Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

It seems like the Michigan system is counter-productive to making FIRST a mainstream "sport" (remember Deans' homework last year?). If you are the average guy walking down a street, would you rather go to a hugely awesome event in a big stadium, or to a low key affair in a highschool gym.

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

Most high school sports have regional or district level events before moving on to a State Championship.

I would suggest it is far easier to pull in the "average guy" to an event in a high school gym in their town than it is to pull them in to a "hugely awesome event" 2+ hours away.

I can't really address whether the "low key" vs "hugely awesome" comparison is fair as I haven't been to a Michigan District, however I will point out that feedback from many who have is available on this forum and suggests that the differences are not as large as you seem to think.

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

To alleviate the frustrations of fewer matches and low ROI per dollar/match, we simply need more offseason events (ok, and to fix the issue with $300k regionals..). A $200-$300 registration is relatively easy to come by. I'm pretty sure FIRST will get the message when teams start attending more offseason events than official events. It's why my team just went to get approved for our own offseason event.

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

To do all this, unfortunately, you need a big sponsor or government money to support these efforts. Which will be a problem in many areas, especially for states that are cutting their education budgets.

Plus volunteers. Unless the event is very near to your team, and you have a large enough team, you won't get that many. Especially in the middle of competition season when teams are still meeting several times a week.


And who pays for the travel to all these separate events? Do they involve overnight trips? Does your school provide the transportation or do the students pay (which is very common, especially for non-school teams).


Michigan is very fortunate to have the infrastructure, the corporate and government support, and the density of teams, to support this. Other areas are looking into this, with encouragement from FIRST, but there are many obstacles to overcome.

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

Thats actually a good point, vikesrock. I just realized that we are kinda hijacking the thread for a district discussion, so I'll try to bring it back on topic!

There is always this kind of frustration. Every year, there is some sort of problem people have with something. However, this year it seems a bit more than last.

Much of the frustration stems from two areas:

Unbeatable teams: Teams like 2056, 217, 1114 are all something that we should strive for, but with them becoming a sort of "landed elite", it ends up with the same team winning the same regional every single year. It isn't fun for the veteran teams who come back every year, do OK (quarters, maybe semis every year), but they never win. Thats where all this silly "student built vs mentor designed" business comes in. It is demoralizing to see undefeated teams.

The other area of problems are the somewhat wishywashy nature of the GDC. They have a minibot race, but they restrict it to FTC parts. Why? So we can support other FIRST programs. A noble goal, but the fact is, we arent in FTC. Also, late game rule changes always make me mad: This year with the "no blockading game flow" rule. They should have thought of that before teams built wall bots. We can't expect them to make a perfect game, but completely denying a team of it's strategy really isn't in good fun. It has also seemed like Red Card has lost it's value: You can get one for just about everything, such as a zone intrusion. They used to be just for actually egregious behavior; not any more. I could nit-pick more, but what good would that do?

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

There may be additional pressure put on high school students to step up and volunteer when they may still be needed on their team. The high school students have enough pressures without the added pressure of volunteering throughout the season. If they want to, cool. If they are feeling pressured via conscience or other reasons, that may be something to look at. Hopefully, districting allows for the adults to the volunteer and they step forward in ways that don't place a lot of pressure on the high school students in order to get the events off the ground.

One thing that we are seeing is the strength of young alumni in the FIRST programs gaining momentum. With the district events, the high school students that are involved at the level that Jim is talking about will become super powers before they graduate college. Hopefully, within this gain of power and strength in our students and alumni, we'll see some upcoming Dr. Woodie Flowers beginning to bloom. Then all the effort will be worth it.

Jane

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

To answer the original question, yes, I think there is this much frustration every year. If there is more, I suggest that's simply because there are more people in FIRST. I'm not saying there haven't been frustrating events or actions or rulings this year, but they don't dwarf previous years.

We have the same problem in Oklahoma, and I've felt exactly the same way. Why, after pouring countless hours, blood, sweat, and tears into a robot do we only get to use it for 25 minutes of match time? But as someone who grew up doing FIRST in New England, I think off-season events are a solution as viable as the district model (not that the two are mutually exclusive). My point is that small groups of volunteers or individual teams can run an off-season event, and we don't have to wait for someone to let us play more matches: the power is in our hands.

Aren't most high school sports played in high school gyms, or on the fields outside the schools? FIRST is a high-school sport, so why wouldn't high schools host the games?

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

You don't make a sport 'mainstream' by putting up huge barriers to entry. Sports in the US grow because they're inexpensive, (bat and a ball for baseball, etc) and easy to play nearly anywhere.

