Chief Delphi - Championship 2010 - Atlanta

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Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaneYoung (Post 955228)

P.S. I respect the purpose of this thread. Thanks, Dave. I hope you are getting some of what you were asking for.

Yes Jane, the comments I have seen so far are exactly what I was looking for. This thread was started primarily for the planners of Championship's for the next few years and to let the folks vent. Sorry that most of them so far appear to be negative but those comments can be made into a positive for St. Louis and beyond.
Dave

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

I have thought about the issue of "buying your way into the championship"
I think that the attitude of many individuals about this is a little skewed.

First of all. EVERYONE buys there way into the championship. I know of quite a few teams that qualified at Regionals and didn't have the money to go... This is certainly true the further you get from Georgia...(or Missouri next year...)
The registration fee is just the initial roadblock... after that $5000, you have to pay for lodging... (not cheap) and you have to get there... (for a team from Seattle... that would an additional $400 minimum per student in airfare...)

Nothing in life is fair.... there is really no fair way to pick the best 360 teams... the way we do it now brings in 3 teams from each regional as "winners" but please don't tell me that they are the BEST three teams at the regional.... they are the representatives for that regionals... as simple as that... and they were the winners... But to think that they represent the best three teams is not necessarily true. They were the best alliances.... perhaps they should be competing as alliances at the CMP too?
How do we compare a winning alliance from a 30 team regional to one from a 60 team regional?
How do we compare teams winning a "weak" regional from those winning a "strong" regional (Whatever that means anyway...)

We qualify the Rookie All-Star, the Engineering Inspiration, and the Chairman's Award winner also... completely with no consideration given to how well they played on the field...

For everyone to think that CMP is about bringing the best 360 teams together is not reality.
We bring together the best of FIRST.... the qualifiers... the teams from the previous year... HOF teams...etc...

Why should we just have the best teams? Part of the learning we accomplish is figuring out how to deal with adversity.... on the field and off.... we work together.... we adapt... we overcome...
That is the essence of CMP..

I don't think anyone would argue that what we saw on Einstein wasn't a great example of FIRST engineering and team abilities.... I was proud of all the teams that managed to get there... Were they the best teams? That's an argument I won't participate in.... They definitely were the WINNERS and deserved to win... We all play within the rules to build a robot. We have rules that determine how we make alliances and how we play... we play within them too...

This is just like life.... we all strive to play with what we are given.... we do our best and someone comes out on top.... Congrats to the Winners!!!

I do think that this year was a difficult one for the building of robots... in my 7 years at CMP I have never seen quite this many teams struggle so much with having a competitive robot at CMP....
Is that bad? I don't think so... we all learned a great deal.... we competed like crazy... and we were all inspired to do even more....

Our team has paid our way into the championships for 3 years straight.... We do it because we HAVE to get our arrangements done early... just so we can have a target for our fundraising.
In those same three years we have managed to have 2 regional wins, an engineering inspiration award, and a chairman's award.... so we have ALSO qualified to attend every year... (Our first year we won a regional and were Rookie All-Star and also attended CMP in that year (2007).

Next year we will again try to sign up for CMP.... We hope to also qualify but we will still try to attend.
It is our goal every year... we learn so much from CMP that we can't possibly learn at our local regionals.

It would be a real shame to limit CMP to only teams that "WIN" regionals....

Many really GOOD robots and teams don't win qualifying awards every year.... it would certainly be a shame to not see a team because in that particular year they didn't win one of these awards.
We all know that winning a regional has quite a bit of luck in it....it is not a perfect system by any means.

But in the end.... that is not what FIRST is about.... FIRST is about inspiring students to pursue careers in science, engineering and technology....
What is MORE inspiring than coming to CMP and competing....

In the end there are +/- 360 winners at CMP... and 1800+ winners in all of FIRST....

Now on to 2011!! We will be better.... and I am sure you will too!!

See you all on the field in 2011!!

