportunity to attend.

Many rookie teams that looked REAL GOOD last year didn't get a shot to attend the Championship (even after winning a reg. rookie award) and they left with a bad taste. That is not good. I hope they return, but don't know.

my 4 cents worth. (not even a nickel)

Coaches Poll
 

I feel that the criteria should encompass the following...

1. Eliminate the odd/even teams deal.

2. This is a competition, the national championship should have the best of the best. (This includes all categories, Robotic and Chairmans)

3. Fair number of teams of all experience levels.

4. Hall of fame teams should get auto entry.

5. Innagural teams should get auto entry.

6. The system should allow for even teams who didn't win an award to qualify due to ability. (i.e. team 95 in 2002 who had the best offensive robot in the country yet didn't qualify for nationals)


With that said, I shall go off on my tangent for what I feel would be a good system.

1. All regional champions and award winners qualify for nationals.

2. All FIRST Hall of Fame teams gain automatic entry.

3. Innaugural teams gain automatic entry. (I know many people don't like this, but for teams who have been around for 13 years, and have paid their dues, its the least that FIRST can do.)

4. There should be a quota for teams involved. (i.e. x number of rookies, y number of 2-4 year teams, z number of 5-7 year teams, etc....)

5. Teams should be chosen by "coaches poll"


To elaborate on what I feel would be the big portion of this, the coaches poll, here is tangent number 2....

The coaches poll encompasses the idea that who knows more about what teams deserve to go to nationals than the teams competing against them. This will allow for great teams who dont win awards to get into the nationals. This would be done by giving each team a ballot at every regional. At the conclusion of each regional, each team should hand in the ballot with a certain number of teams that they feel should attend nationals. At the end, top vote getters from every experience class would gain invitation to the national championship. This would allow for teams to go by various things they see that encompass the true meaning of FIRST. For instance a team could vote for team xxx if they like the robot, or team yyy because of their constant showing of gracious professionalism towards others every year out.

Fact of the matter is that there is no way that everyone is gonna be happy, and whether we like it or not, FIRST is getting too big to allow all teams to go to the championship event. That is why it is important for there to be more focus on the regional events, to make sure that especially rookie teams get the feel and excitement of the nationals, in each regional event. Furthermore I think that it is about time for FIRST to separate the dates of the nationals and regionals so that proper planning could be achieved by teams. Maybe for 05'

Have a great winter all,
Andy Grady

Some interesting thoughts
 

What about doing something similar to the NCAA basketball tournament?

Four people at FIRST could receive input from judges / FIRST volunteers / referrees, etc. (all officials) throughout the season. Then, there could be a selection show - webcast of course - in which the four championship divisions are selected. Selection criteria would be performance based (number 1 seeds, champions, finalists, etc.) and non-performance based (best design, creativity, etc.). Award winners would obviously warrant more consideration, as they did something to warrant extra recognition during the season. Selection would continue until the field is complete, not necessarily relying on any past performance, and should take into account awards and what-not mentioned above, average performance (similar to win-loss record in NCAA), availability of team to attend nationals (not exactly like a team being eligible for post-season play, but somewhat similar), extraneous conditions (similar to injuries, etc.), etc.

I'm kind of opposed to any kind of team poll. Unfortunately, I see this too easily getting out of hand and becoming more of a popularity contest. Lesser known teams will likely be overlooked, and larger teams will dominate this aspect. Even teams that have a profound impact on another team may not be considered if word doesn't travel fast enough.

I'm very much opposed to basing qualifications on an essay and taping it to a wall for judges to review. It's called the FIRST Robotics Competition for a reason. Don't get me wrong, I believe the Chairman's Award is very important, and teams that win this should be recognized (and attend nationals), but when the entire championship event attendance is based on essays and does not at all consider performance, it should be renamed the Essay Event, and not the Championship.

diversity of Opinions
 

All of this wonderful diversity of opinions and unique perspectives only solidifies my point (post#39) and some of the view points of Mike Martus (post #44).