FIRST's goal, and it has been thus for a very long time, is to get a team in EVERY high school and be as ubiquitous as any other sport. To do that, you need to make it as affordable and accessible as you can.

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

A couple things:

Michigan district events are in NO way less stressful or lower key. We play 33-40% more matches than you do in a normal district. We play 12 matches, at a minimum.

In addition the days are much much longer. Pits open at 7 or 8am on Friday. Matches on Friday at West Michigan ran until 8 o'clock PM. Then you go to your hotel or home, eat dinner, have a team meeting, and start scouting. We weren't able to hit the sack until 1 AM, and we did not socialize much, or swim, or do any of the other things that the older more laid-back regional system allowed.

Match turn around time is FAR faster - on three separate occasions at Waterford we were being qued in for our next match as we came off the field. It's almost, but not quite, like being in a permanent elimination round.

No. More laid-back is definitely NOT a good description of a district event.

With regards to the original post, I think we're finally hitting 'the good old days' in FIRST. It's a tendency that a lot of people have to look back in time and gloss over the bad points of something. Remember how great the 50's were? The 60's music? etc. etc. People don't think back about FIRST and remember what is like: no kit bot chassis, very limited parts, many robots completely unable to move. Long-term field downtimes, poor volunteer work due to lack of training. Fewer teams, fewer matches, fewer events. Less media hype.

I could go on all day.

Sure, FIRST can improve. At the same time I don't know another sport that completely rewrites their ruleset each year with a new game. Frankly FIRST does an incredible job. After all, look at all the problems in the NHL, NBA, and NFL with what are essentially static rules sets. There are still regular bad calls made by extremely high paid refs, missed calls, misinterpreted rules, and the like.

Now, if you have suggestions to improve FIRST, I'd hope they listen with ears open. For instances:

1. FIRST - your field prints are horrible. Please please please get a professional that follows normal drafting standards to do your next drawings. I've been making this please for 3 years.

2. FIRST - please give us lit field targets back for vision, and make it worthwhile.

3. FIRST - please REDUCE the number of places I have to go for information, and improve your webpage so it's organized more intuitively!

4. FIRST - please modify the Q&A. Make it indexed by topic, easily searchable by keyword, and downloadable as a single PDF (the entire Q&A).

I'm sure that folks can come up with more suggestions. Let's be proactive and move the bar forward.

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

I just want to say that as a part of Monroe Trojan Robotics I was able to have the opportunity to experience both district and regional events this year because we chose to attend the Finger Lakes Regional. After getting the opportunity to attend FLR I have to say that although it was a excellent event, I prefer the district system much, much more.

As some people have said above, why spend countless hours on build, business, scouting, sponsorship hunting, and many other things to potentially only get to play 10 matches. If I was in an area with the Regional system I would not be a part of FRC. I enjoy the opportunity to attend two appropriately professional and priced events a year with more seeding matches in each one. With the district system I am able to play a minimum of 24 matches assuming we only attended two events and never made elims and a maximum of roughly 84 matches if we attend three districts plus championships and played the maximum number of elim matches in each one. This does not even count the M.A.R.C off-season event my team puts on every year.

The Rochester Institute of Technology is an excellent facility, but would I say it is any better than that of any Michigan high school I have attended for an event, never. Aside from a smaller pit area in Michigan I don't notice a difference. The lighting system they hauled in specifically for the event is ridiculous, and the arena was no more than a pricier version of a high school gym. The fact that to get to the machine shop you had to ride a shuttle was so frustrating we decided to make due with the stuff we had in the pits. We also had to park practically a mile from the competition each day. I'm not complaining I'm just trying to point out the superiority of the high schools the Michigan system utilizes to the universities used for regional events. I enjoyed the Niles District Event more than I did FLR because of this. Both were excellent and professional events which would exemplify FIRST to an outsider looking in, but Niles was better because of everything's close proximity and their ability to give each team a greater number of matches.

EDIT: To respond to someone above, the districts are in no way "low key." The local paper had a full page story on the front page with a title along the lines of "Robots Converge on Local High School." The hotel we stayed at had "Welcome to Robotics Tournament Participants" on the sign. The events in Michigan are in no way "low key."

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

Tom hit on a good point. Let's see what the good old days brought us:

1. You could only use items found in the Small Parts Catalogue ... yuck!
2. No Autonomous mode
3. No CIM motors
4. Globe motors (OK, I want those back)
5. Door Motors (OK, I want those back too)
6. Did I mention no CIM motors?
7. 1 v. 1, then 1 v. 1v. 1, then 2 v. 2
8. No real kitbot chassis. This was the single biggest one year improvement in robot quality / Regional experience. 2005 brought us 4 CIM motors, 3 v. 3 and the kit chassis.
9. No bag and tag. This has saved many teams a lot of money in shipping and not just the Michigan teams.

