[cgmv123]

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...day-Priorities

As I said in my last blog, we’re going to be having a meeting with teams at Championship about the move to two Championships starting in 2017. FIRST will be providing some additional information at the start of the session, then we’ll be moving on to questions from the audience. The session will be 12:30PM to 1:30PM on Thursday, April 23rd, in the Ferrara Theater within the America’s Center. We’re in the process of updating the conference schedule now to accommodate this. If you will be at Championship, and are interested, please attend, and bring your questions. We will be making information from the session available to the broader community afterward.

The Magic Number is 608

Your probably already know, but Subdivision team assignments for Championship are out. You can find them here.

Some may be wondering – if we said we wanted 600 FRC Teams at the 2015 FIRST Championship, why do we actually have 608? Can’t we count? Well, usually we do pretty good with that – using spreadsheets instead of fingers helps* – but offering slots to teams off the waitlist is tricky, because not everyone accepts. We need to work acceptance estimates into our decisions about how many teams get waitlist offers. At the same time, we want to offer slots to teams as early as we can, so we’re not calling up teams the Tuesday before Championship with the question “Would you like to go to Championship tomorrow”? Also, we did aim for the high side on registrations to make absolutely sure we hit that 600 number to which we committed. I’m personally very happy we’re able to accommodate these eight additional teams with little trouble (and I would bet they’re pretty happy about it also). It does mean playing two more matches per Subdivision, though, and so adding 14 minutes to the 14.5 hours of qualification match time we currently have scheduled. We are updating the schedule to show matches Friday PM going to 6:30, though if things go as planned we’ll end a little sooner than that.

Wednesday at Championship

Wednesday at Championship, teams should be focused on getting through inspection safely. Practice fields in the pits will not be open Wednesday, though officially scheduled practice matches will be taking place on your subdivision fields in the dome from 6-8PM. If you have finished inspection, please find another team to help. For team members not helping in the pit, we do have several conferences going on Wednesday, and it's the first day of a new Championship element, the Innovation Faire!

Frank

*But not for everyone. Have you seen these guys? Be sure to watch until the end when they start using abacuses that only exist in their minds. It’s honestly a bit unsettling.

2017-2020 Championships plan listening/Q&A session will be Thursday at 12:30 in the Ferrara Theater. Bring your pitchforks.