Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

FIRST may not be about maximizing any one particular person's experience, but they are about maximizing the experience of their target audience and customers. FIRST's biggest recruiting tool is not a single high-profile event with pop stars, it's all the teams and the students and mentors on those teams going out in to the community and making targeted pitches.

To that end, the complaint is that FIRST would be sacrificing their current customer's enjoyment to try and expose the program to prospective customers, and in doing so may be hurting their own efforts. If teams come back from champs feeling like FIRST doesn't care about them, they're going to have a much harder time getting enthused to go recruit and to inspire their own teams.

Teams are paying a lot of money to attend this event, and most of are doing that under the premise that they can use this to wow and inspire their own students. As much as they might support FIRST's mission to recruit new members, I highly doubt they're willing to spend that money so that others can enjoy a free concert and maybe see what's going on.

The bottom line is, the teams are the paying customers of FIRST, and FIRST needs to respect that. Getting to the championships is the goal of almost every team in first; it gives them something to work towards, it's the crowning achievement of a season. To get there and feel like you have to take a back seat to some big show that FIRST has organized undermines that entirely. These students are attending under the premise that they are the main attraction.

I believe it would be extremely counter-productive to FIRST's goals to push FRC fields out of the dome for an entertainment show. They keep telling us we need to celebrate and idolize engineers, but then they make those take a back seat to a rock star...it seems kind of hypocritical. I refuse to believe that FIRST is really that ignorant.

Edit: EricH, I really hope you're right about expanding programs needing more space, and showcasing CollegeFIRST. That makes much more sense to me than some big show. If they need to put the wrap party indoors for weather reasons, perhaps they put that in one of the conference halls and moved FLL or FTC on to the dome floor.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

I'm glad a few people beat me to the "Stop Whining" punch...

The fact is, people are resistant to change. Everything is new. FIRST has changed the venue, thus it is going to create change... nearly everyone here seems to think change is bad.

Heck my first thought was "ugh we have to lug our scouting setup halfway through the day on friday, and gosh, during the Deans List presentation! how rude!"... but then I immediately volunteered to organize a group of 3 of us to do it so the rest of the team could go see the Dean's list presentation.

My second thought was exactly JesseK's "SWEET, I can be in both the pits and at the scouting/matches at the same time!! I dont have to walk a bazillion miles for every match!"

Its new... Its different... LIVE WITH IT. It may not be so bad!

FIRST has their reasons (which we dont know yet), and I'm sure 3 years from now we will find something else to whine and complain about and will forget that we even had a time before there were 3 fields in the Dome.... :D

Don't get me wrong, healthy conversation & concern can be useful and has helped bring about some great changes... but when after a hundred posts it winds down to people bashing FIRST for decisions we don't even know about, random speculation and whining... well its just not productive anymore. If you really have a concern or issue, have your team leader email FIRST to bring it up. If you are just concerned that it wont be glamorous enough, well just wait and see. It might be better than you think.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

I see your point, maybe there has been a little bit of whining going on but I think it's understandable.

Teams work hard to raise the money to go to Championship. It's our money that makes it possible for us to rent out an awesome venue like the Georgia Dome and the Edward Jones Dome. We give that money to FIRST and they are choosing how to spend OUR money. I think what has people most upset is just the plain lack of explanation. If it wasn't our money then we would have no right to complain. But it is our money and we are spending A LOT of it and I think we deserved better then a HUGE change with ZERO explanation.

It might be great, it might not, at the very least we should have gotten some sort of explanation.

I think it's sad that the only benefit we've been able to find out of this whole situation is the walk to the field from the pits is shorter...

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

A collegiate showcase would be very cool. I am hoping that the extra space they're freeing up is for something robot and student related as opposed to something pop culture related.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

I remember the FIRST College Pilot Manual said that the fields are standard sized FRC fields 27 ft by 54 ft. So there are six FRC sized fields. I think there 6 or 12 teams competing in the pilot competition.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

I agree about the whining, but for the most part this thread has been good questions and speculations.

Please don't forget, the teams are the customers and FIRST is the vendor. FIRST has an obligation to communicate to the customer when changes to the product are being made.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

I don't really see it that way at all. FIRST is a non-profit organization, and all of us are members of that organization, not customers. Yes, we have to make payments (fees) to participate in various events, whether regionals or CMP. I believe FIRST *did* communicate a change to the product (hence this thread), and it was primarily a logistical one (moving fields and swapping fields), not a substantive one. The fundamental aspects of 'the product' haven't changed... You get to compete with all the regional winners, chairman's winner's etc. The field will still be 27'x54' just as you expected.