We will do a diservice to the teams and the competition, if we change everything without careful consideration.

I just don't see how you can assess the entire situation carefully in an 8 day time frame.


Al Ostrow
Coach
Team 341

Re: diversity of Opinions
 

Well, my feeling is that they didn't just begin the process of reevaluation, but are trying to decide upon the best solution they've developed.

That's why we're being asked to describe what characteristics are important to us rather than to recommend an entirely new system. It could be that they're just trying to decide among new criteria they've already created rather than draft it from scratch in a week's time.

Question - What makes the best the best? Is it by winning or competing. How many teams were not in the top 8 but were "better" robots? Teams that have large bucks can add much to a robot. Are they better than the team that has to eke out a robot on a shoe string budget? Which of these teams is best?
One of the things I find most impressive about FIRST is the spirit of gracious professionalism. Everybody helping everybody else. Weak teams become stronger, stronger teams become wiser and everyone is encouraged. Boy it would be great to win Championship but you ask the other teams that were there if they were disappointed or discouraged when they left I think that they would all say it was rewarding and exciting. It was a time of celebration to all that were there.
Should some teams get a free pass forever? I don't think so. Rewarding them for a 4 year period with a free pass is ample. We shouldn't be living off of others accomplishments. Teams that were here from the start are thanked continuously by others for there experience. Free pass though? Think of the new team with bright eager eyes being told I'm sorry you can't attend cause we are giving your spot to a team that just happened to be started sooner than they are.
Lets keep our eyes on the real reason for FIRST. To ENCOURAGE students into the Sciences and Technology fields. We need to try and be fair to all. Will it happen? Not likely because everything isn't fair. Can we strive to be fair? That is my hope. Once FIRST moves into competition is number 1 then we become just another sport and we start to shun the weaker teams. I see a bright future for FIRST if it keeps its eyes on what made it what it is today.
Sorry for the ranting!!!

Re: Re: diversity of Opinions
 

Well, we can only hope that you are right.

Yes I would love to have selections being decided just like the NCAA's. That way we can definitely have teams leave FIRST because they feel screwed. But hey at least we can have one day which we can sit around a computer and see if we have been selected, and on this day we shall call it not selection sunday but the end of FIRST.

There are many things that need to be considered when deciding upon a method of Championship team selection.

FIRST history - should being an original team play a part in the decision or not?
Team performance – does robot/team quality matter?
Last performance – should a team get in because they were good last year?
Past performance – should a team get in because they have been a good team for a number of years?
Entrance equity – should everybody get an opportunity?
Team funding – how can we make this possible for all teams?
Team planning – when do teams begin fundraising & planning for an event?

As a team coach/teacher I have to plan in advance for all of our team’s trips and expenses. We do not yet have a sponsor for this year but I have already had to submit forms to our school for the trips to Regionals & The Championship for this year. If we want to go to the Championship we have to start planning now. We can’t just win an event & get to go. Last year we won a Regional plus a few awards but couldn’t go to the Championship because we didn’t plan for it. As the rules stand we qualify for this year’s event. That is a nice feeling.
I hope this helps you Dave. Good Luck.

What is the Purpose?
 

Wow - so much input.

I am stuck.
I cannot decide on the meta-criteria because I do not really know what FIRST intends for the Championship to be.

I feel that FIRST must first answer this question before they ask our opinion:

What is the purpose of the Championship?

Maybe, you are asking us to define the purpose of the Championship. I am stuck.

- Is it a celebraion for FIRST?
- Is it a competition to highlight the best of FIRST?
- Is it meant to publicize FIRST to allow it to grow?
- Some other purpose?
- All of the above?

The fact that the name was changed from "Nationals" to "Championship" made me think that they somehow had a different purpose for this final event.

I guess by defining the criteria, we are defining the purpose of the event. But I feel it would be better if FIRST just told us the purpose and then we can give opionions on the criteria.