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

Quote:

Originally Posted by fuzzy1718 (Post 954859)

A few people on my team were suggesting during the finals, moving einstein to the middle of the arena and lowering the curtains. That way people can sit on either side of the arena and see/hear better.

I would like to do this to. And if they curtained all around the einstein field(like at kick-off) and drop it then the alliances make there way to the field it makes it look more of a ceremonie in itself. It would make that experience of just getting there that much more cooler. Many people say this is the super-bowl of brains, why not make something to show it is.

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob (Post 955417)

It seems that the four divisions field crews have a "race" each year to see who can finish their qual matches the earliest, with the prize bieng invited to be the field crew on einstein. I may be way of base here but from my observations it appears that this is the case. While this may be a good way to keep the volunteers entertained, I strongly feel that this creates a situation where rules and policies can be bent and the experience of teams can suffer. Teams work really hard to get to the Championship event. This "race" against the other divisions can detract from the teams experience and lead teams to feel as if the field crew believes the teams experience comes second to accelerating the schedule to finish early.

Rob

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy Grady (Post 955456)

Let me shed a little light on this because I think there is some misinformation here. While it is correct that field crews on each field are competing to get to Einstein, it is not because they are trying to finish early. It actually has more to do with staying exactly on schedule. The objective is to get each field as close to the scheduled turnaround time as possible. As a matter of fact, we even had to slow down on Galileo in order to get back on track. Fact is, the fields need to stay on schedule because of a multitude of reasons. These reasons (and the hustle to get done) would remain reguardless of the field crew incentive. Volunteers work extremely hard at Championships. Many of them spend alot of their own money to be there for you. I feel that it important to throw them a bone every once in a while. Every volunteer wants to be a part of Einstein, but very few can. It is great motivation to keep going, because it is such a difficult weekend to get through.

Great job this weekend Rob! Hope this explanation helps.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mtaman02 (Post 955849)

Field Races: I feel thats untrue. Division Volunteers are encouraged to work at a set pace according to FIRST's expectations on how quickly a field can be reset but not rush or bend the rules / policies to get the job done quicker. Think of it as 4 Regionals going on at once. Each field has their own FTA, Supv and Queuing Personnel etc... So each field operates independently of one another like a Regional Event and of course will naturally operate differently then one another. At the end of the last match or just before pairings The Supv's of their Fields gathers their respective crews and selects "X" amount of volunteers for the Einstein Crew (at least thats how they did it in '05 and '07). Those chosen were the ones who can reliably repair minor defects in the field w/o causing a distraction and those who can effectively and safely help move teams on and off the field. Field reset only takes 2 minutes at max. The rest of the time is used for Robot Linkup and last minute debugging if required. So this years reset expectations are a little faster in of itself and not the doing of the volunteers & how quickly they worked - It's just how the game was desgined. Volunteer as a Field Repair / Reset Crew member and you'll see what I mean. If I'm not mistaken the turnaround time between matches should've been 6 minutes + match run time. Thats pretty comfy. In the past it used to be a little more reset time due to the complexities of the game (more objects to be scored + different methods for scoring which = more items that have the ability to break). There's only 12 balls on the field this year - we just clear them out of your way so you don't trip and you place them before you leave your robot. So this years reset expectations were simple and quick from the get go. Next year the fields might not run as fast due to change in game and deisgn of key game features. So you have to take all of that in account. Thats probably (and I use that word loosely b/c no one person can really find out why FIRST does what they do) why FIRST ran this reocrd amount of matches this year - the game was simple enough to reset and they figured they could add 1/2 a day to the Qual. Schedule b/c of this years game features and # of teams competing - next year you might be back to Fri and Sat only competing and have a slower match cycle time. I've done Field Repair / Reset / Setup / Break Down / Queuing on all levels and FTAA - All jobs which revolve around a set schedule that FIRST outlines. At times you feel rushed but that could be because your behind 45 minutes and looking for innovative ways to regain some of that time lost for whatever reason. Sometimes it's unrecoverable but when ever I was told to help in the speeding up process we were never told to bend or break pre-set policies. We were always told to do the best we can to be on point when the buzzer sounds. As a team member you get to have fun playing at the event and experience everything - As a volunteer part of your particular job crew you get to experience how to work as one so that the team members can have a good time in experiencing everything. Nothing more nothing less

There was definitely misinformation here. I was queuing on Newton. We were told Thursday that if we were the fastest crew that we would get to go to Einstein. (I guess that could have meant either first to finish or best turnaround time, which are kinda the same, right?)