Many of these changes were brought about because we asked for them. We asked for more matches in 2004 and got the 3 v. 3 in 2005 instantly adding matches. We asked for more reliable motors and the CIM motor was custom modified and put into the kit of parts.

Now, with regards to districts and low key. That is like saying jumbo shrimp. It is an oxymoron. The districts are fast paced and there is almost no turn around time. I personally have played in several Regional and District Events and the experience from my perspective is the same. Don't even get me started about the Michigan State Championship ...

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

For the third time:

1) That was the impression I got from the webcasts--it seemed a lot like on offseason, slightly relaxed. Admittedly, the offseason that they most resemble is IRI, which as we all know is two days of craziness.

2) I have never been inside the state of MI. As such, I haven't actually been to an MI event, other than to see them on the webcast. So maybe I haven't experienced the intensity. So shoot me.

3) IN SHORT, maybe I got the wrong impression from the webcast. So why does everybody seem to want to correct me?

Tom, you've got the same post twice--might be nice to remove one as it's rather long.

Jim, it's quite possible that you could have multiple events in the same area. But you've got to make sure that you can do that--maybe there's only one suitable venue within a full day's drive, and it's booked for all but one weekend, now what? Cut the team registration cost? Go into "beyond the season" or have a midweek event? And how have the UP teams dealt with their travel to the non-UP districts? What about the areas with less than 24 teams? If the West Coast goes to a district-type model with non-district teams excluded, including HI, what are the Alaska and Australia and Chile teams going to do? For them, the West Coast is the easiest to get to. (Same for the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic area and the European teams. Texas, AZ, NM, and CA all going to district could affect the Mexican teams--until they get enough to have their own events.) If you can't answer those questions effectively for your area, then you really need to before going to a district model.

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

Actually I was speaking to GrimTuesday. I guess I should have been less lazy before. Sorry for any confusion.

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

For our team, the extra travel to attend two regionals is difficult. We would really like California to switch to district-style events. However, we don't have to adopt everything Michigan has done. Perhaps we can compromise and get some of the benefits of district while keeping the strengths we have.

I think California can support both district and regional competitions simultaneous. Teams in California could sign up for a regional and have the option to sign up for a reduce cost district event. We could leave the regionals open to out of district teams. This way, California teams can get more game time per dollar then what we currently have. We won't be as efficient as Michigan but it would be an improvement. Plus we get some visiting teams at our regionals.

I am not sure if California could pull together a Sate Championship. It would cool if we could but its not as important as adding district events.

To return to the original topic. The most frustrating things teams experience are probably:
1. not having a working robot
2. excessive red tape (poorly written rules and regulations)
3. not enough opportunities to run the robot in competition.

District events would help with number 3. But teams are only concerned with that if they have a working robot. The only way to fix 1 and 2 is to communicate better with FIRST and other teams. I know that my team is terrible with this. We never give feedback to FIRST (if more teams give feedback, more likely FIRST will try to correct issues) and never bother to properly network with teams in our area. The teams I know that left FIRST, usually left because of not having a working robot at competition. 766 has been there, we know have horrible it can be to not have a robot working at all. I feel we could network better, help out other teams have a working robot at competition and network with better teams than ourselves so that we too can avoid pitfalls that cause a non-functioning robot. We certainly have made it difficult for ourselves by not posting any contact info. We will be definitely correcting that soon.

I think the key to improving FIRST is minimizing really frustrating experiences and maximizing positive experiences. Having more working robots and more matches are the ways to do it.

Re: Is there usually this much frustration?
 

Frustrations:

I'll start by stating that I really like the LogoMotion game. It has fairly intuitive scoring, the right balance of subtlety and mania, and the minibot race (despite all of the FTC/VEX political brouhaha) is a great climax to each match.

However I really have a problem with the excessive use of red cards this season, both as a sanction in the rules and in practice. In other sports the red card is used for egregious conduct or repetitive infraction of the rules. It really is devalued when a non-functioning robot can incur a red card, causing a team/alliance disqualification merely because of where it gets pushed to.

Tom, while I agree with your other points this one I have to disagree with. The retroreflective targets are a huge step forward in my opinion. Assuming the robot provides it's own illumination, there is much more control over hue and illumination timing so a robust solution to image tracking is far easier. As to making it worthwhile, at least this season there is a bonus to autonomous scoring - each top row ubertube is worth 6-12 points, so up to 36 points for each alliance in the match. While that's less than the 50 max points for minibots, it is still a strong incentive.