I'll stop now.

Raul

Rookie All-Stars
 

The Championship is the heart of the FIRST experience and rookies team need to be a part of it. This will help rookie teams get into the spirit of FIRST. They will be more likely to return next year instead of giving into sophomore year difficulties.

Allowing rookies into the Championships would also promote the competitive nature of FIRST. Rookies will learn by seeing the best bots in action. Since they have seen how great the Championship is, they will strive to build better bots so they can go back.

Obviously all rookie teams can not be eligible since there could easily be more rookie teams than open spots at the championship. So I think all Rookie All-Stars and Highest rookie Seeds should be automatically eligible. Although the highest seed might overlap with all-star, no team should be given a rookie all-star award if they are already eligible. The purpose of this award is to give recognition to deserving rookie teams who may go unnoticed. If you are a rookie team that is already eligible, you don't need the recognition from this award. I know this favors later regionals but many judges would do it anyway.

That being said, the rookie all-star is the only award a team should not get because of eligibility. The other awards should stick to their purpose regardless of eligibility concerns. Maybe judges should be able to give eligibility to one of the runners up if the winner already has it for any awards that guarantee eligibility.

Odd/Even - Power Division
 

I think qualification should be strictly odd/even.

Everyone can go.....and everyone can plan.

The teams that are used to going every year can get over it......FIRST is too big now.

Where I play volleyball we have a POWER league and a REC league. Maybe there could be a power or all-star division at nationals. This year all the EVEN teams that are seeded in the top 10 (or some number) at a regional will be in the power division at Nationals.

I think this would provide the highly competitive aspect some people want while keeping Nationals just that ----- NATIONALS, not CHAMPIONSHIP EVENT.

Lisa T :D

(I did'nt read thru all the other posts , just wanted to add my 3 cents)

Odd/ Even could be lost without any screams from me.

Making it a competition to get to nationals would be applauded by me.

I like the idea that winners at regionals move on to Nats.

I like the point system from the one previous year.

i love the life time pass for Chairmans award winners.

To add to the confusion how about having the alliance that had the highest single match in all the regionals get a wild card spot, regardless of how they finished the regional
If there is room how about one alliance from every regional. (I doubt this would be practical)

Thanks for asking

I too have not followed this thread and have only read a few of the posts but I do not like the idea of a life time pass for Chairman's Award winners because that would sort of promote teams doing well one year to win it and forget about the whole thing for the subsequent years. I know we all practice GP so technically this should not be an issue but I see it as a possible one if that route is followed.

I only browsed through this thread, so if something has already been mentioned, I apoligise. Anyhow:

I hated the even/odd thing when it first happened. But now I realize that it is a necessity. With the huge influx of teams the past couple years, you need to make things a little less, what's the word I'm looking for, hellatious. Let all even teams register for this year. A lot of them will end up backing out anyway for lack of funds, etc. Then work from there. I'm still trying to figure out when FIRST became about winning competitions. Last I checked, it was meant to inspire and recognize kids in science and technology. I personally don't think last year's performance should qualify you for this year (well, alright, I suppose a national champ should be able to defend their title). Original teams and chairman's award winners shouldn't get a free pass every year either. Teams in this situation really don't have to do anything to get to nationals (I know, Gracious Professionalism, but still, it could happen, and I wouldn't be too suprised if it hasn't happened already). I also don't think weight for qualification should be based on winning a regional. This rules out a lot of the smaller and rookie teams who don't have the ability to build a flashy robot that can do everything. But if you let them focus on the engineering, no matter how flashy it is or isn't, you can give them the awards to match. Those juges awards are also golden. There was one last year for a team who never gave up despite their robot breaking a number of times. There are the spirit awards too. Those are the teams that deserve to go. Plus, with the even/odd thing, every other year doesn't seem too bad anyway. Thanks for reading.