Needless to say, we all really wanted to go, so we tried really hard to keep matches moving fast and have a good turnaround time.

I know for a fact that the Newton field finished about 2 matches before all the other fields on Thursday, about 1 match ahead Friday morning, about 1-2 ahead Friday Night, and about the same Saturday morning. And I know that we averaged only maybe 3 minutes ahead of schedule.

We discovered Saturday morning that we had not been selected to go to Einstein. None of us could figure out why, because we had always finished early, we had an awesome turnaround time, and the only reason I believe we were ahead of the other fields was mostly because they were having some field issues.

Our crew was extremely frustrated and bitter about this. Not to say whoever got selected didn't deserve it, but why the heck were we pushing so fast if that didn't matter anyway?

Our crew did honestly believe it was a race, plus we wanted to have the best turnaround time. However, we never did anything to make it unsafe for the teams. Believe me, I know how important safety is, and if I saw that we were making teams unsafe, I would have said something to our Lead Queuer or someone else.

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

Much has been posted about the seating situation and I wanted to give you my perspective. 2010 was my son's team's first appearance at Championships. We had a wonderful time, and were very inspired by all the wonderful people we met. However, I was disappointed and frustrated with the teams that saved large blocks of seats. On our field, there were many large teams that saved 4-5 ROWS of seats, (18 seats per row) while they only had about 20 kids actually in the seats. My son's team is rather small and we did not need many seats, but it was still nearly impossible to get seats. I did ask for a few seats from some of these large teams, once I was successful but the rest of the time I was told 'No, we need ALL our seats." We actually asked for ONE seat from a team during finals on our field, and were told no even when many of their seats were open and remained open until the end of finals. ONE POSSIBLE SUGGESTION would be to have the prime seats in each section designated as "must be occupied or else you lose them" seats. Sections further away can be used for the large teams to "camp out," and if that large team has a match they can head to the "must be occupied section" and try their luck there.

Also, I don't think most of the students realize that when they stand up, they are blocking the view for a HUGE area. We were sitting off to the side of our field, and were up pretty high. A large team was down front and many of the kids in the front row were standing. This completely blocked our view, even though we were so far away. I put up with if for a while, but as our match was approaching I headed down there and pointed to my group (wary in back) and let them know they were blocking our view. This was met with some temporary success. Please don't think that I'm not interested just because I'm not scouting or because my son's team is not on the floor. I AM interested and want to see the match!

At band competitions they restrict access to the stands while a band is performing...and this would be great to do at FIRST events. I always waited until the match was over before heading down into the stands or before leaving my seat. Since the matches are so short, it is hardly an inconvenience.

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

I love Championships! There is something so amazing about seeing all the teams from all over the world for each program all in the same place!

Only one comment that I haven't seen expressed:

Thursday Matches in Atlanta: As much as we all liked having extra qualification matches, I did not like what it did to the "intensity" of Thursday.

I did not like that it was announced too late after many teams had made travel plans and the FIRST Conference planners had already sent out their schedules.

Too short of time to practice and make final repairs on the robots, too short of time for inspections, team members trying to get pits organized while competing, pit scouting, match scouting, giving conference presentations and trying to attend the conferences. Our team also organizes the All Rookie Meet and Greet and we had invitations to deliver on Thursday. And students that just wanted a chance to look around! Even with a detailed team schedule, our team members all ended up trying to do several things at once which was very stressful!

