First off, 1923 had a fantastic time at IRI. To have been invited was an incredible honor, and watching our students work hard on robot changes to be able to 'play with the best' before the event was awesome. I wish we could have had more time to shake out the new claw before arriving, but we dialed it in eventually; and watching my students become "an IRI team" over the course of the weekend was well worth the trip.
I've done my share of work running events, so I understand that there are things you can't entirely change - heat in the gym for example; not much you can do beyond blasting the AC at full and hoping it helps! Overall we had a really good time, but I'll make a few quick notes:
Team Dinner - Before our last match, our students looked in briefly to see if they wanted to stay, and couldn't find vegetarian options (we have more vegetarians on the team than carnivores!), so we went out elsewhere. I wasn't there, so maybe they just weren't looking hard enough, but options for alternative eating habits/restrictions would be nice.
Ref Inconsistency - I'll spare the details for a PM, but in one match we were setting up a double-tether (our ramp > partner's ramp > partner robot) so that our robot could can-burgle... and had our HP ramp taken off the field by a referee over the numbering rules. This was something we'd done before, and had been done -to- us in other matches, with no issue. We asked if we could fix the problem quickly (with a sharpie, <30 seconds), and were denied. A few matches later, we watched the same ramp numbering issue be called on another team, and they were allowed to make the same fix we were proposing before the match started. It affected our match outcome, but more importantly it was pretty disheartening for my students to have been treated that way. In the future, consistent approaches when it comes to calls/situations like that would be better overall for team experience.
However, out of three days in that venue, five minutes of unpleasantness isn't really the biggest deal. My students had a fabulous time meeting new friends from all over the place, and are certainly working hard to create a 2016 team & program that makes it out to Indiana again. Thank you, so much to the IRI PC for putting together another fantastic event.
Edit:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The other Gabe
Pros:
the interview with the 1923 person
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Hey, thanks!
Thanks a bunch to IRI for inviting me on their show. It was an awesome format, and super fun to be a part of! Everyone I know that was watching back home enjoyed IRI Live a great deal.