-Eddie

Re: Odd/Even - Power Division
 

Actually, it is the Championship Event, not Nationals anymore, 2001 was the last year it was called Nationals, if I'm correct. Making it strictly odd/even wouldn't even work since this year that would be 500 something teams that qualify. So not to negate your post but, that idea just simply would not work. Back to the new qualification for the Championship, any idea when they will be posted up on the FIRST site?

ok people cmon! honestly not every one can go to the championship! if we could we would live in a perfect world! water fountains would spout out mountain dew, we could all win awards and calculus would be easy!!!!!!! im sorry the system we have is perfectly fine except mabye making the championship more of a championship. maybe the divisions could be more.......evenly matched. i agree with the idea of having award winners only but the problem there is hidden talent. It is touigh on how we can say you can go and you cant........but it cant happen. but there sould be a way to seperate regional winners from people who ranked last in their regional.........maybe. or how bout a rookie division......(Hawkings division)....... a supreme rookie winner...lol. im on a rookie team but i was a d/o on 231 and we had problems at nationals not because we had a bad bot but because our alliences were not always stong........( i still love all you guys!!!!!!!!)...... but we do need to figure out a better way of seperating teams at nationals!
thanks and in christ,
jon "el capitan"

<side track>
What about seperating the three or four regional winners??

I have seen many alliances formed down at Nationals based exclusively on the fact of a previous win together at a Regional!! This happens when two or three (or more) regional winners are all in the same division when the list is released for Nationals.

It makes sense though, doesn't it? You tend to think that because you won a regional together then maybe, just maybe you could work together as smoothly as you did at regionals and go all the way together!!
</side track>

78 Regional Winners
26 Chairman's
26 Animation
26 Spirit (I feel the loud teams should be there to cheer everyone on)
26 Delphi Award
26 Engineering Inspiration Award
26 Motorola Quality Award
26 Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award
26 Leadership in Control Award
26 Highest Rookie Seed
-------------------------------
312 teams
i agree with this idea!!!!!

Dave,
I understand the need and agree with the concept of modifying the Nat'l qualifying criteria. My issue is with the timing of the proposed change. In my opinion it's to late to make a change for 2004. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for improvements, well planned & thought out improvements. It seems that the FIRST Executive board is scrambling to make a change at the same time teams are registering/planning for next season. Now is not the time to change the Nat'l championship qualifying criteria. Teams have already begun to implement their 2004 season plans....based off the current criteria. Changing the crriteria now, just before the registration date for Nat'l is not a well thought out plan. Teams develop their regional competition plans based from their budgets and if they qualify or not qualify for Nat'ls. Changing the criteria after teams have already registered for one & two regionals may possibly force teams alter their plans which results in spending more money then planned. In this current economic environment many many teams are financially already in trouble.
Again, I agree with the need, but more time is needed to develop this new criteria. If not, then it will be setup for failure.

My two cents.

+ 2 original teams
 

+ the TWO original teams still involved - #45 and #191
= 314 teams
Even better!

Actually there are 6 original teams that have been there every year.

Re: + 2 original teams
 

Errrr Try again

The correct answer is 6.

19, 45, 126, 190, 191 and 250. Well thats according to my 2001 10 Year FIRST anniversary collectors pin ;)

Oops
 

Sorry. I stand corrected.
Still, point is - They should be there!

Re: Oops
 

agreed :)


D.J. Fluck- biased member of an original FIRST team ;)

I havent read this whole thread, but one important consideration.

Some teams dont have the money to goto the championship every year, or every other year.

Our team hasnt been to the championship since 1999 - primarilly due to the expense involved.

It would be good if a team would be allowed to go if they have not been there in the last 2 or 3 years - we might be able to pull the funds together this year, it would be a shame if this is the first time we could afford to go in 5 years, but we did not meet the registration qualifications.

Also, in that light, it would be good if the championship moved around the county every few years - its a huge difference in expense between taking a charter bus 300 miles, and flying your whole team 1000 miles or more. (but thats a nother thread).

I would like to see the rookie teams all go. I think this would help bring them back the next year.