Now, if they said we don't have time/space to run Einstein so we'll just have four co-champion alliances, or if they said the fields will be under water, that would be a change to product :-)

The rules include a section on Tournaments, and I think most, if not all of those rules (include informing you of changes via Team updates and Q&A) are still applicable --

If they answered all the questions being raised here, those answers would elicit a bunch more questions. I suspect they don't even know all the answers to the first order questions yet, as Bill alluded to in his blog post. They are trying to stage a huge event with tons of logistics to consider, let them do their job and cut them some slack.... With a new venue as well as other motivations to change/improve things, some things won't be as you would most like it. Others may find things that have bugged them for years is worlds better.. Just like engineering, there will be tradeoffs and decisions need to be made.


P.S. Go tell the high school [Foot|Base|Basket]Ball team that you are complaining because you have to play on two or three different fields with different refs! I don't think they'll have much sympathy for you as they play on numerous fields throughout their season and post-season.

John Vriezen
Team 2530 "Inconceivable"
Mentor, Drive Coach, Inspector

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

I think he was more referring to teams paying a hefty registration to pay on the Georgia Dome/Edward Jones dome floor, not a convention center. While it will still be champs, it will feel like a regional just with some good robots on the field!

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

My comment was more directed at those who had been complaining about sensor calibration differences and inconsistent ref'ing due to swapping fields/refs.


John Vriezen
Team 2530 "Inconceivable"
Mentor, Drive coach, Inspector

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

IMO, thats a pretty weak comparison. We already play on different fields with different refs during the season if you go to more than one events. If my high school team got the chance to play in the Championship game at Camp Randall Stadium (home of the Badgers) and payed thousands of dollars in registration, travel and hotels (for the team, family, friends and fans), but found out the game would be played in some park with bleachers set up, I'm pretty sure there would be some complaining, especially if no one knew why the location changed.

Even if you don't consider FIRST teams to be FIRST's customers, you need to understand that FIRST needs us just as much as we need FIRST. They should do everything possible to please us (which I think they are for the most part), because without us, there is no FIRST Robotics.

That being said, I have faith in FIRST to make the Championship in St. Louis just as good, if not better than it was in Atlanta. Of course there will be some changes--some will be for the worst, but others will be for the best.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

Are non-profits exempt from detailing what the service/product is? Send us your money and then we'll tell you what you get for it.

Think of each FIRST team as a company that purchases materials and services to market the end product. We choose where to market our product. We choose markets (regionals) based on known value. Teams are purchasing the the known value from Atlanta and expecting at least the same if not better.

The issue is the timing and the lack of specifics.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

We are not customers of FIRST, we are FIRST!


FIRST is a collection of volunteers and participants (for discussion purposes, I'll call it FIRSTUS.) What I like to call FIRST Corporate (FIRSTCO) is that small group of payed folks and volunteers who work to organize things for FIRSTUS.

FIRSTCO will never be able to make everyone in FIRSTUS happy, heck there are still people who want us to go back to the days of Disney.

If FIRSTCO makes decisions about the championship that we of FIRSTUS don't like then it's up to us to show our displeasure. We in FIRSTUS land just need to make sure our complaints are valid and not based on pure speculation.

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

College-level FIRST Pilot Info: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&p...thkey=CM2L9sIG

http://vimeo.com/17484250

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

This is beneath you, Cory, and I can't believe you wrote it. Which emoticon means "disappointed?"

Re: Bills Blog - Champs info
 

That should pretty much put an end to this speculation nonsense. CollegeFIRST, with AERIAL vehicles, and so on, needs 3 FRC fields. By my count, that means they're fitting:

3 FRC Fields (Divisional Dome 1, Divisional Dome 2, Einstein)
3 CollegeFIRST Fields (All Your Base, FIRST Flight, The Best Trajectory)
1 FRC Field sized area for FTC
AND FLL (atop Einstein)

inside the Dome.

Plus: College level-FIRST, including flight? Yeah, I think that trumps 2 FRC fields needing to be in the dome.

EDIT: All that being said, I still think they could have fit it all in. Arrange the 3 CollegeFIRST fields close together in one end-zone, Einstein, stage, and FTC in the other endzone, and 4 FRC fields in between. From what I saw in ATL last year, there was a lot of under-utilized space on the floor of the dome, and my understanding is that STL is actually BIGGER than the Georgia Dome.