Hmm. This will be a bit of a rant I guess, but most of my complaints were larger items overall. This being my first season, perhaps I just haven't been around enough to appreciate the smaller issues
- For lack of a better adjective, "better" webstreams overall, to get to a larger audience of lesser-dorky folk (read: people like my mother). I've seen some events on Youtube which were streamed in very much an ESPN style, with some volunteer announcers + between-match commentary, fancy scorekeeping, interviews, etc. I'm aware this would cause a manpower issue, but it'd still be nice to have if we stirred up enough demand.
- Faster match resets with less clunky live scoring. I don't really get why bins were chosen over, say, a coin-slot system here. The weights seemed to have nothing but problems, whereas a mechanical switch would be much more reliable. The only plausible reason I suppose is space to get a return pipe for any slots made for counting. And resets... wow. A match every 10 minutes (or more) isn't a great way to keep energy going.
- On the energy note... a little less time spent between Einstein matches would be nice. While there does need to be time for sponsors and awards, I think speeches between almost all QF/SF matches was overkill. Why not run through Chairman's and EI and similar between QFs and SFs, and GP, EE, etc. between SFs and Finals? Longer bunches of speeches, yes, but would make the actual match structure more fun to watch in my opinion.
- An extra day of CMP would be fun, too. Not just in the "cool, more time around dorks just like me!" sense, but in the "can we please play more than 8 matches?" sense. As a scouting application developer (IPA from #3138) I have to admit it's sometimes a hindrance to only have 10/11 matches at a regional to average out with, let alone 8 at Worlds. Also, as was noted above, not playing over half the teams in the division at CMP is a bummer - with 8 matches, assuming you never duplicate teams, you're playing with/against 40% of your division. Yikes! Compare that to 3138's two regionals this year, at Crossroads we saw every team there if I'm recalling correctly, and at Queen City we saw all but about 10 I believe.
- A flame-inviting complaint I'm sure, but the WiFi war really needs to end. I understand the issues with Einstein last year, however if I read right the Rev. B DLink was to fix the deauth attack issue, which was the issue
as far as I recall. "Interference" is a pretty simple fix - run the robots on some 5GHz channel way out in uncommon territory. However, I'm also of the opinion that routers do a pretty darned good job of eliminating cross-talk, and as such the "please shut down your hotspot" bit is probably unnecessary. A related side note, having FTAs walking around the stands with the sensors was... interesting. I understand there were FTC fields having issues, however (ignoring my rant about WiFi radios above) patting me down with the little triangular sensor like they were the TSA as I apparently looked suspicious enough (and was within the general vicinity of an iPhone hotspot) was interesting if not a bit awkward (there wasn't even a shared laugh afterward or I'd have thought he was just messing around...) Again, I might be only eclipsing the scope of the WiFi issues, and if anyone'd like to enlighten me a bit more on this one, I'm all ears.
Overall a fun first year for me, even with these few complaints.