There are some pretty apparent downfalls to this as well.

Well, this has always been something I've thought about for a while...
First off, let me start by saying I've been in FIRST for almost 3 years. I havent' been to Nat's yet. Now, this doesn't entirely disappoint me, but I know that we would really like to go, If we could.
Every form of selection is prone to have it's own problems. The best way to determine a good method is by which can please the most people, and give a fair chance to all.
The fair chance is something that needs to stick.
If something based on your robot, or your points was implemented, you would find the number of rookies at nats decreasing, and piles of trophies growing in vet's closets. I'm not saying ALL rookies, but, the first year in itself is learning the flow, and seldom do rookies get "in the flow" well enough.
Anyway, I think I agree with the fact that more awards need to be weighted toward Nats.
We received the Rookie All Star for VCU(or one of them). This didn't qualify for nats. If you think about the rookie all star awards, they're picking a team who is different from the rest, and who shows great teamwork, community involvement, etc. If you're one of the 2 outstanding rookies of 60 -some teams at your regional, think of how many "outstanding" rookies would get to compete at Nats?
Now, I also like the idea of Being a Semi-Finalist getting you in. I think that just getting into elimination matches is a job in itself.
Random systems would work, but I'm not too keen toward the idea.
Just think of watching Jeff Seaton (sorry Jeff, but I'm gonna pick on ya :) ) draw number from a hat for an hour or so, and certain teams going "Awww" because they weren't picked.
Another thing that needs to be considered is cost.
There are some teams (like mine) who need to pick between 2 regionals or shooting for 1 and nats. This is a tough and time-constrained decision. Going to 2 regionals increases your chance of getting into Nats, but you might not have the money to go.
And vice versa.
I'm not saying team's that can't pay their way shouldn't be admitted, but I think that the system need some form of incentive to shoot for nats. Almost like, FIRST has some funds set aside to pay for teams to go to nats. Maybe they could earn them through higher ranked awards? I know with the economy and so forth this would be difficult to implement as well.

I think Championship Selection should Reflect Elimination Match selection, Where teams who might not have been the best go get in off the bat can have a second chance.
Now, I'm not saying teams should literally pick other teams to go...but a system of "second chance" should be implemented.
I also think team's should be asked to accept/decline entry to nats, and have runner-ups selected, so those who can't/don't want to go (I can't think of a single team who wouldn't WANT to go) can decline, or team's who have already gotten in through one way or another can open the slot for another team.

I think that the number of teams allowed to attend should be increased, to fit the growth of teams across the US.
This also opens more room for earning your way in.

Well, that's just a few of my ideas.

Great ideas - but, maybe more than Dave really wanted.
Problem: Growth rate too steep for any reasonably "fair" solution, so as stated by Dean last year "nothing in life is fair".

Stating that - but, trying to be as fair as I think FIRST should be.

1) No free rides
2) Method: Lottery,
# of balls in selection process could be influenced by performance
# of balls could be influenced by last time a team went
# of balls could be influenced by history/inspiration
# of balls could be influenced by years in program status (rookies from the previous year - not the same year, as they have enough to do just to get ready for a regional comp)
obviously the # of balls system needs to be worked out still

3) Timing of lottery: Lottery for the next or following year is done in the Fall BEFORE the registration process begins and allows teams enough fund raising time as they would already know if they have been selected to go.

I know that this cuts out the "best performers for that years challenge", so what - maybe that is the part that is clouding up the "Inspirational" part of the "Finals".
I would eliminate the name "Championship - leads people to believe that the only thing that matters is winning" and I can't believe I am saying this as I am a very competitive person (too much so at times), and "Nationals - not inclusive enough". I'd run the event like a super regional and NOT have the winners compete for a single "championship title" - does that really add value? Wouldn't teams still be inspired without it? End with divisional winners and the ever lasting question - I wonder who would have come out on top if ...

That's it - Good Luck Dave and the team