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

In contrast, I have to say I loved the Thursday matches beginning after lunch. At that point in the season we didn't have to change much, but if allotted the time our mechanical team would have started "improving" things, instead of remaining focused as a pit crew.
Thursday was previously a long day (unless your robot was terribly broken or had to be built from scratch). So this is probably a good thing if you're ready, and a bad thing if you don't have it all together - Ying & Yang.

From a team perspective I liked the Wednesday inspection, because it took the pressure off and we couldn't delay because we had "something to add." Although we got lucky and happened to have a mentor driving down with another team who could uncrate and take the robot for size & weight inspection. I appreciated the stream-lined inspection process. Still, I liked the students working with the inspector in our pit on Thursday morning.

Pre-planning would be appreciated, so teams can organize their activities ahead of time. I'm sure the last minute notice did throw some teams for a loop, as they had to scramble to reassemble parts they'd removed from their robots after Regional competitions. We won't be able to plan travel to arrive early on Wednesday, because we want to keep the students in school as long as possible and won't leave until after school.

The down-side of the way matches began on Thursday were that they were somewhat anti-climactic with no defining

Let the Games Begin

Practice matches just sort of rolled right into matches that counted.

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

I'm not sure if I'm re-posting anything here, but the other fields were great in the way the teams moved on and off the field.... except for Galileo. The stage was pushed RIGHT up against the Galileo field, only leaving ONE side for 6+ teams to move to and from the field. It was extremely congested and slightly annoying having to wait to get your bot on the field, or have to rush out of the way on the side of the field, unable to see your match's final score, because there was no room.

And I also miss the matches played inside the pits. Not only is it nice for the pit crew to watch the matches we're in, but watch the matches of their favorite teams.

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

Quote:

Originally Posted by gallo26 (Post 956534)

A little late now but 1086 had the webcast running in their pit. FIRST should definitely supply this, though.

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

Galileo field: We had an unusual situation to have the stage right up against the field, and eliminating use of the right side for queuing and traffic. We were very disappointed to see this, and had a lot to do with why we were pushing the teams so fast to keep traffic moving. Having just one enter and exit for a field changes the dynamics of everything, how fast teams change over, how strict 'media behind the line' policy is, how much you 'push' teams to keep things moving. All in all, we tried to keep ourselves going fast enough while still being gracious, and I'm sorry at point if we were ungracious. It is frustrating that when your on the third morning and teams still don't understand we want their robot to be on at the last 20 seconds of the previous match. Having a faster turn around time(without getting ahead of schedule) allows more time for teams to be on the field to setup and point their robots, something that surprisingly takes a while for most teams. It also allows more time for FTAs to work on any problems with the FMS and robots if there are any, thus helping to prevent us from going behind schedule.

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris is me (Post 956535)

A little late now but 1086 had the webcast running in their pit. FIRST should definitely supply this, though.

I saw that. That was a very nice addition to their pit. Unfortunate that out pit was on the other side near Curie (the unlucky few to be split) but there were matches i would have liked to watch from other divisions. 2007 I used to watch the screens constantly. This year it was disappointing not being able to.

Re: Championship 2010 - Atlanta - Your Thoughts Please?

It was my first Atlanta Championship that I went too and it went fairly well, however, the traffic getting back to our hotel used to be 10 mins but ended up taking a hour or so to get back.
I liked the way it was organized, it was way much better than the Regional in North Carolina. I did not like the way the prices were for the drinks especially if you cant get refills or anything like that. The food was okay but I expected that from the football experiances.
The seats were terrible, my team had to get in at a specific time everyday just to get good seats and spread out all of our stuff but we ended up getting mixed in with other teams. We always had to keep someone in the pits at all time as well, I not alot of judges were walking around in the pits and I wish we had a schedule so that we can keep things moving and watch the matches. (I missed a couple of matches trying to tidy up our pit and near the end when our team was in the semi finals a couple of my team members and myself had to take it apart, so we missed watching a couple of matches!!)