[EricH]

Just to be clear:

I do not mind having a concert at the Championship. It's happened before; it's just been at the wrap party instead of on Friday night, or it's been after finals but before the wrap party. Having it on Friday night, before the event is over, is just new--if done right, it could be really awesome. See next points for why I'm commenting in more of a negative vein.

I do mind the movement of two fields. Said prior concerts never had the fields moved. They've also never even been in the same venue, to my knowledge (though Epcot might be the exception there--I only went once). Again, could be quite awesome, if done right. See next point.

I do mind the lack of official explanations for said field movement until today. Even a "Hey, we are having a special concert with [name redacted] on Friday night" would have been better than "We're doing something cool, just wait for more info"--which is exactly what we got for the last couple of weeks. Even knowing that there would be a concert--for sure--would have been a vast improvement over the rumors that were around, even though those rumors did turn out correct.

I would not be entirely surprised if the concert is comparatively sparsely attended, not in protest, but because people planned ahead to be doing something else at that time due to the lack of information. That lack of information is my main complaint; the fields moving can be dealt with, even if it is uncomfortable for a while.

For next year, there are two things that would help this continue: 1) Say that there will be a concert as soon as that is known (or that you're working on a concert if you don't know for sure by, say 1 month before--"something cool" won't cut it). This allows teams to plan to be there. 2) Try to have it displace as few fields as possible--for that, some clever floor planning or using a field as a stage may be needed. This allows more teams to play where they were expecting to play this whole time, for more time.

As far as a performer giving a concert just for FIRST participants getting attention: I don't think that will quite get the message out, even with a national television special. However, if there was some way of getting word out that [insert favorite celebrity here] was going to be at this robotics competition, and they would be [doing something for their fans] if [fans in question do some easy task like finding a cool feature on some random robot], or [celebrity] was acting as a traffic director/MC/tour guide of cool robots/some other function that gets them interacting with the public, I think there would be a really massive invasion of the general public. Maybe some of them just come for the celebrity. Maybe some of them get the FIRST bug and start looking hard into STEM. As a matter of fact, that's what Morgan Freeman did with that video he did for FIRST--"I'm going to be here on these days, come join me in watching" (paraphrased).