[Kpchem]

High-level summary: FIRST needs to work on cleaning up the transitions during Einstein and Closing Ceremonies.

There was downtime between matches where it looked like the fields were green and ready to go, but nothing was happening. Sometimes it was filled with dance songs, but often it was filled with nothing at all. And while part of that can be attributed to technical issues with the Audience Screen from the FMS or connection issues, I would be surprised if that was the case.

If there is going to be a lot of downtime between the end of Einstein matches and Closing Ceremonies, then it would be nice if it was communicated earlier on to teams and audience members. I understand that time is needed to tear down the fields and clear things out, but if I remember correctly they didn't give people a good idea of when that was going to be finished until about halfway through the break (and I might be wrong on that, feel free to correct me). I'm sure there are teams that left after Einstein matches finished who wanted to stay for the Champions, Inspire, and Chairman's Award presentations but didn't know when they were going to happen.

FIRST needs to do a better job of communicating/advertising what the closing acts are going to be during closing ceremonies. I know the names of the groups performing were briefly mentioned during Opening Ceremonies, but unless you researched those groups (I know I didn't) you don't know what you were missing by leaving early. And even if you stayed for part of the acts, there was no clear indication during Closing Ceremonies whether or not the act that just finished was the last act or not, causing people to at least start getting ready to leave even when there was much more to see.

I really liked the production value and introduction of all of the teams on Einstein at the beginning, but just overall it seemed to go downhill very quickly from there.